It only takes moments for Colin Howard to show his scar. He turns his right wrist and points to the purple loaf of healed skin where thick glass invaded a few months ago. The accident occurred at Howard’s job, sliced through a tendon and gave his band, Portland’s Blue Horns, an unwanted break. But Howard’s tone is a happy one. His Scar Story (one of the best kind of stories to tell and hear) is much like a Horn’s song: odd, twisting, nearly-dark but mostly fun. And like everything the Horns have played and recorded in their short time together, I can’t stop listening.

“So, here’s how it went,” Howard begins, beer in hand, shirt sleeve pulled back, loud country rock surrounding him and I and Christye at the bar of Ballard’s Sunset Tavern. “I was carrying boxes at my job at a distillery in Portland. I got my foot caught in a pallet and dropped a giant glass container. Then, I fell right on the glass. That’s thick glass. It went through my wrist about an inch. I thought, Oh no, that’s not good. That’s about the time when I saw the tendon fall out of the cut.” As most scar stories go, my girlfriend Christye and I were then invited to feel the wound and witness the odd popping sensation where the tendon was reattached. Sadly, this distillery debacle has not been the only setback the Blue Horns have faced in the last while.

After a strong debut (Blue Horns–self-released), Brian Park, Brian Kramer, Andrew Stern, and Howard toured as much as a band could with only seven songs to sell on one album. They drove south once or twice, worked hard in the Portland scene, and made riff-heavy rock and a jumpy falsetto into a party wherever they went. But, as any band would, they wanted a follow-up record. But, apparently, fate did not want the same thing. “Yeah, my hand slowed things up,” says Howard. “We had plans to record with The Decemberist’s Chris Funk, but he got caught up in his own projects. We’ve had to take things bits at a time.” In this way, the Blue Horns are a A+ student writing a term with no due date. The final result may be good, but it won’t come timely. And even though the band is looking forward to more well-deserved notoriety, they might enjoy the freedom of Self-Releasedom even more.

This night, the band takes to the short Sunset stage quietly. They arrive to perform the same way they arrived on my intern’s desk at Sound over a year ago. Along with The Final Spins debut, The Blue Horns were my favorite group I reviewed while at the magazine. They were the most fun to interview. They’ve been the most fun to listen to. And the songs they play at the Sunset show–mostly new jams to be included on their up-n-coming, yet-to-be-determined release–make my toes tap the same way that paper-packaged album did coming through my headphones back in the Spring of 2009. “Daughters” and “Mountain Eats Men,” features Park’s unmistakable croon, guitar riffs that twitch and glide, and jazz drums darker than an Old-Growth midnight. “You Destroy Me,” displays a lyrical side of Park not yet seen, but one that does not distract from the bouncing good time that is the Blue Horns.

“There are still a few songs that need to be written,” says Howard. “We’re working on getting out of Portland a little bit. Getting the album done. Doing some different stuff.” And based on the sounds, the structure, the rock and roll style that sounds like no one else (hell, it doesn’t even remind you of another group playing in the Northwest), these songs will make a more mature album. But not too mature.

“We stopped for McDonald’s soft-serve on the way up.” Brian Park mentions this even before Howard can mention his scar. “Colin had a dip cone though. The rest of us kept it real.”

The Blue Horns are a band made of movement. And no matter what tasty treat or nasty, tendon-tearing accident gets in their way, they’ll continue to move like the Columbia River to the Pacific coast–always in the direction of a good time.

The van is outside, running. The drums are stacked, the guitars cased and cared for, the potato chips opened and beer kept cool, the engine humming just like the fellows in the backseat. The LA sun is high and yellow and hot. The electronic clock on the dashboard is blinking and everyone in the van thinks of the upcoming show and how late they might be. And Brette Way, drummer for this band, the Parson Redheads, is inside an air conditioned building, auditioning for a commercial. Although Brette has never made it to the screen, her shoes have. “It was an iPod commmercial,” says Way. “My dancing got edited out, and it was just me, two models and five professional actors at the filming. One of the models wanted my shoes, so they made it on the final cut, which made me thirty bucks. Fifteen bucks a shoe.”

After the audition (she did not get the gig), Brette hurries out to the van and the van heads north on the 5. She shakes her long red hair and everyone kindly asks her how it went. This kindness, this courtesy, this politeness, this is what makes a Parson Redhead tour so perfect to Brette. It brought Brette, a drummer who had never drummed, into the band and it has kept her in, and loving it. “I couldn’t really play when I auditioned,” says Way. “But in awesome, Parson Redhead Style, all the guys said it was no problem, they would teach me.”

Now, as the bands chats in the balcony room of the Comet Tavern, drinks Budweiser, and discusses Dominique Wilkins, this phrase, “Awesome, Parson Redhead Style” comes up more than once. And although Sam Fowles, Charles Hester, Brette and Evan Way (husband and wife) seem to know what this means, it is not so easily defined. Is it found in what Brette describes as the “little things.” It is in the way the folks in the band liked Brette, not Brette’s drumming, and that is why she was asked to join. “You can teach and foster musicianship,” says Charles, adjusting his thick-rimmed glasses and itching his black beard. “But, can you teach someone not to be an asshole?” Parson Style can be found in what the band disagrees over. “Well, Charles likes Steely Dan,” says Evan. That’s it.

As they talk, the Redheads pass jokes and stories off each other like pick-up basketball players, but when asked about problems arising on tour, the upper room is silent except for CCR’s “Susie Q” floating in from downstairs. It is in the way no band member wants a tour to end. “When we got back from a long tour a while back,” says Brette, her arm wrapped from occasional arthritis, “I couldn’t go back in the house. I cried. Evan asked if I liked to go out. So, the band met up for beers.” It is found in the way the band simply likes each other. A lot.

Evan Way, lead singer and songwriter for the Redheads, considers himself very lucky. His band met in Eugene, Oregon, at Lane Community College. Evan and Brette moved up from Medford, Hester just across the Willamette River from Springfield, Fowles all the way from Green Bay, Wisconsin. Soon, all the members ended up in LA and began working at making a musical act that could rock, that could grow, that could keep that Redhead Style in a metropolis where so many good band were looking to make a name for themselves. “LA is great place to play music and find shows,” says Fowles. “Where we live, in Echo Park, people are always sharing ideas, shaking hands, coming out to shows. A lot people moving into the neighborhood, coming into the record store where I work and being really really nice. Not much of a sense of competition among the music community.”

But there was a prize to be won in the clubs in Echo Park: a residency. Hearing the band talk about winning their first residencies is much like listening to Larry Bird and Irving Johnson discuss the mid-80′s.

“Man, remember, there was Silverlake Lounge first.”

“Oh yeah, great gig. Remember, then we got the Lava Lounge.”

