On the Eastside
My first club show in Portland at The East Avenue Tavern with memories of Lisa Lepine pro-motion queen, meeting Johnny Cunningham, and another night that reverberated down the years.
Hi all! Here’s post #2. I’m off to UK for a run of tour dates (June 27-July 10 in Hastings, High Wycombe, Sheffield, Suffolk, & a big show in London to finish). Info on the gigs at www.caseyneill.com Meanwhile, here’s transportation to another long lost music room in the early 90s. More soon… CN
When music happens in a venue, it resonates in the room long after the last chord is done ringing out. A bar is no longer just a bar, a club no longer just a club. The songs and tunes echo in the walls. I am generally not prone to magical thinking but I like the notion that stages have a memory and that if you listen they whisper to you when you stand on them. A venue can have a legendary bearing and you feel it when you play there. It can be a hole in the wall or an arena. I’ve experienced this countless times - Water Rats in London where Dylan played his first UK show and the first Pogues performance happened is such a room (then known as Pindar of Wakefield) as are Club Passim in Boston, Town Hall in New York, and the countless less celebrated places lost to time.
By 1992, I was doing shows around the Northwest up and down the I-5 corridor slowly building a handful of people who would come see me play, mostly through the environmental movement. I had performed in the eco-activist communities in Portland but I wanted to get into some more music specific venues in town. The bar for acoustic music at the time was the East Avenue Tavern, so that was my first pitch. It was booked by a beloved promoter named Lisa Lepine and owned by the accordion player Michael Beglan. I sent Lisa my demo tape and she wrote back to say she heard potential in it but that the music just wasn’t ready yet. I appreciated that she took the time to listen and respond with an honest take. Looking back I don’t think my songs were ready for another 5 years or so, long after I had an active national touring career.
I stayed in touch with Lisa and she liked the next cassette I sent her. So she asked me to open for Irish singer Peter Yeates at the East Avenue. It was a small barroom on Burnside Blvd just over the river from downtown and it had been host to many acoustic music legends. Master Texas songwriter Townes Van Zandt played there more than once. Up above the bar there were cigarette butts tacked up with the names of the performers who had smoked them. In the case of Pete Seeger, there was the tea bag from his cup! I drove down from Olympia and a few Portland friends came out to see me in addition to Mr Yeates’ fans and the punters hanging around the place.
The East Avenue was smokey and lively. Leaning against the bar was a fiddle player named Johnny Cunningham. Leather jacket, scarf, dragon tattoo down his arm from the Book of Kells, long red hair and beard, and often balancing a jaunty cigarette. Widely considered the greatest living Scottish fiddler, he was an infamous character and it blew my mind that he was there (he was in a band called Nightnoise at the time who were recording in town). I was a huge fan of Johnny’s band Silly Wizard with his equally illustrious brother Phil. The Scottish counterpart to Irish acts like Bothy Band and Planxty, Silly Wizard played Scots music with wild modern energy and cut a swath across the world in the 80s. To say his presence was intimidating is an understatement but I charged through my set with the blind confidence of youth and inexperience. After my set, he came up to me to say he enjoyed the music. We sat down together and for the remainder of the night we chatted, laughed a lot, and downed more than a few drinks. Johnny jumped on stage to play with Peter Yeates and the rest of the night… well it gets a little fuzzy.
On that evening of December 11th 1992, Johnny and I began a friendship that would later change my life in very big ways but it would be a few years before I saw him again. The East Avenue closed a few years later and Mikey Beglan opened the Alberta Street Pub which carried on the spirit. Lisa Lepine became a longtime friend and advisor to me as she did for countless Portland musicians. She was effervescent. The kind of person who lit up a room and was always championing others and pushing us to be better at the parts of the job that didn’t come as naturally. Lisa passed away in 2016 at 58 and she is tremendously missed here in Portland. Her motto on her letterhead and emails always made me smile. “DO. DREAM. DAZZLE.” Words to live by.
SONG - ‘THE EASTSIDE’. Acoustic version 1 / “Quiet Storm” version 2
A song of mine that is not about the East Avenue Tavern per say but more of a portrait of a friendship taking place on the east side of town. Which town is up to you though East Portland and Lower East Side NYC specifically have deep resonance for me. One version is given a treatment inspired by the aesthetics of my favorite bands ever - Sade. The drummer on the track Ji Tanzer shares my deep love of Sade music and his groove led to this arrangement embraces that inspiration full on. The other is a more acoustic take. I liked them both and so they both went on my latest solo record ‘time zero land’.
RECOMMENDATIONS -
Music Playlist (on Spotify)
A collection of songs related to this post and other things I’ve been listening to. Steve Barton, The Minus 5, Poor Creature, Dave Alvin, Joy Oladokun, Townes Van Zandt and more.
Reading -
Colm McCann - Twist - a great new novel from one of my favorite authors
Rebecca Solnit - No Straight Road Gets You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain
Her newsletter Meditations in an Emergency is vital at this dangerous moment. This new collection of essays is a balm for those of us who appreciate the circuitous routes in life.
Thanks for reading! Next time we’ll head to an old warhorse of an arena and an ancient forest…
