Tower of Song - Episode 1

[dog] and [pony] - Tower of Song Sessions
Episode 1 - Sam James and Chriss Sutherland
05.23.09

The Bands:
Sam James - Vox, Guitar, Foot Stamps
Chriss Sutherland - Vox, Guitar

The Scene:
The Tower of Song is set in an apartment living room looking over Congress Square. Four roads meet in a blocky, red arena home to coffee shops, grocery stores, the Portland Museum of Art and so on.

The day of the festival the square is home to a few rows of white tents as vendors set up shop. People gather and mill, blankets are laid out, picnics are had.

Portland comes together.

Tower of Song is a celebration of community. Nine bands steam up one fourth floor apartment, stomping, strumming, pounding, wailing, moaning. Hip Hop and folk, jangly pop and indie-rock come together in a beautiful testament to Portland's diverse music scene.

And it makes sense that the festival blasts against the old State Theater. Jesse Pilgrim, the first performer of the day's events, has a theory that because Portland spent so many years without a mid-level venue, the local scene had to improve, step up and throw down. If your only options are whoever's at The Civic Center and what's going on at Slainte, you're going to want to see some good stuff at the cheaper venue.

Filling this gap has given Portland a rich and diverse music scene. For a relatively small city, we've been gifted with a varied pastiche of local music. From Pilgrim's country strumming to Sam James' blues-picking. From Spencer and the School Spirit Mafia's joyous-cult-pop-rock to Fire on Fire's indie-orchestra commune. From Dilly Dilly's Ukulele to ... well, basically anything else she does. The scene is wide, it is filled with talent and it is something that deserves reveling in.

So if Tower of Song only happened because The State theater closed down, I say good. I miss the mid-level acts the venue drew but I think I'm much happier with the eclectic mix Portland has now, the breadth and depth that only happen in a borderline isolated community.

Which brings us to Sam James and Chriss Sutherland.

These two feast on yesterday's music. But they do it in separate ways. Sam's a foot-stomping, string-pickin' hollerin' blues-man. Chriss picks and strums, he sings and moans. Sam sings to his bouncing feet or the neck of his guitar, Chriss rolls his eyes back and sings to the ceiling fan.

And the music these two are blasting from The Tower... Sam James is singing a Leonard Cohen number about the music community, a song with such echoing portent the whole god-damned festival bears it's name. A song written to address music's place in the land and a musician's place in music. Music's import, it's reverence, it's worship.

Musicians are elevated instantly onto a tower.

Chriss Sutherland sings a country-folk staple written by one hero for another. The community of music represents itself another way through Chriss as he wails and moans on Angel From Montgomery. Sam's song is philosophically meta, Chriss' abandons the meta for a self-aware celebration. It doesn't expound on what it means to be a musician, but at the same time it acknolwedges that the players are musical. When John Prine wrote that for Bonnie Raitt to sing, he did it without philosophizing on what it means to make music. Prine and Raitt know that already. Angel celebrates music, Tower celebrates making music.

Both Sam and Chriss have a tendency to keep alive the communal tradition of music. They play songs that you want to hear and songs that are easy to learn and play along to... but they do it in a professional, hypnotic and singular way. Sam and Chriss play simple music in a way that makes you want to listen, want to join in. You want to help this music, you want to be there and experience it.

Sam James and Chriss Sutherland are perfect for Tower of Song. They represent a fundamental, uncomplicated togetherness in music. They aren't pumping out music for money, they aren't defiantly challenging the status quo (though they do challenge it). They are residing in music.

Allow me to clarify that last statement. There is some musicality in all of us. It is a basic element of humanity that draws us to tunes. Songs represent a whole of humanity. When was the last time you were at a party that music wasn't played at? Even solo acts - such as these two - help to bring us together.

People seek out music. We're drawn to it.

Bands, of course, represent a community just by being together and creating something beautiful, but the fact remains that we're bewitched by what Chriss and Sam do. Without their plucking and strumming and wailing and humming we'd be a little more lost and a little less unified.

Maybe you don't like their particular styles, their idioms of playing - this is where they challenge the status quo. Take your genre of choice, it works across the board. Swaying to dreamy electro-pop or grinding to grungy metal or if you're at a bar and RATT comes pumping through the speakers and you see someone else grinning and bobbing their heads, you feel a connection.

That is the essence of the music these two play - of the music anyone plays. Their essence goes back a hundred years, though - again, this is where these two challenge the status quo. The essence of Chriss and Sam is pure community. Their music has roots in a time when this was the only music you were likely to hear. A time when radios weren't all that popular. A time when it was live or nothing. This is the music by the people, of the people and for the people.

The tradition Chriss and Sam are continuing is long and noble. At the Tower of Song Chriss sang, for instance, a song called "All The Little Horses" or, alternately, "Hush-a-Bye." This is a song older than the Civil War. No one knows who wrote it or how many versions of it there are. But you can be sure the version we heard at the Tower of Song was unique and Chriss' own while also being a part of a sesquicentennial tradition. Sam performed mostly originals, but if you ever hear him live you've got about even odds on hearing something old. Real old. He'll tell you he doesn't know who wrote it, but that's only because nobody knows who wrote it.


Chriss Sutherland - All The Little Horses (Live @ Tower of Song)

The songs have lasted that long without an owner and they'll last that long again. Partly because of traditions like The Tower of Song. There is a pure and driven need to rejoice, to get together and to collaborate on music. Music represents community and joy and revelry. There's no better excuse to commiserate or to celebrate, to weep into a bottle or to dance around a bonfire. To ache and to yearn and to breathe and to pity and to love and to gush... music fills all these primal urges.

At the Tower of Song, a fundamental, sublime urge is filled. At the Tower of Song, Nine bands come together. At the Tower of Song, a community rallies at the doorstep to listen. New songs, old songs and cover songs ring through the streets of Portland. Those at the Tower of Song thirsty for new noise leave filled with centuries of humanity.

At the Tower of Song, Portland comes together.