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Looking for the Good Life
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struggle. Joy and exhaustion, satisfac-
tion and disappointment, poor choices
and the consequences of them.”
Stuart, who’s day job is working
for a cable company, has found musi-
cal inspiration in the story of the timber
industry and the men and women who
made their living here in the Pacific
Northwest. RootJack’s first album, In
the Pines is scattered with references to
working men and the woods.
When he first started looking
Stuart, who’s in his forties,
lives in Portland with his family, but has
found a second home, of sorts, out here
towards the Coast Range. He has trav-
eled to Vernonia and Birkenfeld numer-
ous times over the last several years to
play with both The John Brown Band
and with RootJack. The John Brown
Band has performed at both the Friend-
ship Jamboree and the Salmon Festival
as well a private party in the old fuel
house at Vernonia Lake; RootJack has
into logging he discovered that loggers
spoke their own language. “When most
people are on a job site and they need a
piece of equipment to get the job done,
they look into a catalogue and order the
part they need,” explains Stuart. But
when loggers came out here, there were
no parts and no catalogues. They had
to make everything themselves - which
means they got to name it too! So they
have this really rich, colorful language
that they used.”
Stuart says when he started
learning about logging and needed a
name for the band, he wrote down a list
of about forty logging terms “We’re
not ‘Jim Pole,’ but we thought about it,”
says Stuart with a laugh. “We’re not
‘Bull Bucker’ or ‘Widow Maker,’ but we
thought about it. ‘RootJack’ was one
that was on the list that we kept coming
back to.” A root jack is a tool for pull-
ing small trees. Stuart added that, after
they chose the name and started using
it, the name RootJack is short enough
that on concert posters it often ends up in
a larger font and stands out from other
band names. “We didn’t plan on that, but
it worked out well!” says Stuart with a
grin.
played The Birk several times
and Stuart also played as part
of a trio of solo artists who
shared The Birk stage one
evening last year.
The John Brown mu-
sic came about sort of by ac-
cident back in 2010. A fellow
musician, drummer Eric Ko-
tilla, is the grandson of John
Brown. Kotilla had passed
along a collection of Brown’s
poems about Vernonia to Stu-
art, knowing Stuart, who had
recently formed RootJack,
was interested in logging cul-
ture. Stuart was definitely
inspired, setting a dozen of
the poems to music for acous-
tic instruments in a short ten
hours. The collaboration,
with the blessing of Brown’s
relatives, led to a CD record-
ing, several live performances
in Vernonia, and numerous
more in the Portland area.
“I had never been out
here; I had never even heard
of Vernonia before I read the
poems of John Brown,” says
Stuart. The project, which
found a somewhat limited
audience, has lost some steam as Stuart
has focused more on RootJack. “Hon-
estly, I think it could be my retirement,”
says Stuart. “You can play those songs
when you’re seventy. And the stories
in them will translate from eight year
olds to eighty year olds. I can make
them work in a bar, but you can also
make them work in a classroom, or in
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Vernonia’s Voice is
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and 3rd Thursday.
Our next issue will
be out May 1st.
an old folks home or in a coffee shop or
anywhere.”
Stuart says the group of John
Brown songs he has now is just the first
batch. “The family gave me a CD ROM
with well over a hundred other poems on
it, which I’ve quickly skimmed through
and pulled out at least twenty more that
are ready to go as songs. RootJack has
just gotten busier and busier and that’s
great and I’m having a blast. But I’m not
putting John Brown away.”
RootJack is a different sound al-
together. Having spent a lot of his early
life in Georgia, you can see and hear that
southern rock influence in Stuart’s look
and in his music - a bit of Lynyrd Sky-
nyrd here, some Allman Brothers there.
When RootJack takes the stage they
sound more like Neil Young when he
performs with his sometime-band Crazy
Horse, just sped up a couple notches;
raw and powerful guitar chords on top of
the strong rhythm of bass player Kevin
Cowen and the drum beat of Chris Hut-
ton. Stuart’s blues vocals with a south-
ern twang complete the package. Root-
Jack’s Facebook page describes it as, ‘If
Cream had been listening to the Carter
Family, instead of Robert Johnson, it
might have come off like this.’
In fact, Stuart joined up last
we won’t do Neil Young again, we’ll do
something different. It takes months to
learn and it’s a lot of work, and then we
go do it once. But it’s worth it. And we
make some great connections with musi-
cians from other parts of the country.”
Stuart says RootJack will be
playing several festivals and will be re-
ally busy this summer. He says he likes
traveling away from Portland to perform
because the city is so crowded with mu-
sic that it’s hard to compete. “We’re real
happy to go where somebody wants to
hear our songs,” he says.
Stuart has strengthened his con-
nection to the Vernonia area through the
RootJack shows at The Birk. The ‘Old
House of Music’ seems to be a good fit
for RootJack and Stuart. “There are lots
of roadhouses up and down I5 that have
live music. But they also have video
poker and sports on the TV-whatever is
going to get people in the door,” says
Stuart. “This place is a place that’s
about music, which makes it very spe-
cial for us. We get treated really well out
here. Tonight there are a lot of people
here who aren’t going to come to Port-
land to see us. So we’re happy to come
out and see them.”
Stuart added that several musi-
cian friends have been booked at The
Birk this last year. “They
come back and say, ‘That is
the best venue we play-the
best spot for music we get to
play in.’ It’s a serious room.
I don’t know that the patrons
know it, but the bands that
play here sure know it,”
Meanwhile, RootJack
recently released their sec-
ond CD, Oasis Motel. In a
departure from his northwest
themed music, Stuart tackled
a different subject matter this
time around, but one which
sticks to his thesis of place
and working and doing what
you have to do to get by. “My
wife and I lived in and ran
an adult motel on the strip in
Las Vegas,” explains Stuart.
“They rented rooms by the
hour and had dirty movies on
the TV. It was a nasty place
full of hookers and pimps and
people on the grift. We lived
there for less than a year. All
these songs are about that time
and tells a story of excess and,
hopefully, redemption.”
Stuart says following
the release of Oasis Motel he
is right back to work on new
material. “We weren’t off the stage for
ten minutes from our record release par-
ty when Chris our drummer says, ‘So...
new songs?’ So, no rest for the weary.”
Stuart’s connection to Verno-
nia is real. “I’m thrilled with this area,”
said Stuart as he got ready to take the
stage again at The Birk last month. “Ev-
ery time I’ve played, whether it’s John
Brown songs or RootJack music, I feel
really appreciated here. We’ve played in
lots of places around Portland, and what
we learned was there are places that
have music and there are places that dig
music. We want to go to places that dig
music and this is one of those places.”
summer and performed several times
with “Brothers and Sisters,” an Allman
Brothers tribute band, something he says
was a lot of fun. Members of the band
are spread out all over the country and,
according to Stuart, are in serious and
original bands of their own, but he says
there are opportunities this summer for
that band to play together again.
Stuart also says the members
of RootJack played a summer festival
last year and performed Neil Young’s
album Harvest in its entirety, acting as
the backing band and having other per-
formers from the festival join them for
certain songs (think The Band’s The Last
Waltz). Stuart says RootJack has been
asked to do the festival again this year.
To learn more about Kris Stuart
“We’re going to do a different program, and Rootjack go to: www.rootjack.us
