House Show

I feel like a real queer Portlander now. Last night I went to a house show with a friend that was being put on to raise money for a top-surgery. It was held in this big punk/hippy sorta house with a vast porch and all sorts of nice people came to hang out. The kitchen contained a donation jar and a remarkable assortment of vegan and sugar free baked goods. The carob brownies! And the music was REALLY very good, which I wasn't necessarily expecting. It was a treat to hear the musicians play a living room gig because it was pretty obvious that they do much bigger venues most of the time. They were both recent Brooklyn transplants and extolled the virtues of Portland where the people and life are so much nicer. As an unforeseen consequence, the pleasant life offers less consternation for songwriting. Good problem, I say. Malcolm Rollick is a drifting troubador who seemed to write a lot of her stuff on the fly and sounded great doing it. I talked to her a little and learned that she's about to ride her bicycle, with guitar, across the fruited plains, perhaps all the way to the Atlantic on a tour. Wow. The second set was Katie Sawicki, who played a very beautiful Gibson Les Paul. We were stacked on couches and the floor, eating our vegan cookies and getting our singer-songwriter on. Lucky.