Oregon Shows This Week: Willamette Valley + Reflecting on a Central Oregon Run

Last week’s shows in Central Oregon were special. Outdoor patio weather. Mild, sunny, just enough of a breeze. Wonderful people at The Commonwealth Pub in Bend, Frankie’s in Sisters, and Century Commons in Sunriver.

The Commonwealth Pub - they’ve invested a lot of money in their professional sound system and it shows. The monitors and equipment onstage were top notch. A musician’s venue run by thoughtful people. I’d love to be back. One fun and curious thing about this show was that there were several (where did you all come from?) people who showed up and were filming me while I played my songs. Y’all were into it! I saw you chair dancing :)

Frankie’s - I was the first musician this 2026 season to play on the patio in the back courtyard area. Primo real estate. The crowd was into it and supportive. I’ll be back for a writer’s in the round gig upstairs at Frankie’s in September.

Century Commons - Couldn’t have asked for better weather. I was set up on the outside stage. I don’t know what got into me, maybe it was that I’d been on the road for a week and after the gig I was driving back to Eugene but instead of playing for two hours I played for 4 and it was lovely, fulfilling, and entertaining. I just love performing songs. The rehearsal and hours and years of sweat equity is so worth it when I find myself in moments of these songs where muscle memory and mastery take over and I am not thinking about chord placement. I’m somehow above it, or in it, and time isn’t linear. I don’t know how to best describe it but it’s like in those video games when you get some kind of bonus and time slows down for everyone else but you and you’re existing on some kind of other plane. In these moments I feel I can travel one of like 7 vocal melody paths now and coming up, and I am also choosing ahead of time how delicate or firm my strum hand is while I choose from one of a handful of hand positions to form the chords. So - I got to do that A LOT at Century Commons and it was a trip. Shout out to the middle school baseball boys in from Lake Oswego and beyond. Y’all were excited to be there and perfect gentlemen. It was good to have you front (side) rows digging the tunes. I only repeated one song in the entire 4 hour set. “Heart Of Gold” by Neil Young. I may have been running out of steam, ha. But I treated you (and myself, who am I kidding) to a surprisingly on point rendition of Nirvana’s “Lithium” which I might not have ever performed publicly.

THIS WEEK:

I’ve got 3 shows in the Willamette Valley.

• Wednesday, May 27th
Block 15’s Southtown Pub
Corvallis, OR
6-8PM

Wednesday, May 27th — Block 15’s Southtown Pub | Corvallis, Oregon 6-8PM

• Friday, May 29th
Claim 52 Brewing
Eugene, OR
7-9PM

Friday, May 29th — Claim 52 Brewing | Eugene, Oregon 7-9PM

• Sunday, May 31st
Oregon Garden Resort
Silverton, OR
7-10PM

Sunday, May 31st — Oregon Garden Resort | Silverton, Oregon 7-10PM

Living in Eugene for over a year now has been wonderful. I’m in an objectively beautiful part of the country. There has to be something to beauty, and admiring natural beauty which delights the senses and calms the nervous system. Anywhere you look up here you’re breathing fresh air while bathing in creation.

I still delight in playing places for the first time. The adventure as a musician to go where I haven’t gone before. See things I haven’t seen. Meet people I’ve never met. And present the melodies and emotions which continue to inspire and represent who I am. It’s like I have this well-curated emotional stamp collection, and every show is like a show and tell of the stamps and stickers I have. Bared from my heart and inner world. Each show allows me the opportunity to switch out the frames of these “stamps” and rearrange however I please. That ultimate freedom I possess as a musical presenter is a sacred honor and carries with it an incredible power. I relate to Kurt Cobain in this way. He often spoke about the purity and freedom in punk rock. The power of it. Not really in an egoic way. But freedom through and in the presentation of art was paramount to him. Important. Maybe the word is “esoteric” but in an untouchable, nebulous, esoteric way when I am creating art and presenting my emotional stamp collection for others — I am practicing the human art of not apologizing for my autobiography. To let the listener have these songs/stamps and let the melodies reach them however they need to in that moment. Music is medicine. And how special and precious live music is in that it cannot be duplicated or replicated in the same way ever again. Everything points back to the truth that this moment is all we have. The Now.