Experiencing a Local Music Bloom
It seemed as if there was a certain point when I personally experienced how things really scaled up with the local Bend, Oregon live music, which was just around ten years ago.
The Bend Fall Festival was added to the annual line up of festivals, and then the town had the Bite of Bend. All of the festivals finally started opening up their events for local performers where earlier they would only position touring acts.
With all of these new events popping up everywhere, things were just cooking, and the need for fresh new musicians and local musicians was stronger than ever. New breweries were opening their doors, and they were looking for musicians to play; it was exciting. There was a strong demand for musicians, and other promoters started coming into town, like Monqui Presents and Parallel 44 Presents. McMenamins opened a popular music stage in Father Luke’s room.
Silvermoon Brewery was one of the first breweries to open its doors and bring in music on a routine basis from both locals and touring acts. Also, acts with larger draws were continuing to come and perform at the Domino Room and Midtown Ballroom, M and J Tavern continued to host their popular open mics and shows – Downtown Bend, Oregon became a little pocket of music fun.
The town started seeing a rise of local talent, and everyone was really excited with artists like Mosely Wotta, Larry and His Flask, and The Autonomics all gaining some serious altitude. It just seemed that my band at the time, KouseFly, was in the middle of greatness.
What really brought all these projects together was The Roots Festival (a local music festival), and the other one, which was a little weird and contentious, was the Last Band Standing (a battle of the bands). Being involved in those, you began to really discover not only the diversity of sounds and inspiration but also the magnitude of what we were becoming.
It was not only something incredible to see, but it was something incredibly be a part of. During this time, this was the time when the Central Oregon music scene just blossomed. We had a local guitar company, Breedlove Guitars. We also had an amazing and brilliant bluegrass scene showcase by the Moon Mountain Ramblers. We also had a booming heavy metal scene, a band named Kelverkill, which were the champs. Artist genres started popping up left and right, with new breweries open up their doors. We had new venues, specifically for Performing Arts like Volcanic Theater Pub and the Century Center.
It was a moment where we crossed the chasm. A moment when we as musicians raised our hand and said, “we are here world, come enjoy a beer, come enjoy your stay, come watch the sunset with us while we play music; that we thought of.”
With KouseFly, life got in the way again; in a good way. I was expecting a daughter, and Bird was planning on getting married. We didn't have it in us to jump into a touring van and promote the heck out of our album, Kousefly, Down by a Billion. We went on hiatus indefinitely up until 2019, when Bird and I began splitting shows as solo players. Unfortunately, the pandemic slowed down the momentum of Bird and I continuing to share shows and rebuild our collaboration.
The beginning is always a good reference for restarting and that’s exactly what we are doing here in Bend in the fall of 2021 - trying to restart.