“Then the Echo”

“Yeah, yeah. Then, we scored Spaceland”

“Right, right.”

“It was big deal,” Brette reminisces, passing on a Bud Light from the cooler next to the night-black table. “It took us two years to get that first long-term gig. There is something about residencies down in LA that folks don’t quite get up in the Northwest. We were working hard, wondering when are we get big enough.” This is the second week the Parson Redhead are playing the Comet. One might think it would be more difficult to play week after week in the same place. But, according the Redheads, the opposite is true. “These are great,” they are all seem to say at once. “You get to know the bartenders and the audio people,” says the long-haired Fowles. It comes back once again to community.

Hearing the band talk about how often they play and practice, it is clear they all work hard. But, a word like Ambition does not instantly land in the list of adjectives which come most readily to mind among Easygoing, Chill, Talented, Friendly, Funny, Just Plain Nice, Lovers of Miller High Life.

And it is very true the members of the Parson Redheads are easygoing and nice. Their existence depends on it, perhaps even more than their hard work. “Touring and playing is so much fun,” says Charles, the only non-LA resident on this February tour, “because we are such good friends first, and we agree so much musically. If we didn’t agree about the music we made, I would still be friends with everyone, but I might not continue with the band.” Brette agrees with the first part. “Yeah, we’re friend. Plus, these guys are just gentlemen. They say please and thank you and give up the backseat to stretch out. Like I said, it is the little things” But, Evan tells me in between discussing the best place to play pick-up basketball with his PR agent (hands-down, he says, a court in a park where “Usual Suspects” was filmed), the band is looking forward to the Next Step.

Even more than the Parson Style, the Next Step is difficult to define. Each members gives a vague answer to what the Next Step is, but no one can give specifics. “We want to tour,” says Evan. “Like, something around, I guess, maybe eight-months out of the year, we’d like to be on the road. Obviously, we also want a record deal with a good label.” The Parson Redheads are working on a new LP, their first in over four years, and hope they will not be forced to release it on their own. But what will that take? Evan simply shrugs. “I write songs on the way back and forth to work. Driving in LA, there is plenty of time for it–I have three hours to drive everyday. But I feel I haven’t yet reached the top of my game as a songwriter.”

Soon, the band will reach its eighth year together. And perhaps it has taken it this long to find their little piece of rock ‘n’ roll utopia. For the hour in that upper room of the Comet Tavern, there is not one shred of passive agressiveness. Brette Way feels good when she is honest, sometimes brutally, about the songs her husband brings in from his slow drive home. Evan takes no offense when he is ribbed for not being able to smile like a normal person. Despite mercury poisoning and giving up the bed, Charles Hester could not be happier to be sharing the van with the people he does. Sam would rather talk about community than if Steely Dan is a good band or not. The most heated any discussion gets is the one about the better dunking point guard: Mugsy Boggs or Spud Wedd. And although this is never clearly resolved, one thing is clear: even if the Gods of Relaxed Dudes and One Chill-Ass Chick do not bless these relaxed dudes and the one chill-ass chick with a hit song, a residency at Red Rocks, with the Next Step, the Parson Redhead Style will live on like it does now.

“I had to make a choice between pursuing acting and this band,” says Brette before heading to get a decent beer at the bar. “And I would not change a thing.”

And like an old friend, pats my shoulder.

The Parson Redheads fought the Lord Himself to play their set at the Comet.

“Our guitar player got bit in the face by a dog.” This is how Evan Way, Parson Redhead singer and sweater-donning husband of drummer Brette Marie Way, begins discussing his Northwest tour and Comet club residency. “He had to go to the hospital to get shots. We had a flat tire on our up from Portland. We had to take a tiny car here. We also blew an amp.” Evan looks up and tries to recall any other calamities. With the universe and fate against them, the LA pop group are now safe and sound on Capital Hill for the second time this month.

As Damien Jurado, Robin Pecknold and other Fleet Foxes pow-wow in the corner of the bar and two TV’s play NBA highlights from the mid-90′s–featuring Shawn Kemp at a time when he could dunk (and run, jump, move sideways, play basketball, support dozens of illegitmate children and a budding cocaine habit)–Marty Marquis strums quick country chords and hollers into the sloshing tap-beer and electronic goggling of Mrs. Pac-Man. Tim Meining and Javier Suarez of Yarn Owl, a young group with Morning Jacket swing and springtime bounce, sell their five-song EP (Stay Warm) from a picnic table behind the stack of speakers. Dollar bills hang on the ceiling like green birds as bundled listeners bob and bounce like pigeons to the alt-country sway of Marquis, guitar player of Portland’s Blitzen Trapper. Even he can’t ignore the dunk-fest taking place on the flatscreens. “Those dunks are inspiring,” he says and leads into “Jericho.” He then commits his set to America (the idea or the nation, no one is sure) and exits. Joe Syverson quickly invades.

Syverson’s band, The Final Spins, are a great hope, a McCarthian fire-bearer of quality pop music into the new decade. Led by the punchy and precise lyricism and baratone delivery of Syverson and motored through by the stool-less drumming of Colin English, the bouncing bass of Zach Tillman, blaring keys of Chris Early (who engineered the Yarn Owl EP), and hidden volume of Colin Wolberg, the Spins bring as much rock ‘n’ roll grit and groove as they can and just as much as the crowd desires. No song last more than three minutes, and although the band looks relaxed (it is hard not to wearing sweatshirt and jeans), everything is in place, perfect. “Party Time” from the band’s freshman LP This Was Then/That Was Now, sounds better than ever as Tillman cooly walks his bassline like James Dean with a middle-school mustache as the song moves effortlessly into the sunshine. “Let Me Know” and “Another Sunny Day” (also from This/Then) cause occasional handclaps and a good-many smiles and stomps from folks standing on the bending benches and tired floorboards. Cold drafts of rain-soaked wind sneak in from Pike Street, but all anyone can feel is the beach-rock vibrations born of a house party jam session and Syverson hope for “another sunny day if don’t go away. Oh, there’s another sunny day if we don’t go away.” And as in the cold shadow of the Cascades a sunny day seems rare, a bright set of bright music at the Comet is never far.

“We wanna thank the Final Spins for letting us use their stuff,” says Evan Way as he pushes his thin, red hair out of his face. “Oh yeah, and playing a great set. We’re the Paron Redheads from Los Angeles.” Evan Way looks tired. This is probably why he quotes the movie Fletch to tell his wife he looks good behind the borrowed drumset. “I love your body, Larry,” he says and sort of shakes his head. No one gets the reference. Everyone seems a little tired. “Thanks for staying with us on a school night. Yay for school,” says Way.

