Eugene weekly., April 02, 2020, Page 12, Image 12

music
Islands in the Stream
A EUGENE WEEKLY MUSIC WRITER COZIES UP TO LIVE STREAMING
IN THE TIME OF COVID-19
By Will Kennedy
O
n the first evening of spring, and a
few days into self-quarantine, I sat in
the kitchen of my west Eugene home,
watching stand-up comedians perform
to no audience through a live stream
at Sessions Music Hall downtown.
At this moment, the strangest feel-
ing came over me, difficult to describe, full of complexity
and contradiction, and a little like existential vertigo.
It was the sense that, all at once, something big had
changed — something that prior to this point moved at
an imperceptible pace.
Streams like these are in-
creasingly common, as artists all
over the world — Ben Gibbard,
Neil Young and Willie Nelson, to
name a few — take to live stream-
ing platforms amid calls for self-
quarantine and social distancing.
They do it to stay financially liquid,
in some cases, but also to share
their art or spread comfort and
connection.
It’s no different in Eugene. For
instance, in the wake of COVID-19,
Eugene rock duo The Critical
Shakes hope to launch their own
live stream. Ministering to shock,
trauma and grief suits the band,
says Critical Shakes singer and drummer Jordan Blaisdell
via, of course, email.
“The root of our music is the cathartic release of nega-
tive feelings,” he says. “We spent the first six months of
the band in a room by ourselves, resisting playing shows
streaming body-strengthening and mindfulness exercises.
“Going live on social media gives me an opportunity
to show up in the world,” she says. “It’s inspiring to see
what other creatives are coming up with to endure the
isolation and how they continue to express themselves.”
She expects live stream-style concerts to become more
and more popular in the coming months.
CALYSTA CHEYENNE OF
FORTUNE'S FOLLY
until we were ready.” While it feels reductive to go back to
that space of straight creation, it’s also liberating, he says.
Before the novel coronavirus, most discourse around the
use of social media had it dividing us more than uniting us.
This, too, seems to be changing, as if overnight. Now that
platforms like Facebook are all that’s left, I ask Blaisdell if
these channels could just now be coming into their own.
“The magic of live music is in its temporariness,” Blais-
dell responds. Live streaming, he says, is antithetical to
that. But if even just a little bit of the negative stimulus
we’re all experiencing can be transformed into communal
catharsis, it’s worth it, he says.
Max Miller, bassist with Eugene
indie rock band Fools , isn’t so sure.
HALIE LOREN
“This isn’t some new model
that’s going to reinfuse music into
listener’s lives in some novel way,”
he says. “It’s still little sterile boxes
of sound and color with no actual
human element.” That’s the same
stuff that’s been eroding the value
of music for a solid couple of de-
cades now, he says.
Nevertheless, live streaming
has Eugene singer-songwriter
Halie Loren rethinking her en-
tire relationship with the internet.
In the past, Loren found herself
Photo by Russ Elsevier
resenting social media. That, too,
is beginning to change. This could be a tipping point, she
says, redefining our relationship to social media and the
internet, but also our relationship to art itself.
In addition to music live streams, Calysta Cheyenne,
singer with Eugene band Fortune’s Folly , has been
Two Broke Boys,
No Cadillac
Photo by Alex Quadrini
To me, the rise of live streaming during coronavirus
recalls what I know of Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th-century
collection of tales, The Decameron. The work follows 10
young people as they hide out in Italy during the height
of the Black Plague, telling each other tales to pass the
time and stay sane.
In 2020, we do the same, from artists live streaming a
performance to someone Zooming with a friend — faces
stacked in neat and orderly boxes or side-by-side, lit up
by the warm blue of our computer monitors.
“It seems that as people are finding that they truly
need art as a source of comfort,” Loren says, “musicians
and artists are taking up the mantle.”
Back at the Sessions comedy stream, one comic said
to the home audience, after landing a punchline, “I don’t
know how you’ll clap with your phone in your hand.”
Thumbs-ups and hearts fluttered across my computer
screen. Downtown, Sessions Music Hall remained silent. ■
Find Sessions live streaming at SessionsMusicHall.com/live-streaming.
SPENCER SMYTH PERFORMING AT A
LOCAL HOUSE SHOW EARLIER THIS MONTH
THE LIFE OF A LOWLY WORDSMITH RAPPING IN EUGENE
By Donny Morrison
F
or local rapper Speno, it’s hard to not to
think about money all the time.
But on his new EP Hand Me Downs,
through his ferocious wit and ability for
self-examination, Speno proves that money
isn’t everything — even if that’s by virtue
of having none.
“I wouldn’t be here without hand-me-downs,” Speno
says. “From handing me down clothes, to handing me
down cigarettes. All the way to hand-me-down beats
from Smyth.”
“I’ve never been that dude that’s been poor and found
value in like, the butterflies flying up across my face while
I’ve been like sleeping on a fucking bench or something,”
Speno says. “It’s better to see butterflies fly across your
face while you’re traveling because you have the money
to travel.”
Born and raised in Eugene and a graduate of the
University of Oregon, Speno has been a regular in the
local music scene for years. The first time I saw him rap
was in 2018, backed by a full band at Luckey’s Wednesday
night Funk Jam. Before the virus you could still catch him
there if you were lucky, often performing with members
of a band he’s in, called Doink!. “That’s ‘Doink’ with an
exclamation mark,” Speno says.
He’s also performed regularly at house shows around
campus with frequent collaborators Brax and Smyth,
the latter of whom handled production on the new EP.
The beats are some of Smyth’s darkest yet and remind
me of my favorite horrorcore records from the ’90s,
Photo by Sarah Northrop
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