Party: "Sabertooth Micro Fest" - Day 2 with Kurt Vile and The Violators

Party: "Sabertooth Micro Fest" - Day 2 with Kurt Vile and The Violators

Saturday, February 7

"Sabertooth Micro Fest" - Day 2
featuring:
Kurt Vile and The Violators
The Minders
The Shivas

In Lola’s Room: Vintage cartoons and other visual pleasures
In Ringlers: Freak Mountain Ramblers, featuring members of the Holy Modal Rounders
A musical celebration of the Crystal Ballroom's psychedelic history
sponsored by Willamette Week, KPSU and VooDoo Doughnuts

7 p.m. doors, 8 p.m. show (Ringlers music 5 to 7 p.m.)
All ages welcome
$30 advance, $35 day of show | 3-day festival pass $75

"Sabertooth Micro Fest" - Day 2
McMenamins is excited to announce the full lineup for the Crystal Ballroom's inaugural Sabertooth psychedelicstonerrockmicrofest, a property-wide musical celebration of the Crystal Ballroom's psychedelic history.

Click here for the listing for all three days!

Facebook Event, Day 1:
https://www.facebook.com/events/490977401044365/

Facebook Event, Day 2:
https://www.facebook.com/events/590715551040016/
Kurt Vile and The Violators

Kurt Vile has a way of tying time in knots. You can hear it on his new album Smoke Ring For My Halo from the get-go - the pinwheeling guitars and reaching atmospheres of ‘Baby's Arms' are as strange as they are familiar: a demonstration of how Kurt can put worn methods and sounds through himself and end up with something that isn't emotionally or sonically obvious. Instead we're left with a record that contains traces of the past but doesn't waste precious time in the now being reverent.

Once compared to Leonard Cohen, Tom Petty, Psychic TV, and Animal Collective in the same review (for 2009's Childish Prodigy), Kurt can bring to mind anything from Suicide to Leo Kottke to My Bloody Valentine, Bob Seger, Nick Drake, and Eastern ragas. Still, he pieces together these disparate elements so seamlessly and unpretentiously that such reference points are rendered pointless by the singularity of his sound. Kurt Vile might belong to a long lineage of classic American songwriters, but he's the only one who's alive and in his prime today.



This is the fourth time Kurt Vile has put an album's worth of songs together and stuck a name on it, but in a sense Smoke Ring For My Halo is his first real album - every flinching guitar arpeggio and vocal wander was made to be here, made with this record in mind, to sit alongside another in situ and in sequence. It seems weird saying this given the amount of ground he's covered already, but Smoke Ring For My Halo is the perfect way into the music Kurt Vile makes. It's tender and evocative, elusive but companionable, tough in the gut and the arm but swollen in the chest and giddy in the head. It's a record that is perfect for any given day during whatever season, to satisfy all moods in every possible scenario - be that first thing in the morning or last thing at night; today, tomorrow or five years from now.

In short, it's real. Kurt Vile isn't just the loneliest of ten siblings born to parents on the outskirts of Philadelphia, the former forklift truck driver who makes rock band guitar songs in the solitude of his bedroom. Smoke Ring For My Halo brings all of that together, marrying the introspection of the nocturnal stoner with the exploration of a troubadour frontiersman to arrive at a record you know is so much more than the sum of his and its constituent parts because often he sounds like he doesn't know how he got there himself.



Website:
http://kurtvile.com/

The Minders

The indie pop group, The Minders, was formed in Denver, Colorado in 1995 by Martyn Leaper and Robert Schneider (Apples in Stereo). The Minders started out as a recording project with Robert Schneider producing the first single (Build) which was released in early 1996 on the Elephant 6 imprint. The Minders quickly became a live act, with Joel Richardson on bass, Rebecca Cole (Wild Flag) on drums, and Jeff Almond on lead guitar; a follow- up single (Paper plane) was released later in 1996, and the band quickly gained popularity as a new member of the growing elephant six collective. The Minders would release four singles before delivering their first full length album (Hooray for Tuesday), in 1998 on SpinArt records.
The Minders sound has evolved over the years. From its simple garage origins, the group has grown to incorporate complex arrangements that harken back to the orchestrations of such acts as the Left Banke, and the Zombies, and even though the Minders music is greatly reflective of Sixties pop music, the band has continued to evolve. Since 1998, the Minders have released six more records, each of which tackled different styles in pop and new wave.
The Minders new album “Into the River” (October 2015 release on Space cassette records) Recorded at Jackpot! Studios and Produced by, Larry Crane (Elliot Smith, M.Ward, Go- Betweens) is a return to form after an 8 year absence. Their new single, “It’s Gonna Breakout” is a bold lush statement laden with hooks and offers up a taste of things to come from an album that promises to be their best release yet.