PR’s music is not demanding. Just good. In just the right way. Jurado has gone home and all The Foxes are standing outside smoking cigarettes in four-part harmony. Those remaining are treated to a brand of pop that could only be made by former Oregonians who now experience a blue sky most of their worldly days (read: grateful). Songs like “You Can Leave It” and “Punctual As Usual” arrive at the truth like a Woody at the beach, without a grain of cynicism. From the moment Brette Marie thuds on her snare and Sam Fowles strums sunshine in a single note, the fight against fate seems to end. A wall of forbidding clouds opens like a gate. The way the Redheads play rock music is the same way Way talks about his struggle to arrive in Seattle in one piece; his words move straight in an Oregon drawl, his red mustache rises under his smirk as he says something like: yeah, he got bit in the face by a dog. Simple lines like “It’s alright/Don’t you know it’s all okay/It’s alright,” from “Got It All” (featured on their newest release, Owl and Timber EP) stand out and make everyone leaning on the splintered beams and sitting in heavy cafe chairs think the same way. For the time, at least. Good pop may warm the soul, but a fight against cold rain waits on the street just waiting to pop a tire. Or bite someone in the face.

The Parson Redheads continue their residency at the Comet next Thursday, as well as two Thursdays after that. They will also be playing shows in Portland, Euguene and Salem this month. Visit here for a full schedule.

The dark backdrop behind the Triple Door stage fades into orange and purple stars. The performers on stage, all dozen of them, seem to float underneath like the angels and cherubs and Saviors they sing about. It is chaos. Nathan Marion, the man in charge of bringing each painter and singer and instrumentalist to the Fremont Abbey’s yearly benefit, does not know what the night will bring. No one does. “It is brilliant to see the backing and improv band behind the singers and poets,” says Marion, who has concentrated on bringing together musicians who do not know one another, but hopes they will get along. “My favorite part is how the artists connect. They often end up working on shows and songs together in the future.”  The Round is a rapid fusion of artistry unscripted, set free, unacquainted. And as the deathly cold waits outside on Union Ave, artists who have not practiced together and who hardly know each other put together one of Seattle’s most unique shows–piece by spontaneous piece.

SINGERS

Most artists of the night rely on covers (Noah Gunderson sings Jackson Brownes, “The Rebel Jesus” and Star Anna plays a heartfelt rendition of Nick Cave’s “Into My Arms”) as well as classic standards (Matt Bishop’s popified “Angels We Have Heard On High” and John Van Duesen hollering “We Three Kings”). Damien Jurado, a Round veteran with at least six prior appearances, decides that no matter how much he loves the timeless Christmas tunes, he should write his own songs for the night. “I’ve always loved the idea of ‘one time only’” says Jurado. So, with only the shushing crowd and clanking of thin glass to accompany him, Jurado performs his exclusive songs with his son’s tiny keyboard and sacred source material. “The Bible can do it better than I can, but the first song is being told from the perspective of Joseph and Mary. The whole scenerio speaks volumes. This king will grow up to be hated, cast aside. This is the kind of kid I want to follow.” Jesse Sykes sits to Jurado’s left and describes the night as ”warm and natural, innocent even. I applaud what it stands for,” she says. ”Music is powerful, but it’s what surrounds the music, an invisible halo of light and energy.” For all the singers, the night is an opportunity to do something special. “There is just magic,” says Jurado. “The Christmas Round is the same as others, just with more beautiful colors and lights.”

POETS

Like a car engine chugging in the cold, the night’s beat poets Buddy Wakefield, Elaina Ellis, and Sara Brickman, begin slow and drive deep. After three songs, the poets are met with silence as they stand, empty-handed and forcefully confident, to deliver what singer Jesse Sykes considers “a beautiful storm of equations and metaphors.” “I see real courage and desire to bring out the divine from themselves,” Sykes says. Buddy Wakefield, two-time World Poetry Slam champ, member of Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records and former lumberjack, says that his objective is to “charge the hearts of people. For tonight, I wanted to tell a story, perform a non-tragic work. I like to disarm a crowd through humor.” Wakefield enters the stage with a too-short holiday sweater he got from his cousin Lace and opens with a short, unrhymed couplet that brings a somber crowd to tripping chuckles about a young Buddy wandering into strangers’ home and asking to see their toy collection then asking, innocently, wha the fuck? “The Round is always good vibes, good people,” says Buddy. “Jurado and I have done a few Rounds together and have found a mutual respect for each other. Plus, he’s hilarious. And Star Anna really blew me away. With the the band, we figured things out for ‘Hurling Crowbirds at Mockingbars’ in no more than three minutes. It’s–the people, the singers, everything–always been quality.”

IMPROV BAND

“All we had was a pretty rag-tag practice,” says Philip Kobernick of The Round Improv Band. “We were given some chord charts, but that was all. It’s a learning experience.” Kobernick says an event like The Round is important because the spontaneous art benefits everyone. “The audiences get a great show. The artists, all of them, get to play with and be around other great artists and are moved outside their comfort zones.” Just beyond the stage light, the relaxed audience cannot see the subtle tension on stage, cannot see the miracle of each song moving effortlessly, as though precisely planned, which it is not. “Four days before, I realized, ‘We have this huge event with 23 artists, and I need to coordinate all of them!” says Emily Peterson, celloist and member of the Seattle Rock Orchestra, as well as the unofficial PR person partly responsible for the sold-out show. Peterson says artists will bring old, tired songs to the Round and be blown away by the the unplanned arrangements the backing band brings. “Novelty in the context and creation of any idea produces new life. I can’t speak for the mindset of the other artists, but mine was, ‘Well, here it goes. Hope we land safely!’ And we always do. I don’t know why I worry about it.”

PAINTERS

Solio Thompson admits that as a painter at The Round, scrambling with wide brushes and narrow time, it can be difficult to concentrate. “I meant to paint Kate Tucker,” says Thompson with a slight scowl. “I listened to Kate Tucker and the Sons of Sweden before the show and loved songs like ‘Faster Than Cars Drive’ and ‘New York,” says Thompson. “I’m working on illustrating a comic book and I love finding the narrative, discovering the relationship between word and image in songs and stories. I tried it here, based on Kate’s music, but it didn’t quite work this time. But oh man, you should see my sketches.” Jesse Brown, four-time Rounder and mini-muralist of traffic control boxes around Seattle, stands relaxed at his small, blue canvas, dabbing away the distractions to create his piece. “I  came up with the idea while we were all in the green room. I made a small sketch of a castle type structure and decided to go with that. I was happy with the outcome of the piece. I’m used to working in a busy environment.” At The Round, there are no guarantees or preconcieved ideas of success, and all artists cannot seem to stop saying how proud and happy they are to perform at the event. “I just think this is a phenomenial event,” says Thompson after a heavy breath. Although all Rounds are their own snowflake of an event–unique, light, beautifully chaotic–Brown says this Round was especially impacting. “There’s a real holiday feeling. I’m kind of a sucker for Christmas and sappy holiday emotions.”

