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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 2, 2001)
november 2.2001 • i ••^39 f F rom Albuquerque to Alabama, bad cops and bugs in the ear and fate working its magic on a Tri-Met bus, the two gals, one guy and many instruments of Vivian’s Keeper teach us about doing what we love. When other 18-year-olds were enrolling in college, entering the military or getting office jobs, Adam Bentley was choosing to follow his life’s love. “Being a musician was all 1 ever wanted to be when 1 grew up,” he explains. Bentley made a conscious choice to make a career out of playing music and spent five years as an electric guitarist in “noisy rock bands.” Then he “ran into a wall with loud, aggressive music,” sold all of his electric equipment and most of his CDs, learned how to play acoustic guitar and began writing his own songs. While visiting a mutual friend, he met Joan na Agee, who recently had moved to Portland from Albuquerque, N.M. For years they worked as a duo but always hoped to evolve into a trio. They interviewed and rehearsed with potential bandmates, but no one ever quite fit the nuances of the person they were hoping to find. “We made a very specific list of incompati ble things. We thought we wanted a woman, someone who could play drums but who also plays other instruments, who sang, and wouldn’t it be nice if she wrote songs, too?” Agee laughs, recalling their impossible dream. Fate finally answered their call when Bent ley sat next to a woman on a bus ride home from his day job as a librarian. Ever the pro moter, he enticed her to buy a discounted C D that he and Agee had released. A month later they received a letter from the woman’s girlfriend, Erin Moreland, request ing to join their mailing list and compliment ing them on their music. The first time they all met was during a show at the White Eagle that could have been a disaster, considering only one person was in the audience. Luckily, it was Moreland, who went home and penned a letter of encouragement. In it she wrote, “Oh, by the way if you ever need a third....” Moreland also mentioned her previous experience playing guitar for a folk-rock band and her more recent interest in learning to play her new drum kit. The duo took her up on the offer and, after playing three songs together at a rehearsal, asked her to join the band. About two months later they went on the road for shows as far away as Alabama, but Moreland only accompanied them for the first leg of the tour, leaving them in the Bay Area. She just had graduated from the East-West College of Massage and hadn’t planned to tour with a band on such short notice. “I guess I’m kind of a homebody, and it took a shift to take off from work to travel,” she explains. band makes unusual muslo together by M elissa S ayler “ Urban folk” band Vivian’s Keeper— from left, Erin Moreland, Joanna Agee and Adam Bentley— named themselves after a formerly depressed turtle But since then Moreland has come to agree with Agee’s philosophy that they will have plenty of time later in life to pursue other paths and that “music is better served by youth and willingness to sleep in cars.” Agee herself put off going to midwifery school to be in the band. That willingness to sleep in cars and play their Northwest-inspired "urban folk” music has brought them most recently to California, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. Bentley was worried that going into small towns being a “sissy gender-abnormal man” and singing songs with leftist lyrics would get them into trouble. But he found out “there are sweet, tol erant, open-minded people all over the place.” In G rants, N .M .— a tiny town that claim s ownership o f “ the only underground uranium mining museum in the world”— only six people came to the show, but every single one o f them bought a CD . In Boulder, Colo., Vivian’s Keeper played an infamous frat bar alongside a “macho fishnet- and miniskirt-wearing blues band,” but everyone stayed and listened through their whole set. Bentley even scored a special com pliment from an older hippie fellow who asked him, “What’s your name?” When he answered “Adam,” the audience member replied, “Oh I knew it, because I wish I was Eve!” But it’s no mystery why people who never have heard Vivian’s Keeper play before would stay to hear the whole set— regardless of whether they came to hear punk, scary blues or Grateful Dead cover bands. During a recent show at the cozy Red and Black Cafe in Portland, the trio played to a frill room of fans tucked into comfy couches and old chairs. The most beguiling songs warmed the crowd against the chilly fall air with deep bass lines and fast-fingered drum work. Add a banjo, xylophone, penny whistle and djembe (an African drum) to their trio of ethe real voices, traditional instruments and lyrics smattered with nature references, and you’ve got one eclectic group. According to Bentley, their sound most often is compared to the Cranberries or Suzanne Vega, yet with a decid edly Northwest sensibility. The band members also compare their ideal future to the life and level of success Vega has reached. “Everyone knows her name,” Bentley says. “She plays small enough venues that you can still see her— she’s not a speck in the dis tance. And she gets paid well.” Their main concern isn’t being famous but making music to pay the bills while still having the freedom to stay independent. “When you cross that line [sigoing with a record company] someone else is telling you what to do and what to record. They’re you’re employer,” Agee says, telling a story about friends who had to record a Christmas CD in the middle of summer for their label. So Vivian’s Keeper will continue to play their music, follow their passion and hope peo ple come out to support them so they can quit their day jobs— and pay off the debt from mak ing their last CD! All three members write lyrics and music, although they don’t classify their music as gay- themed. “We’ve talked often about how hard it is to maintain a queer identity through our music,” Bentley reveals. “We don’t do relation ship songs or political songs, so we haven’t ‘come out’ per se in our songs.” He does stress, however, that lyrics are impor tant to them and that they work at singing them clearly. “We’ve even been called conversational,” he says, adding that despite his shyness, he does like to talk to the audience between numbers. And what about that strange name? Agee, who works at Art from the Heart, has a history of rescuing animals from her workplace, including Stinky the depressed turtle and Mouskin the abandoned baby mouse. However, Stinky was luckier than Mouskin, who was nursed and raised to adulthood only to be eaten by one of Agee’s cats. Stinky was nursed back to health, renamed Vivian and became the band’s namesake and mas cot. She is no longer depressed and accepts her newfound notoriety with grace. J H performs 8 p.m. Nov. 8 at Astoria’s Uniontowm Cafe, 218 W. Marine Drive, and 9:30 p.m. Nov. 15 at Portland’s Mount Tabor Theatre and Pub, 4811 S.E . Hawthorne Blvd. V i v i a n ’ s K eeper M elissa S ayler is a staff writer at Just Out who always wanted to be Jerry Lee Lewis when she grew up, although she prefers dating women older than 13. Auto, Home, Life & Business F o r fa s t , f a i r a n d f r i e n d l y service, c o n ta c t "Your Independent Insurance Agency" p □ &□ Elliott, Powell, Baden & Baker, Inc. 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