This Week's LivePDX.com Music Blog

While plotting to somehow arrange it so that no song ever again begins with an acoustic guitar going "chunk chunk-a-chunk-a, chunk, chunk-a-chunk-a, chunk chunk-a-chunk-a"…etc:
The Mt. Hood Jazz Fesitval is actually the Mt. Hood Jazz Festival again. On Monday, with saxophonist Red Holloway in attendance, they announced that the festival will come back to the campus of Mt. Hood Community College (also the home of KMHD) Friday and Saturday August 16 & 17. That's where it started in 1981. There are still bad feelings about how and why it left. Not toward the college, but toward those who ran it back then. No, it won't be like it was, but it's a good thing it has come home. More info later.
A new jazz club in Portland! And run by a musician! Come May drummer Alan Jones will be opening a club in the basement of the Green Onion near Portland State called The Cave at 636 SW Jackson St. (at Broadway). And hallelujah!!! Wednesday nights will be owned by Nancy King. There will be music on weekends, too.
Yes, of course Alan will be playing, it's his club.
There's some grumbling among and between the musicians over Jimmy Mak's new policy of booking two bands in one night. Two bands, one cover. Sometimes a band will open for another, sometimes they share the headline. I think it's a great thing for music consumers (us).
I reported last week that Margaret Slovak was having her shoulder examined in New York. Not exactly. She says, "I got a grant to go to NYC for two weeks to study with a classical guitarist, David Leisner, who has developed guitar playing techniques utilizing larger muscle groups in the shoulder/armpit to help regain right hand function due to injuries. The lessons went very well and I feel that these techniques will help me to get more of the use of my right hand back. It will still take a while to fully integrate the techniques but the study gave me a lot of hope! I had shoulder surgery in 2006 to fix the damage from the (auto accident)."
On the teenage blues front: Last Friday (Muddy Waters' birthday) guitarist/singer TJ Moor was thrilled to be able take the stage with Pinetop Perkins and Willie "Big Eyes" Smith at the Aladdin Theater while multi-instrumentalist Mac Potts, "danced the night away whirlin' and twirlin'," according to TJ. Saturday Mac played in the lobby of the Schnitz.
One good thing about working for nothing at KMHD is the DJ email list. For instance, a couple of weeks ago Jeremy Appleton, who does the awesome Soul Station show at 10 pm on Tuesday nights wrote, "Robert Parker is an Australian Sound Engineer and Broadcaster. Over the last thirty years Robert has developed a unique, award winning system for extracting high quality sound from early mono 78 rpm records. He has been collecting records since the age of around twelve - and has now amassed one of the finest vintage music collections in the country. It has formed the basis for 'Jazz Classics in Digital Stereo'. You can now hear the seris over the Web."
Brother/sister electronic/trip-hop duo Oracle with Keith Schreiner,
twin sister/sister duo Acoustic Minds
and Morgan Grace (among others) performing at a tribute to Billie Holiday? Now that sounds like fun. It's a benefit for November's Siren Nation Festival on Saturday, April 12 at The Fez. MCing is Tahoe Jackson. I wish she were also singing. Somebody has to get her to sit in on something that night.
Bassist Damien Erskine is always busy. There's finally a Klezmocracy gig coming up (stay tuned) and recently he signed with Alfred Publishing for an instructional book and a DVD. He ought to have one on how to grow and maintain an awesome half-a-goatee.
I won't jump the gun on a piece I have in this week's A&E section but one of the happiest happy hours in town these days features former Artichokians Kate Power and Steve Einhorn every Monday night in April at the Alberta St. Public House.
There are no Oregon bands nominated for Jammys
this year. You can vote there anway. I voted for Bonerama and Galactic.
Tom D'Antoni is a Portland writer and TV Producer/Reporter. Listen to his show on Saturday nights 10pm to 2am on KMHD 89.1 fm and streaming on the web at kmhd.fm.