6 // COASTWEEKEND.COM
Arts Center welcomes
bluesman and balladist
LONG BEACH, WASH. —
Acclaimed blues guitarist
and songwriter David
Jacobs-Strain will perform
at the Peninsula Arts Center
7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 16.
Jacobs-Strain is a fierce
slide guitar player and a
song poet from Oregon.
He’s known for both his
virtuosity and spirit of
emotional abandon. His
live show moves from
humorous, subversive blues
to delicate balladry, then
swings back to swampy
rock and roll. It’s a range
that ties Jacobs-Strain to his
own generation and to gui-
tar-slinger troubadours like
Robert Johnson and Jackson
Browne.
Jacobs-Strain began
playing on street corners
and at farmers markets as a
teenager and bought his first
steel guitar with the quarters
he saved up. Before drop-
ping out of Stanford to play
full-time, he had already
appeared at festivals across
the country, often billed as a
blues prodigy, but he had to
fight to avoid being a novel-
ty act: “I wanted to tell new
stories; it just wasn’t enough
to relive the feelings in other
people’s music.”
The virtuoso has
appeared at festivals from
British Columbia to Austra-
lia. On the road, he’s shared
the stage with Lucinda
The North Coast Symphonic Band and
North Coast Chorale at the Liberty Theatre
PHOTOS COURTESY JANET BOWLER
The Astoria Tuba Quartet
Andy and Rachel Becker, vocal solists
Symphonic Band, musical guests bring
‘Peace on Earth, Goodwill to All’
COURTESY PENINSULA ARTS CENTER
David Jacobs-Strain
Williams, Boz Scaggs, Etta
James, The Doobie Broth-
ers, George Thorogood,
Robert Earle Keen, Todd
Snider, Taj Mahal, Janis Ian,
Tommy Emmanuel, Bob
Weir, T-Bone Burnett and
Del McCoury.
The Peninsula Arts Cen-
ter is located at 504 Pacific
Ave. N., Long Beach, Wash-
ington. Admission is $15 at
the door or online through
Brown Paper Tickets, or call
Bill Svendsen at 360-901-
0962.
Wine, beer and other
refreshments are available
for purchase.
Concerts benefit the
Long Beach Peninsula
Acoustic Music Associa-
tion, a nonprofit charitable
organization.
ASTORIA — The North Coast Sym-
phonic Band and Liberty Theater Pres-
ents will offer a joint celebration of the
holiday season 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 17,
at Astoria’s Liberty Theatre.
Dave Becker, former director of
bands at Lewis and Clark College, is
conductor and musical director. Guest
vocalists Andy and Rachel Becker of
Portland will entertain the audience
with good cheer, and the North Coast
Chorale, directed by Denise Reed, will
perform as well.
Doors open at 1:15 p.m. The Astoria
Tuba Quartet will offer a concert pre-
lude of holiday tunes at 1:30 p.m.
The afternoon’s musical program is
themed “Peace on Earth, Goodwill to
All” and features wind band and vocal
selections to inspire and offer optimis-
tic messages of hope for the holiday
season and beyond.
Selections include “And the
Mountains Echoed: Gloria!” by Robert
Longfield, “Chanukah Celebration” by
Bobrowitz, and “Noël from ‘Symphon-
ic Sketches’” by Chadwick.
The Beckers are making their third
appearance with the Symphonic Band.
The couple appeared in the Age of
Aquarius concert in 2015 and in the
July 2016 performance of Ameri-
can Heroes and was invited back by
popular demand. They will sing “Blue
Christmas” made popular by Elvis
Presley and Céline Dion, “Pa Pa Pa
Pa” from the opera The Magic Flute
by Mozart, and the classic holiday
tune “The Night Before Christmas.”
The North Coast Chorale will sing
fresh arrangements of classic car-
ols by Maurice Lauridsen and John
Rutter. The Symphonic Band, Chorale
and the Beckers will join forces for
the grand finale sing-a-long, “Merry
Christmas, Everyone.”
The Astoria Tuba Quartet consists
of four fun guys: Dennis Hale, Lee
Stromquist, Bob Joiner and Brian
Bergman. The quartet’s lush warm
sounds, blended from tubas and tenor
tubas will surprise most audiences
expecting brash, brassy, bombastic
sounds. The quartet is known local-
ly for its holiday program, “A Tuba
Christmas,” presented annually at the
Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum in
Ilwaco, Washington.
Tickets are available at the Liberty
Theatre Box Office (1203 Commercial
St.) 2 to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday through
Saturday and two hours before the
performance. Regular admission is
$20. Student tickets for those 18 and
under are $5.
For more information on tickets,
visit libertyastoria.org. For more
information on the North Coast Sym-
phonic Band, visit northcoastsym-
phonicband.org, find the Symphonic
Band on Facebook or call 503-325-
2431.
Symphonic Band musicians are
community volunteers who rehearse
weekly. There are limited openings
for new musicians who own their own
instruments and perform at the high
school level or beyond. Interested
musicians should contact Personnel
Director Lee Stromquist at encore1@
charter.net or 503-861-1328.
Hounds bay at Fort George Dec. 17
ASTORIA — Seattle band Hounds of the
Wild Hunt will perform at Fort George
Brewery 8 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 17. There
is no cover for this all-ages show.
The band has been throwing around
their sweaty brand of garage rock in
one iteration or another for quite a
while now. Starting off as The Whore
Moans in the mid 2000s, they released
two full-length records and toured the
country multiple times, earning rave
reviews from coast to coast for their
high-energy shows and earnest rock
‘n’ roll anthems, including a write-up
in Rolling Stone and an appearance
at CMJ in New York and SXSW in
Austin.
Then, after hundreds of shows and
countless miles on the road, the boys
decided to tear everything down and
start from scratch. And so Hounds of
the Wild Hunt was born.
Pumping out an EP and full-length
in rapid succession, the band proved
that their music wasn’t just confined
to the dingy bars and clubs where
they cut their teeth, opening for such
acts as Biffy Clyro, The Detroit Co-
bras and Titus Andronicus, along with
a host of others.
Line-up changes have quieted
the group down for a short interval,
but they’re on track for a busy 2018,
with a new record ready to be re-
corded and a handful of Seattle dates
in the works.
COURTESY BRIAN BOVENIZER
Hounds of the Wild Hunt