november 2.2001 •
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••^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.
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