We rolled on through OR toward Ryan’s big sis Kristi’s house in Ashland. Like all of Ryan’s family, she’s super supportive of her brother’s musical endeavors. Sisters Sarah and Emily (along with Emily’s husband Austin) came to the show in Portland, and came next morning for an informal screening of the new music video (which sister Sarah helped film). Sister Kristi came up for the show in Eugene, excited to see the Horde & the Harem live for the first time. Now we were heading to her place where she lives with daughter Flora for a little family night and some rest from performing.
Aura took the wheel for the day’s drive, and while the boys watched movies and read in the back, we talked a bit about life back in Seattle. Aura moved up there about 2 years ago to be close to her brother and his kids when their mother passed away. In addition to her family responsibilities, Aura teaches piano classes to students from 4 to 40, and works part-time in a coffee shop. She knows Ryan and Noble from their days back in Santa Cruz where Ryan and she took all their Opera classes together.
About a year ago, Aura started dating boyfriend Dave. She met him at a coffee shop she worked at across the street from Dave’s apartment building. Days before she was about to quit, she told Dave that she would be leaving, and was excited that her then crush insisted they hang out away from work. Now they’re swapping pictures of potential houses together, and she’s getting him to pick up the trumpet he’d neglected since high school…
Ashland is a cute little bubble of progressiveness in the more rural/republication Southern OR at large. The van pulled right up to a friendly community yoga studio, where some of us did deep squats to expel the cafa of winter and tour living. We were just grabbing sandwiches after when Noble came up with a flyer for open mic. Why not? We toted some instruments over to the Black Swan (an affiliate theater for the OR Shakespeare Company) and put names on the list.
The room was a packed one, surprising for a Monday. The night featured some slam poets and hip hop artists, and the audience was an eclectic one. I sat next to Holly, a woman in her 60s, who’d moved to town about 12 years ago after coming up for the festival performances for many years before that. She told me about the green shows (informal outdoor shows before each festival performance), about the 12 different plays each season, and about the one outdoor Elizabethan and 2 indoor theaters whose capacities range from 150 to 1200. She was pleased with the new management of the company, and noted a couple times how well they were doing at diversifying the offerings. She’d never heard any slam poetry before, and was excited to see what it was all about.
Despite it’s being billed as an open mic, MC Claudia had a lot of the first 1.5 hours slotted for scheduled performers. Some were awesome – Cornflower did two beat box jams with his loop pedal which were pretty inspired (and only a mite hippie spiritual), and another young guy did a great accapella performance of “No Contact,” a really funny and prettily rendered response to break-up. The feature performer, though, fell right over the line of inspired to trite with his slam poems about fatherhood, religion, sexual feeling, etc, etc, etc. Perhaps if he’d honored the spirit of open mic and shut up after a more reasonable 25 minutes. Forty-five minutes and an epic mess-up later, he was still rambling on and rumpling papers. Give up the stage!
A quick check of the clock, and thoughts of visiting with Ryan’s niece Flora at a decent hour, had us sneaking out after feature fail. We spent the rest of the night playing LIFE and eating grilled cheese at the kitchen table at Kristi’s house. Flora was quite the little hostess, ushering the cats about and out of the way and showing us to towels and showers. Thanks, Kristi and Flora, for a much needed respite!
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