Back from the Midwest

After a move to Portland from northern Michigan, Portland band Cat Stalks Bird has noticed the more communal music scene and performance opportunities Portland has to offer. Whether it’s local house shows or the interconnected venues, Portland has become the right fit for the duo of Nate Weber and Jake Early.

“Cat Stalks Bird was just going to be a temporary band, so that when we got out to Portland we would have something that we could perform and meet more musicians basically and start a full band,” Weber said.

Cat Stalks Bird features Weber on percussion, vocals and some guitar, while Early also plays guitar for the band. With Weber playing different instruments, the band is able to create an original sound that doesn’t rely only on one looping guitar as in many duo bands. Though the strong rock influences are noticeable, the duo from Michigan uses guitars to enhance the melodies and create a complexity in their sound.

“It just…kept developing and becoming more comfortable and we kind of decided to keep working with that,” Weber said.

The band has produced one self-titled album but currently performs with almost completely new material that they hope to produce in the near future.

“Hopefully within this next month we are going to record all of those and probably make a tape and a CD and just kind of give those out to everyone,” Weber said. “As far as our live show we pretty much only play, per set, we only play like one song that is actually off that album we have…it’s all new.”

Weber and Early both moved from Marquette, Mich., which is near the Canadian border, to the Northwest and started this project after performing with other less successful groups. The two have played music together for around nine years, with their most recent stint in Portland gaining them some quick notoriety.

“All my friends were going to school so our schedules didn’t really line up,” Weber said. “I started kind of messing around with the guitar, drums, vocals thing. I just wrote some stuff and brought it to Jake…we performed once on our way out to Portland.”

Cat Stalks Bird is playing tonight at Ash Street Saloon, which is a venue they know well and enjoy playing at. Apes of Wrath and Hotel St. George will join them.

“Yeah we’ve played there two or three times already…it sounds really good, it holds a lot of people,” Weber said.

Tonight’s show with Cat Stalks Bird is bound to give you a different perspective of the two-man rock band with a host of new songs and a solid venue.