Thanks to the gracious help of volunteers and all performers, The Holiday Round was able to take in $2000 for the Fremont Abbey, the nonprofit arts organization located at Fremont Ave and 43rd. The Round will continue into the new year with performances by Kevin Murphy of the Moondoggies for Round 56 on the 12th of January. Please visit www.theround.org or www.fremontabbey.com for more information on The Round and the Fremont Abbey.

Portland’s Carcrashlander, they ride a dark groove. They are a black ship, a level cruiser of smooth organ, dirty guitars and the deep, haunting whisper of Cory Gray. The newest release, Where To Swim (Parks and Records: a San Francisco label which releases all records with recycled packaging and liners, always at a minimum impact on the environment), is like what Gray describes in “House Arrest,” a  ”yellow house of dried up leaves.” This is album is both light and bright, harsh and cold, comforting and welcome in the way of an Oregon autumn, all at once. Swim will hi with a Built To Spill rhythm, then jump to a grungy bebop jam, such as in “Boatfull of Buckeyes,” just before Gray sings, with quiet ernesty, “To those hills of gold, we row row row.” The emotional weight of Carcrashlander seeps in from multiple listens, not from a whack over the head by a tearful two-by-four, which only serves to give each word gravity. “Windtunnel,” a loungey, finger-snapping tune about living with a heartbreak that will not leave, makes one want to dance across the kitchen to put away the tea. Swim is a winter album, it is jacket and gloves album, it is a fireplace and coffee album. It is a fine piece of music. It may be easy to label Swim as depressing or needlessly dark, but within each tune, behind the barrel-chested hum of Gray and the deep horns, there lies a chance for a handclap, a toe-tap, a sway, a two-step. “Rosie,” stands out like a tulip in the burn-pile, a waltzing jam that builds up from Moment One and doesn’t let go. “Yellow Car Tides” finishes this steady ride with a orchestrated dance with dissonance, as Gray, tapping his keys, Jacy McIntosh behind on guitar, and Shelly Short crooning beautifully behind, sends the listener, bundled and at peace, out in the cold.

This is the only piece of fiction I ever even got closed to completing. It began as an assignment in Jessie Van Eerden’s Creative Writing course my Junior year at SPU. The assignment: write a story from the perspective of someone whose mind is fried. Since I was reading a lot of Ken Kesey and Tom Wolfe at the time, this was the result. I set it in Eugene, OR and worked hard to describe the roads and the grass and trees and the quiet nature of folks. Also, this was just a good chance to write a creepy story.

I didn’t tell anyone I came here.  I told Skinny Bill that I was getting some milk but then I didn’t come back.  I couldn’t risk anyone coming around. I needed to be alone and away from the world.  No one.  Not a soul.  Just me and the atmosphere and the billions of vibrations in the dust and in the swaying pine trees and in pale moonlight and in my own body. Everything jumbling and swirling together, crashing and kissing and saying hello and how ya doing and really meaning it.  This rickety old barn has waited, stood long enough for me to find it.  It should all be opening up soon.  Breaking apart and crumbling together like a pyramid or a triangle’d church.

After I left to not get milk I walked out to Highway 126 heading east out into the hills.  I walked past the houses and ignored everyone I saw.  What if they looked in my eyes, saw my plan and wanted to follow?  I couldn’t have it.  I needed to be leechless and light.  I just couldn’t have it.  I did the same thing when I walked through downtown and across the overpass—looked down at the sidewalk and counted the cracks.

I hitched a ride with an old man with missing fingers.  Three fingers were sliced up on his right hand.  He picked me up in a brick-red Dodge Dart.  Bad muffler, so it was loud as hell.  A big dent on the ride side above the tire an old metal storage rack on top with nothing on it.  He had to open the door for me because the outside handle was busted.  His tires were as bald as he was, whatever hair he had left was cut short and precise by Bob the Barber with the red white blue swirler out front.  He didn’t say anything when I got in and neither did I.  We made eye contact and I gave a little twinkle to make sure he knew I was on the up and up.  Or the straight and narrow.  Whatever’s good.  Wife and kids type guy from the looks of him.  Thins slack and a yellow golf shirt still tucked in out of habit.  Must have been on a fishing trip somewhere along the McKenzie from what I could tell.  And I could tell.  In the back was a fishing rod with the reel, red and blue flies, tackle box full of bait and screws and a picture of his first car, pliers and a screwdriver, a brown bag probably full of pre-made ham and cheese sandwiches, a case of Milwaukie’s Best, canvas tent and an old sweat-stained hat I bet he got from his dead dad or his cool uncle.  The short dark hairs along his chin told me he neglected to shave for a couple of days, to feel more like himself and I bet his wife didn’t like it and told him so.  I looked at the birds lined up on the power lines and he tapped his finger to radio playing fuzzy Mexican music.  I could tell he wasn’t really listening.  Scratchy mariachi music is the type of thing you play when you just need to hear some noise and watch the road slice through the forest.  Tap tap on the steering wheel with his three cut up fingers.  Must have been from the same accident because they were all cut at the same angle.  His thumb was cut just at the top, a tiny shred a nail still held on—thick and discolored.  His pointer and middle finger were cut right above the knuckles. Tapping to horns, giant guitars and red green accordions.  The music was bouncing up and down up and down.  He turned to me and asked me where I was headed.  Where are we headed I said.  That’s the right question I said.  Bullseye.

I smiled and looked back out the window. He looked at me like a funny old man, a little perplexed and kind of angry for not giving some standard bull answer.  But then he looked at what kind of kid he was talking to. He started to laugh.  Controlled at first like he had forgotten how to do it but then it started to bust out of him like coins through a worn down pocket. Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson, even Susan B Anthony came tumbling out together.  He laughed and said damn and good lord while catching his breath.  He rubbed his head and slapped his thigh, hit his blinker, passed a few cars for no reason, and scratched his nose.  Then he looked at me again and stopped laughing.  My mind could have been anywhere for all he knew.  I knew that my mind was in the car with the radio and the man with three missing fingers.  But for all he knew my mind could have been with Jack the Ripper, creeping through dark alleys, sniffing out for blood.  Or it could have been with Henry the VIII, in some damp dungeon, fixing to cut off someone’s head.  He was nice about his fear though.  He just turned to me, said this is as far as she goes and dropped me off at the entrance to some old logging road, just as the sun was setting and the clouds were turning purple.  A fresh black eye over the entire face of the sky.

