Playing Portland’s Project Pabst festival… its Shannon and the Clams! one of my favorite bands. Listening to them always makes me want to play joyous music.
These are drawings I made of Shannon and the band in 2015. wow 10 years ago! Am I any better now?
I’m working on a new play about a band. I was inspired reading Kathleen Hannah’s book “Riot Girl” and listening to this podcast interviewing Shannon. It sounded like she was a cool person and listening was like hanging out with friends. I’ll let you know when the play is finished 🙂 the plan is it will be a “behind the music” style documentary about a fantasy band.
I was able to attend Project Pabst last July. Many great bands were playing but it was Soccer Mommy and Big Thief who made this show important to me.
Soccer Mommy’s music meant a lot to me when I was low, though I prefer her older songs, recorded more simply, her new stuff is good too and her band played very well. The stage was decorated with a lo fi video tape look from a projection, her band name in huge letters, but cars driving and waving palm trees. Footage taken from cars by a naive filmmaker, the scenery of California going by, the rearview mirror: it fit her music well I thought.
Her style has been called “bubble grunge.” I think she’s got honest stark lyrics that are inspirational and seem confessional. She reminds me of Elliott Smith. Her 2018 album “Clean” is solid throughout. With “Scorpio Rising” and “Still Clean” being standouts, I was psyched that she played them live. “Yellow is the color of her eyes” is my favorite on “Color Theory.” “Try” and “Death by Chocolate” “Henry” are charming and sound like they could be from a scene I could be a part of. They are more naive and kimya Dawson or Daniel Johnston like in their lo fi recording aesthetic. She’s made several new albums since Color Theory, and I clearly have some homework to catch up on. Here are some drawings of the show. Took me 11 months to finish them. These pieces ended up very “mixed Media” with watercolors, alcohol markers, gel pens and paint markers.
Here’s a closeup with detail on Sophie. She wore real baggy pants for this show.
One of my favorite things to do is go to a festival and try to draw everybody who plays.
I drew many of the bands at project Pabst but I wasn’t able to draw all of them.
More are coming but here is Big Thief, who wrapped up the last night.
Adrienne played with some new band members and played a long jammy style, channeling Neil Young sometimes. She didn’t play the old songs I love but that’s ok because all her new songs still sound like big thief songs and sound pretty good.
My brother gave me a watercolor brush pen from Italy and I used it here and used my homemade acorn ink . Ironing the page had some unexpected results but that’s ok.
Isaac and the Awkward Situations 