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Minders/123261031094649?fref=nf

The Shivas

You Know What to Do [KLP252], The Shivas' fourth LP will have you on your feet. With all of the fierce energy and body shakin' that The Shivas are known for, You Know What To Do encapsulates that, and much more. Recorded and mixed on tape by Calvin Johnson at K's Dub Narcotic Studio, this album is an apt follow-up to Whiteout [KLP242], and features the title track of The Shivas "You Make Me Wanna Die" 7" EP [IPU143] released last April.

Amongst the 13 tracks of the album, you can glance the many faces of the The Shivas' musical style. From the blistering heat of tracks like "Old Lightning Rod" to the cool groove of "Ride On", the record also touches down into the slower tempos on tracks such as the deeply psychedelic "Let It Happen To You".

This is The Shivas record we have all been waiting for, so don't hesitate, you know what to do.

"Their psychedelic surf-rock blew the audience away" - KEXP

"The Shivas might be Portland's best band. There, I said it" - Ryan J Prado of the Portland Mercury

"Tight and entergetic" - ssgmusic



Website:
http://www.theshivas.com/
In Ringlers: Freak Mountain Ramblers, featuring members of the Holy Modal Rounders

Portland's own Freak Mountain Ramblers bring a rollicking brand of rock 'n' roll, bluegrass, alternative country and country-blues to every show they play.

With a lineup including three members of the inimitable and notorious Holy Modal Rounders / Clamtones amalgamation of the '70s and '80s, Freak Mountain Ramblers has its roots in the underbelly of the alternative music scene that existed at that time, both in Portland and across the country. The Freaks have accumulated a loyal following in the Portland area by dependably creating beauty and bedlam at their live shows, and by producing CDs that successfully translate that energy and excitement to disc. Four lead singer/songwriters, each with a distinct character and approach to life and music, provide a dynamic show that packs the rooms with some of the most interesting music fans around.

The Freak Mountain Ramblers are veteran performers packing decades of experience. FMR members have been core musicians of the Holy Modal Rounders, Golden Delicious, the Clamtones, Richard Cranium and the Phoreheads, Prairie Dogs, Swingline Cubs, The Trail Band, and The Fly By Night Jass Band.

"... Freak Mountain Ramblers aren't your typical country western band. Not only have they chucked the slick yippie-ki-yay good looks of contemporary C&W singers for the haggard couture of mountain men, their lyrics have bizarrely warped the genre's storytelling. One song starts as a fable about two fighting neighbors and picks up speed until they have doused each other with gasoline. Strangely addictive and disturbingly fun, the song is sung in sweet tones and set to a galloping swing." – Portland Mercury

Website:
http://www.freakmountain.com/
A musical celebration of the Crystal Ballroom's psychedelic history

The Saber-toothed Cat thrived from the Eocene Epoch to the Pleistocene Epoch (a 42 million year stretch), and it's our hope that our Sabertooth Festival, with its roots in Portland's own "psycheluvic epoch"* will survive as long.

While psychedelic music covers a range of styles and genres, it is inspired by psychedelic culture and the attempt to replicate the mind altering experiences that started in mid-'60s folk rock and blues. As such, Sabertooth celebrates the historical role the Crystal Ballroom played through previous half-century of psychedelic music.

In the late 1960s the Crystal Ballroom celebrated an era referred to as "18 months of Psychedelia," and hosted mind expanding artists of the day from Frank Zappa to the Grateful Dead. While the modern Sabertooth Festival celebrates this history and shares the same common thread of experimentation and the ability to transport the listener to an altered reality, it is not a rehash of artists from a bygone era; the psychedelic music of the 21st century is in fact very different than what it was in the 1960s.