I didn’t know where I was and I really didn’t care. I walked up the road for a while until I found a gate along the side.  I hopped it and walked up the drive and found an overgrown farm left years ago by some Jim-and-Betty couple moved into the city to live close enough to go to all their grandkids’ football games.  The whole property was maybe twelve or ten acres.  It was about as big as my uncle’s place in Scio.  He raises llamas and goats.  They look nice and fluffy, but those creatures are mean as Mother Nature.    Grass stood high as my waist and swayed in rigid clumps and pine trees fortified everything.  The farmhouse had already been torn down and left a pile of unusable boards and rusty nails. But, at the far side of the field was a red barn, leaning to the right, held together by spit and bubblegum.  I swam through the grass and walked through the barn door, remembering to take off my shoes out of respect.  Most of the place was empty, all the hefty tools sold or stolen.  The hayloft was still there. It made me look and I couldn’t take my eyes off of it directly in front of me as I walked in.  There was a ladder going up to it, but it was useless since all but two of the rungs were missing.  Directly above me opened a gaping hole in the ceiling that let the moonlight come in easy.  I sat down cross-legged like a television Indian chief on a dry clump of hay facing the hayloft, placed it on my tongue, gulped, swallowed and waited.  Enough light from the stars and moon to see everything in front of my eyes, and the stuff in my blood to see everything else.  There shouldn’t be anyone barging in because I didn’t tell anyone, not even Skinny Bill that I was coming here.  No one.  Not a soul.

I put my hands out, palms up.  Let the blood flow.  Fancy free.  Take in the answers, soak them up.  I am a thirsty plant.  Answers to questions I’ve never asked, to questions I never thought to ask, and to questions that I never knew I could ask.  Those questions that have been cohabitating with the long-dead stars and the broken hearts of fairy tale villains waiting to be called up—cosmic telephone ringing from anyone like me willing to kill logic and blow his mind long enough to dial the numbers.  Rotary style.  Operator, connect me to John Q Unknown and his crazy gang of Mystery Mates.  Close my eyes and watch the trillion tiny colorworms crawl under my eyelids.  A wild squirming portrait painted with neon and mercury on a fleshy black canvas.  And I can feel myself floating, stepping outside myself.  Eyes open and I see the barn is not the same, different, more, alive.  The walls bend and quiver.  The color of the dirt is now too bright for my blue eyes.  The dull dirt has transformed into something wild and fluorescent.  So bright I have to look up at the shit-covered ceiling beams.  They move too.  Bend easily like rubber or silly-putty and I want to imprint myself on them.  Make myself into a Sunday morning front-page picture to see what I look like as a formulized arrangement of black and white dots.  I am a floating dot.  There is no ground.  Solidity and gravity fled for the high grounds.  There is no gravity and no ground and while I’m at it sir, there is no earth, no words, no books, no order, no homemade apple pie, no big ideas, no 1 2 3 JUMP, no catch you if you fall, no grand ideas, and there sure as hell is no making it big time.  Just one Great Vibration.  The Great Vibration comes in waves at me but I feel slightly out of tune.  The streetlights must have tweaked me something awful.  Turn my mind’s lever to the right, pluck the string below and listen to the barn, still shifting and beautifully painfully vibrant, echo back to me till I get it just right.

Sweet Lord, what is that thing in the hayloft?

No sir, no schoolbook owl.  No honest to God ordinary forest-dwelling critter.  The seven eyes on its face all blink at the same time changing color each time.  Sporadic yet synchronized and purposeful…a groovy and horrible Morse code.  TERROR STOP CHILDREN LOCK YOUR DOORS AND DRAW THE BLINDS STOP BLACK RAIN FROM THE MISERABLE SKY STOP  He doesn’t have to turn his head around because his seven eyes can see through everything, past the bull.  Bullseye.  The middle of each eye endless and black.  His feathers are not even feathers.  They are a collection of every discarded sharp thing draped over his mailbox frame.  Volcanic stones, shrapnel, busted windows by wild baseballs, chipped teeth, rusty murder weapons washed on the riverside, scalpels, shark’s teeth, arrowheads, and razorblades.  They all sparkle in the moonlight, they clink and clank with every silent breath he takes.  His talons are long as hypodermic needles and stained with the blood of millions of field mice and naturally un-selected kittens and in that awful blood red I can hear their last dying screams and even more I can hear all the noise they never made, the screams stopped short and they pulsate my brain.  I look into his eyes and see his evil intentions.

I can see what he means.

That little mouse does look kind of tasty.  Yes, sir, it does.  In the middle of the room stands the poor field mouse, soaking in the moonlight and biting his own tail.  He has my blue eyes and he can’t look at the floor either.  Much too bright.  The owl’s eyes blink.  WE EAT STOP BECAUSE WE HAVE TO STOP WE WANT TO STOP

Without hesitation the owl springs from the hayloft in a dive bomb towards the mouse.  His jagged feathers spread on his giant wings.  Slicing and dicing every floating particle of dust and hay into half, just like the man’s fingers.  I bet the owl did that too. Lord, he must have cut right through those fingers and didn’t think anything of it.  Starting from the thumb in a precise angle to the middle finger before flying off.  And what did that man do to deserve it, nothing—except get a job and raise some kids and listen to fuzzy mariachi music. The seven-eyed owl is hungry for flesh.  He doesn’t care if it’s a middle-aged file clerk or the pauper field mouse below.  Before the mouse’s blue eyes can see or understand his swift arriving death the needle claws pierce his heart and he is taken away into the night through the hole in the ceiling.  I hear his squeaky cry stopped short and the sound of squeaks that never were and never would be.  The sounds of that mouse and all the mice he would create and all the mice they would create.  Generations of squeaky innocent field mice tumble rough through my mind like a crumbling mountain.  I hear the owl flap his wings, his razor feathers clinking with every stroke and slice of the atmosphere and he’s gone.

Now, I can start to see room take shape again.  Beams solidify and walls start to look more like wood and less like rubber.  My Reason For Coming begins to dissolve in my blood stream and evaporate through the hairs on my arm and out underneath my fingernails.  Regretful to have to see this world again, with Taskmaster Time pulling me by my earlobes.  The owl and the mouse—that could have happened years ago, or not at all for all that I know.  No sense to make of that one.  Zero, zilch, nada, nothing, big round goose-egg.  Only thing I know, yes, it’s a good time to not be a mouse.  Good time to be isolated and a good time to not tell Skinny Bill about this.  Good time to have all ten fingers.  Good time for turmoil and this convenient escape.

As soon as the kaleidoscope clouds in my mind move out, the clouds up there move in.  Up there, you, go take the moonlight on a detour to some other godforsaken barn. The one hole in the barn, the owl’s door to dinner, gets closed up by blue clouds.  Everything starts to disappear around me and is taken up by a squirming blackness.  Black as the devil’s coat closet.  But across the room, straight ahead, in the hayloft I hear the clink and clank of a thousand different sharp things. Out of the black comes one green eye, one blue eye, one red eye, one pink eye, one orange eye, one purple eye, one yellow eye.  Seven eyes blinking at once, random and on cue.

