Ben Bonham: Calendar

Solstice Wood Fire Cafe

1st monday of each month - a truly acoustic show - look, no wires!

Volcanic Bottle Shoppe

EVERY MONDAY NIGHT

(note that I am at Solstice 1st Monday of the month - the others carry on without me).

 

At last a new home for the Hapless Hillbillies. This place is small, perfect for an acoustic band and has a really impressive selection of craft brewed and imported beers - as well as constantly changing stuff on tap.

Come and check us out in our new digs.

Sunday, February 12th, 2012

Cast Theater

Great to be doing a songwriter show with 2 good friends of mine.

 

 

JL Stiles is a unique animal who for the first time is merging two totally different fields of truth seeking: Ragtime blues and higher mathematics.  Both of these disparate strands filtered through a lifetime on the run, searching for a universal truth from psychedelic Brazilian forests to US college campuses and further into his own unique vision.  JL Stiles has a mind that sees music in a similar way to how J.S. Bach saw music.  However, Bach never played the blues.

 As for the blues: JL has opened for many a blues great, including BB King, Etta James and JJ Cale.  Surprisingly, looking at such a history, most of his originals would not be considered blues or folkways yet Maybelle Carter, Blind Blake and the rest of his honored forebears haunt everything he does, including his upcoming song-of-the-ages album on which producer Etienne de Rocher (Sean Hayes) plied his remarkable talents.  It's a bit confounding to box a one-off like JL, so the artist decided to mostly reserve his stunning ragtime and blues guitar madness for his other band, Hobo Paradise, which recently tore the house down at the legendary jazz club Yoshi's in San Francisco.  

 

Captain James Cook

 

As a force on the Portland music scene for over a decade now, The Captain does it by not following the rules. Building instruments out of trash cans, cigar boxes and other found and recycled items, he spreads the word that music comes from within, and boy does it ever! A songwriter since age 14, he now has well over a thousand compositions and is still pumping them out. The quantity certainly hasn’t watered down the quality in this case, as the Captian is widely regarded as a songwriting genius. His lyrical musings take you on a journey where you can’t be sure where you will end up. Musicians revere his tunes for their beautifully complex and unpredictable nature. Once quoted as having said “If it sounds like it should go there, I’ll take it somewhere else.” An accomplished vocalist and bandleader, he heads up the popular Portland group “Trashcan Joe”, who perform in their own Jug Band Jazz style.

Friday, February 24th, 2012

Sunshine Mill