May

2

Weinland

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Weinland

Weinland

Weinland gets both the Most Public-Spirited and the Cutest Best Friend of the Portland folk community yearbook.  They’re honest, they have a strong sense of community, all five of them “avid” chess players, and they always have good things to say.  The band emerged from the jamming sessions that Adam Shearer, a singer and song-writer who went by the name John Weinland, and his friend Aaron Pomerantz shared with kids at a mental health facility for at-risk youth.  These sessions were too much of a good thing for Shearer’s buddies to pass by.  Rory Brown brought in a bass – Ian Lyles added drums – Paul Christensen played the keyboard – and John Weinland became the quintet Weinland.  “Other than that, there are a lot of rotating cast,” Weinland explains, “We are tight with our Portland music scene pals.”  The result is an  airy batch of folk that smells like a walk through a pine forest – it’s woodsy but light, it very likely favors flannel, and it’s quite companionable for your own Saturday afternoon listening-pleasure.  “Our primary aim is to make records that are timeless, that you creep up on you, and in the end stay with you for the rest of your life.”  

Their own regular folk rigmarole is often joined by friends like Laura Gibson, Adam Selzer (Norfolk and Western, M.Ward) and Rachel Blumberg of the Decemberists, M. Ward, Bright Eyes and Julie Holland.  In a good neighborly exchange, Weinland hosts The Portland Cello Project – a commune for the gifted cello junkies of Portland.  Weinland recounts fondly that “after many nights watching Adam drink whisky and interact with the audience [Doug, the founder of the PCP] thought, ‘this is what PCP needs… a saucy front man!’”

“Portland has a good thing going right now, not just based on the number of musicians and artists that live here, but the spirit of growth and the willingness of everyone to be helpful to one another.  We have experienced so much support and friendship from fellow Portlanders [that] we couldn’t imagine trying to do this anywhere else.”  The glitz of the Portland scene is more than on the surface.  

WEINLAND – playing Moscow Saturday, 2nd May 2009, 8.00 pm at Mikey’s Gyros. 

Thanks to Pomerantz and Lyles for tag-teaming as Weinland spokesmen – they say that they are excited to come to Moscow, which should warm your heart.

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