NO INNOCENT BYSTANDERS STOP AND HERE YOU ARE STOP

Seven more eyes, seven more colors appear beside.  Fourteen evil eyes, blinking that nightmare Morse code.

WE SEE YOU STOP EVEN IN THE DARK STOP

Seven more eyes appear above.  Twenty-one eyes.  Blinking.

HUNGER DRIVES US STOP BLOOD MAKES US FLY STOP

Twenty-seven

Thirty-five

HOW COULD ANYONE HIDE STOP FROM SO MANY EYES STOP

42, 49, 56.  Losing track.  Can’t count.  Eyes surround me, blinking, bright and menacing.

I can’t breathe.  I can’t move.

WE KNOW YOU CANT STOP AND WHERE WOULD YOU GO STOP

The buzz is gone.

SO WHAT STOP

More and more eyes every second.  The buzz is gone but the eyes are still there.

AND ALWAYS WILL BE STOP

The trip is over.

YES IT IS STOP

No one knows where I am.  I didn’t tell Skinny Bill where I was heading.  No one knows.  Not Old Man Mariachi Band, or even my own mind knows where in God’s Great Valley I am right now.

NO ONE STOP NOT A SOUL

This town, Wallace, in the northern corner of Idaho, has two motels: The Wallace Inn and the Stardust. The Stardust also operates a taco hut and espresso bar and a blue and red space-lander for the kids in the parking lot. In front of the city courthouse, stands a concrete rendering of the Ten Commandments. The people in town don’t give it much notice. They are more concerned for their debunked sliver mine tours, their All Terrain Vehicles, the usually goings on and canned soda pop—not to mention the sweet smell of smoked pork spreading from the giant black stove parked outside the Famous Wallace Smokehouse on Fifth Street, one block from the Community Pool and the old print shop.

I sit on the white plastic chairs on the wide sidewalk outside the Smokehouse. The sun reds my forehead and I wiggle my feet in the hot breeze. The width of the road and the sidewalk reminds me of other desert towns east of the Cascade Mountain, like  Bend and Sisters, Oregon; Spokane, and Odessa Washington; Missoula, Montana. These are the cities that were nothing but sheep stops and mining homesteads when we were manifesting our nation’s destiny, not much more than hippie ski towns in the 1960’s, just before some moderate urban sprawl. The street here is paved with asphalt and lit at night by electric bulbs, but that seems to be the only sprawling about this Idaho town.

A Wallace man, the owner of the smoking black giant, talks to my father, brother and I about how we came to be in Wallace buying pulled pork, sourdough buns and homemade cole-slaw.

“You three must have come on the bike path. You look to me like bikers,” he says and wipes his hands on his blue apron.

“We cycle, yeah,” we say. “We couldn’t believe how flat the path was. It was incredible how we didn’t have to work to climb up from the lake, here to Wallace.”

“I’m no railroad man,” says the owner, “but I heard that the railroad wan’t able to climb up more than a three percent grade. So, the path, the old railroad path that y’all went on, when it got paved over, it made it real easy for you bikers.”

We smile and nod.

“Cyclists, yeah” he says and walks back into the shop to refill his iced tea.

We had biked to Wallace starting 64 miles south in the town of Plummer—a town of equal parts tribal buildings and auto shops. My father had heard about this old railroad track that when trains were no longer needed to ship much of anything, thanks to Teamsters and mass overseas imports of crude oil, it was paved over and made into a bike path. We arrived at the Hin Ya Pqi’nn trailhead at 11:15 in the morning, clipped on our shoes, put on our gloves, wiped our faces and ears and legs with SPF 45 and rode out. Since the trains naturally followed the waterways and lakes of Idaho, so did we. The morning was warm, but not a single boat bothered the crystal surface of Lake Coeur d’ Alene. For the first five downhill miles, we road twenty miles an hour past chipping paint on wooden houses, busy sparrows, old men on rusty mountain bikes, kids being directed by signs to not jump off bridges jumping off bridges and enough squirrels and other furry critters to make a mean stew or a child’s winter coat.

The colored map at the start of the trail made it seem as though quaint towns and women in long dresses waved from their garden every four or five miles, but the higher the number on the mile sign, the more we felt we had completely left civilization and taken the paved way Into the Wild.

The lake become a river and moved at our right side. Horse pastures sprung up along the water, just below the clear-cut hills. The river elbowed east, causing the land to move to a brittle hue and the air take on a dry weight. Yellow grass began to take over the edges of the path, which meant we had entered grasshopper country. Bodies of brown specks began to shimmy and jump as he rode into their territory. Some unlucky hoppers couldn’t escape our spinning shins. I felt small pinches and pokes as I rode. At the same time I was feeling these pains on my legs, my stomach began to turn and poke as well. My water was gone. I needed to eat. I would have to catch a lot of grasshoppers to feel full. I didn’t know how to gut, or for that matter, catch a horse.

Once out of grasshopper country, the river rejoined us. The trail intersected with a private drive where a man and his young daughter stood drinking Cokes out of cold cans. We slowed down, unclipped our shoes, straddled our road bikes, and asked where we might get ourselves some food.

“How long till we’re bike in society,” we asked the man. His daughter sipped her Coke and the man touched his black mustache which was precisely three-fourths the way between his round gut and his thinning hair.

“Yeah. Okay. Let’s see here,” he said.

“We just need a little something to eat.”

“Okay, okay. Yeah. Cataldo is about ten miles up. The Cataldo Mission Inn is just off the path and they’ve got good food. Or, you go a bit father and there is the Snake Bite. Either way, you’ve got a ways to go. Ain’t much out here.”

We thanked the man and rode to Cataldo. About nine miles from where he were, and about a half mile from our dear Cataldo and its dear food which I dearly needed to see straight and keep moving, we saw a moose. We nearly crashed stopping the look at it. None of us had ever seen a moose, and when my brother saw the giant creature he squeezed his breaks. I ran into his tires and nearly swerved into the ravine where the moose was drinking from the river.     My father hit my back tire and yelled at my brother. “Drew, you can’t stop like that. What is it?”

He pointed to the moose.

We would find from an experienced outdoorsman—our Uncle Kevin—that a moose kills about thirty people a year. Abbey Redfern, a good friend and native of Montana, will share with us that moose attacks outnumber black bear attacks in any given year. Wikipedia will tell us that a moose should be given a respectable amount of space. We did not know this. We moved closer.