The Crystal's psychedelic cred includes notable nuggets from rock and roll history:

the famous Peace Rites event at the Crystal in the '60s, where Allen Ginsberg disputably first read 'Howl' (we celebrate his fellow beats in the Joe Cotter mural in the room itself).
the Dead recorded much of their exploratory Anthem of the Sun at the Crystal
the forefather of the distorted and processed guitar, Jimi Hendrix, played there as well
The Crystal has always been the nexus of this scene and McMenamins has continued to program and promote music of this nature since its opening.

Those looking at psychedelia's earliest roots will also see the Crystal playing a role. The first use of the word "psychedelic" in reference to music was in reference to our friends and extended family, the Holy Modal Rounders (members of whom will be performing at the Sabertooth event) of the East Village Freak Folk scene. Other key players of this scene were John Fahey, who's last Portland show was with us at our St Johns Pub; Bert Jansch (Pentangle) who we have hosted on two occasions in Lola's Room and the Rounders themselves who have performed multiple reunion concerts at the Crystal Ballroom.

In the late 70s the new psychedelic revival featuring bands like Echo and the Bunnymen, George Clinton and Fishbone... all acts who have played the Ballroom. And as time moved on, the early 90s brought a "neo-psychedelic " movement with the Elephant 6 collective, and the Crystal continues to host their music (Jeff Mangum, Neutral Milk Hotel, of Montreal - and supporting the Saturday night show The Minders).

The 21st Century lineage continues with such bands as Tame Impala, Animal Collective and The War on Drugs, who in fact just performed at the Crystal and whose early member/collaborator Kurt Vile headlines the February 7 event.

When psychedelic music melded with doom metal and evolved into Stoner Rock, Sleep was the first band of that kind and headlinine the first night of the festival.

Psychedelic music in its varying forms and styles is part of the lifeblood of the Crystal Ballroom: we wouldn't be open today without it, and we have continued to program it. Sabertooth is a natural extension of this, a full blown celebration of the music where the Company and the Crystal , as our predecessors , eternally presses Furthur ...

*from the Oregonian, March 3, 1967

Wiki-Delia:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_music

Interesting Related Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Remember-the-Crystal-Ballroom-of-the-60s/1429127164040565

Invited: Kevin Redhawk Bitsie, Michael Knackstedt, Jack Waibel, Alex Heller, Chris Peregrine, Nightmaren Couch, James Murphy, Rebecca Allyn Boersema, Erik Thorsnes, Drawing LaZar, Mark Bruch, Alex Arrowsmith, Arya David Imig, Rachel Gilmer, Maneesha Jo, Dominic Keska, Larissa Nez, Andy Carlson, Drew Bandy, Matt Daby, Enya Chiu, Gregarious T. Cline, Austen Krantz, Sarah Fernandes, Ben Knudtson, Meggyn Pomerleau, Terri Wiley, Salaam Del Rosario, Jake Smilin' Phillipes, Heather Hyland, Kate Trusewicz, Mica Russo, Dan Wood, Hollister Dixon, Andrea Kienle, Cedar Teionietathe Jocks, Angela Mechaley, Jake Pettit, Justin Ray Ross, Kenric L. Ashe, Jordan Saia, Tommi Schwert, Jay Martin, Brett Nair, Matthew Gay, Tony Altamirano, Beth Ochsner, Melissa Barnes, Dillard BroBot Worthen, Debbie Medina, Coral Cronin, Marjorie Anne Frances Hoover, Anamilé Mispireta, Debra Howard, Sean Danaher, Schlomo Rabinowitz, Trillium Mycelium, Zach Jones, Jeffrey Melton, Joseph Rammell, Kami Bryant, Chris Bigalke, Jimmy Hixenbaugh, Skyler Reed, Colette Pomerleau, Ryan Hetrick, Mark David Charles, Colby Walter Lawrence, Allison Carter, Caitlin M Webb, Steve Hutson, Casey Winkleman, Rountree Intrepid Catalyst, Sam Ewert, Traci Lopez, Joanna Cosper, Sharon Wood, Jonathan Cruz, Pekio Vergotis, Gina Murrell, Eric Phillips-Meadow, Mike Wyant, Thalia Foulias, Kate Shirley, Kevin Smith-D'aguiar, Annie Zryd, Erin Brewer, Brett Cannon, Chris Hooper, Andi Maria, Paul Clark, Sam Isaac Knackstedt, Stone Tang, Fury Mariska, Jj Harris, Shy Allott, Sarah Seiler, Karla Deville, Ryan O'Quinn, Chas Bowie show more »