Author: Anita Kinney

You’re walking downtown on your way to class when a panhandler starts telling you some weird story you don’t want to listen to. So you walk away, just as another panhandler starts gets up in your face trying to sell you some lousy hemp necklace.

Since October of 2006, Kazutaka Nomura has been performing under the moniker PWRFL PWR (pronounced “powerful power”).

Murray Lightburn founded The Dears 14 years ago and, since then, the band has become something of a revolving door for a collective of Montreal-based musicians, emerging as a space for Lightburn (the band’s principal songwriter) to explore emotions through music.

Growing up in public housing projects in London, Louise Harman listened obsessively to her mother’s Salt-N-Pepa albums and began rapping at age 14. She began her MC career in front of a mirror, using a can of hairspray for a microphone.

As this issue of the Vanguard proves, Portland has a vibrant local music scene. Most lists about local music focus on bands. Here, the Vanguard takes a look at the local record labels that work behind the scenes to support both emerging and established artists in our ever-expanding community.

Baltimore’s Ponytail has garnered significant acclaim for their explosive live shows and arty, energetic, punk-inspired rock. Fresh from recording their second album, Ice Cream Spiritual, Ponytail embarked on their biggest U.S. headlining tour to date.

When I talk to John Vecchiarelli, the first thing I ask him about is his Web presence. He doesn’t have a Web site—the only information about him comes from a record label’s homepage.

“I started playing in the middle of the crowd to better communicate with the audience,” says Dan Deacon. Communication is key in Deacon’s famed live shows. He shuns the stage and instead sets up his array of computers, keyboards and electronics in the middle of the venues where he plays.

In 2004, a small group of comic creators banded together to put on a small comics convention. Held in The Old Church, the Stumptown Comics Fest distinguished itself from other comic book shows in the area with its focus on comic artists, rather than publishers and dealers.

Singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler has built a reputation for herself as a purveyor of reverb-drenched, folk-infused ballads. While studying painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, Nadler found herself increasingly turning to songwriting to provide an artistic outlet. 

In a time of increasing economic uncertainty, it’s tempting to turn entertainment into a purely escapist pursuit. With El Grito del Bronx, Portland’s Miracle Theater emphatically rejects this temptation, and chooses instead to stage a challenging play that packs an emotional wallop.