As the moose jumped onto the track about thirty yards ahead of us, a white Toyota Tacoma stopped on the road across the river. The man inside rolled down his window and watched as three dudes on bikes wearing tight shorts inched toward a 400 pound moose—just trying to get a good picture for the folks back home who had never seen a moose either. The moose let go of the tree it was eating and looked at us. We heard a gruff call from beyond the bank.

“Ya’ll must be the dumbest mothafuckers in the whole world!”

We looked up. What the hell did this fellow mean? Wasn’t this just a big dear? Hadn’t this turd-punter ever seen the kind, stuttering Bullwinkle or the commercial for the Northern Exposure DVD set? A moose was a friend.

“Are these things dangerous?” we asked.

We could hear his eyes roll and his head shake at us dumb-as-dirt city boys as he said, “Well fuck yeah they’re dangerous.” And he drove off. So the did the moose. Apparently we had escaped with our lives, but it was only our pride that was trampled upon.

Idaho seemed empty after our hamburgers and French fries at the Cataldo Inn. We passed perfect green parks and no kids. We rode along rows and rows and manufactured homes, but no one sat out in the yard to enjoy the sun, not even to enjoy a cigarette. Logging roads were overgrown with stinging nettle and Hawkweed. The only people who stopped along the road were the ones that caught us trying to shake hands with a moose.

Eight miles South of Wallace, along a desolate, Cormac McCarthy stretch of trail, we found a place to jump into the river. Since the lake, we had been hoping for a spot deep enough to dive. This spot was wonderfully blue and perfectly clear, but only about six feet deep. My brother jumped first with his knees held to his chest. He rose to the surface and took as much hot air into his lungs as possible, just to help his blood move.

“Get in Michael. It’s not bad,”he lied.

So I jumped. And it was cold. It was colder than the North Fork, my favorite jumping river back in Oregon, a river of clear mountain water in the summer and mountain mud in the fall. Much colder than any damned lake I’d ever thought myself tough enough to jump into feet first.  I flapped my arms as fast as I could and gave a short “Whoa,” and a rapid, “Oh my goodness gracious almighty” and another “Okay, okay, okay” as my muscles tightened and screamed silently for pity. When my father joined there were three men in tight shorts and no shirts wading in a mountain stream saying curses and swears that made no sense, trying to convince themselves this water was enjoyable or vaguely beneficial for their tired hamstrings.

I waded and listened to the river move back toward Lake Coeur d’ Alene and could hear the mustached man telling us a better place to jump and swim precisely six miles up the trail, I could envision a small town man sipping iced tea, and coming over everything–my muscle pain and the subsiding cold-shock–I saw a man in pick-up truck rolling his eyes, looking at three city boys in a frigid river, and I could faintly hear

Y’all must be the dumbest…

Matt Bishop leads a Seattle band called Hey Marseilles. When I say he leads, I only mean that he stands center-stage and sings the songs his bands helps creates. He is at the center of a seven-member assault of guitars, violins, keys, drums, horns and hand-painted shakers. His band has one album they produced and released on their own, but Matt hopes that will change soon. Matt Bishop is on the cusp of national indie success with a new publicity company pushing his wild and romantic tunes, a steady audience in Seattle and Portland and Bellingham, and (more than likely) national distribution. Matt Bishop also works five, eight-hour days at a Catholic school on top of Seattle’s Capital Hill. He is a simple complexity, confident and humble, joyfully misunderstood, a rock star with a mortgage. Truly, a paradox.

Matt is fifteen minutes late and dressed in black pants and a gray tie. He chose to meet at Moe Bar because of the two dollars drinks during this early, post-work Happy Hour and its walking distance from Seattle University, where he works in the Admissions Office “I need a haircut,” he says and orders a vodka-cran in short glass with plenty of ice. His blonde hair is just beyond Professional and combed to his right, frayed in the back and around his red ears. About a year ago, next door, at Nuemo’s, a mid-sized club that has homed great bands, Matt played with his bandmates to a sold-out room for an album made on spare time and sparse dollars, To Travels and Trunks.

Selling out Neumo’s, especially for a low-budget band with little distribution know-how, is not easy to do. Even national acts on a Saturday night can have trouble booking out the venue. I’ve only seen one sold-out show and that was Explosions in the Sky at a time when post-rock was a buzz word and Friday Night Lights was watched by 6.2 million people. As we talk, Matt Bishop comes back to this night. And although he sees a sold-out show as a kind of an arrival, he is still uneasy, unsatisfied. Matt has goals, and he does not expect anything to be handed to him. “As far as my musical goals go, I want to make some money at it. We rent our practice space, pay for gas and CD production. And as far as my work goals, I want to be the Dean of Admissions someday.” He says this as though he can have both. And maybe he can. Maybe both will grow together like friendly weeds and coexist in the same spontaneous and organic way they began.

“I had a few songs. Nick and Jacob convinced me to play together. Then the other guys, Colin, Jacob, Patrick and Philip joined in. We would meet at Gasworks Park and play outside there together. It grew from there, very naturally.” When I ask Matt about success in the future, he does not give me a detailed scenario of luxurious The Paramount Theatre in downtown Seattle, no visions of Central Park or Madison Square Garden. And, when I ask about the band’s journey in general, he doesn’t mention playing before Sonic Youth at the Capital Hill Block Party or being included on a bill along with big-name artists like Jason Mraz, Sheryl Crow and Elvis Perkins at 2009′s Bumbershoot. Matt Bishop wants to be able to do something he loves, make music with his friends, and make enough money for a little food and fair-priced liquor on cold afternoons.

Matt Bishop studied literature and concentrated on modern American poetry while at the University of Washington. “Sometimes I feel hindered as a songwriter that I studied so much poetry. The two seem related, but they aren’t much when it comes down to it. Words simply on a page can have meaning in themselves, but lyrics need to serve the song in melody and emotional weight as it interacts with the music.” For some odd reason, I decide to interrupt Matt here and tell him my favorite line of his from “Someone to Love”: “All I want to do today I sleep like I once could/If you could give me that/That’d be good.”

“I wrote that line, a big part of that song in five minutes,” says Matt. “I wanted to play the song for a solo show and busted it out. That was a good time for me, creatively.”

Matt Bishop, it seems, writes travel songs. Or, at least, few of his songs seem to be about love, or about heartbreak, or about partying all night long, or doing the twist. “My songs are about moving through your place on earth. About moving in space, you know. Some of my songs have lines about love and that sort of thing, just in a certain context.” Regardless of what lyrical and linguistic skills that have accompanied Matt from his undergrad days, Matt Bishop has learned from poetry, and found in songwriting, a love for the paradoxical. Matt Bishop gets more upset when journalists and fans give him more credit for songwriting and arrangement within Hey Marseilles than he does when his lyrics are misunderstood. “I like that things I write are understood in different ways that different people.” This, to Matt, is liberating as a songwriter. It is also liberating as a believer. “There is so much grey,” says Matt. “You know?”

Matt Bishop has experienced many forms of the Christian traditions in his time on earth. Seattle University, the Catholic college for which he will fly out of Seattle on Friday and then travel through Montana, Idaho and Utah to numerous college fairs and high schools, is a Jesuit school that values what John Keats called “negative capability.” I ask if he thinks truth exists out there somewhere. “Yes. That is the simple answer.” Then Matt and I begin discussing David Bazan’s newest album and never make it back to the complex answer of absolute truth. Though we do discuss hope. “To me, there are two kinds of hope. There is the hope for the future. Those things to accomplish and have and be. But, those things we never come true–not as we’d like too, not entirely. So, there is the hope to find now, in the things we have and are. Now, I find hope in community,” says Matt. “I play with Eric Anderson (of Cataldo) and he can do everything on his own. That works for him. I need people to bounce around ideas. It can be hard to try to make discussions with six other guys in a band. It’s not easy, but I wouldn’t trade it.”

“Between my admissions work and my band, I’m pretty much working two full-time jobs.” Matt says this suggesting that he is both excited and exhausted. “I don’t have much in the way of musical ability. I can strum three chords along with some really talented musicians. I feel comfortable taking the role of the frontman.” Once Matt returns from his long business trip, lasting essentially a month and some change, he will put energy into making a West Coast tour a reality. It will be the first tour since Matt Bishop and six other post-grad dudes began jamming on the well-kept grass of Seattle’s Gas Works Park over three years ago. In that time, Matt knows his band has done more than okay in a town full of poetry-loving, country-chord-strumming, musical hopefuls.

Joe Syverson shuffles into the Sunset Tavern, an aged lounge-turned-venue located in what most Seattle folks refer to as Old Ballard. He is hunched over with a blue jacket and red cheeks. “It is fucking cold, man,” says the Final Spins frontman and rubs his hands together frantically. Blood still slow and biting, Joe moves on quickly to the back room to join his bandmates and the collection of scraggly musicians on the evening’s line-up. A scrawny technie fidgets with cords and knobs onstage while cigarette smoke driffs in from the street door and hangs onto Virgin Wool and synthetic polyester.  On this Friday the 13th, the rain is beginning to look more like hail and causes everyone wandering the Ballard streets to think SNOW and shudder. The walls of the Sunset Tavern are still decorated for Halloween; brittle trees and oversized moons drawn with an Extra-Width Sharpie from ceiling to floor. Whiskey, rum and soda warms the blood, scarfs hang on necks, pop music welcomes everyone in from the fucking cold.

Cabinessence, oddly enough, sounds like the essence of a cabin. The five-man Portland band begins their roots set, all pine-sap and biscuit steam, from the short stage which nestles itself between the Sunset’s bathrooms, bar, and green room. The space in front of the stage feels more like a hallway than a concert hall; audience members split between drinking at the bar, moving in groups to the latrines, or just moving through for nothing else but warmth. The only two enjoying the country tunes are the two redheads of the Parson Redheads, Evan and Brette Marie Way. The married pair (this could be figured by a)the familiar hand on the back b)the rings c)and, more than anything, the fact that Evan held Brette’s wine while she went to the bathroom) bob and smile to Comes Back to You tracks such as “Bread and Butter” as well as ditties from a self-released EP–for sale only from the bardershop pocket of the bookish keys player. After a varied set of country swing, country soul and country jam, Cabinessence join the crowd on the gum-ridden carpet and leave an empty stage for a short-handed Parson Redheads.

“We’re a bit short today. We usually have a full band,” says Evan Way behind his Yamaha guitar, sandwiched between his lovely wife and a guitar player resembling something between a green bean and chemist. Why was this sunshine pop band, usually teeming with high-pitched solos, classic drum fills and keyboard hooks reduced to something music fans call intimate? “Well,” says Way, “that is a funny story. Our bass player just bought a house. And, just found out he and his wife needed all their stuff out of the house. Today. So, he’s doing that.” This trio scenario is something PR is used to. On an east coast tour this summer, the band, a la Duchess and the Duke, kept their beach rock energy to a minimum. “We practice the three person often. Just in case something like this happens.” The chord-and-melody driven songs played by the three–most notable tunes from a recently released 7″–stick together with high harmony, tight guitar work from the Bean Chemist (real, not as funny, name: Samuel Fowles), and the most sparse and lovely lyrics a former U. of Oregon lit major and avid Byrds fan could craft. Riding on flower-power exhaust, Parson Redheads take the come-together-y’all message out of the sociopolitcal and into the personal and metaphorical. It’ll make the hardest heart hold a glass a booze while his friend goes for a piss. What greater love is there?

“Love the one who hates you,” they sing. “Show them that you care. That you care.” After a final cover of Neil Young’s “From Hank to Hendrix” it takes about twelve second for the band to gather equipment (Brette Way’s normal drum kit was reduced to anything she could fit in her pockets) and exit the stage. “These shows are fun,” says Evan. “You’re up, you play and then you’re done. When we get a full band, I’m like, what is taking so long!” Evan’s patience will be tested when he and his West Coast company holds four straight Thursday gigs at Seattle’s Comet Tavern in December, beginning next Thursday, November 19th.

Carrying the theme of stripped renditions of full-band songs, Final Spins (a washing machine reference?), take the stage in a different form than any had seen before. Joe Syverson, songwriter, singer, tall person, stands stage left and tries to coax the crowd out of no-man’s land and up towards his black guitar and silver amp. Missing keys and lead-guitar, Syverson is joined by bassist Chris Early and drummer Colin English (Secret Agent), as well as a lady not previously a Spinner, on vocals. Blue jacket gone, it doesn’t take Joe long to warm up, to shimmy around the stage, holler and strum. Before the first song ends, sweat can be seen on his forehead below his straight, light-brown hair. He came just short of reversing his testimony and claiming, “it’s fucking hot, man.”

Most Final Spins songs could be played sweetly; most have at least some pop cuddliness. Tonight, Joe Co. go for loud. And that damwell works too. Cymbols crack and ring like dry stones and bassnotes fall like giants, while Syverson sings about losing himself in Chicago, a good party, hoping for “Another Sunny Day.” The pop tunes from the band’s two releases (This Is Then/That Was Now and City Of…) that could take a Redhead route and be played with a gentle hippie-dippy hum, instead are delivered with a pounding energy that shakes the paper-thin walls and low ceilings. Outside, the cold rain clings to jackets and beards and long brown hair and the deathly wind begins to move down Ballard Ave. The music still rings and kitchens stay open long enough for Happy Hour comfort food–nachos and pizza: the culinary equivalent of the three minute pop song.