It’s 1 pm on America’s infamous Valentine holiday. While desperate boyfriends and husbands rush the phone lines of a popular downtown restaurant, fruitlessly begging for a last minute reservation, I am packing up my equipment and preparing to leave for my next assignment.  Forgetting about the holiday, I double booked myself to shoot throughout it. Mapquesting “Good Harvest Bread Company” via phone, I give an empathetical wave to the hostess and head out the massive metal doors.

My next stop is the recording studio of Charlie Smith, local recording engineer and newest member of Throw Me the Statue. There I will meet TMTS frontman Scott Reitherman who has agreed to let me sit in on one of their recording sessions for their upcoming sophomore album.

The unassuming glass door serving as entrance to the space sits quietly to the west of the Ballard bakery. Set back from the sidewalk, I pass it many times before noticing the small Xeroxed sign reading “Charlie Smith Music” tapped to the window panel.

Walking down a steep stairway, I follow similar signs through the long white maze of hallways underground.  Curious creative spaces peak around open doors and sounds exchange in and out from one doorway to the next. As Smith’s space nears, the hall grows silent, with exception to a faint and intermittent fluttering of a flute coming from behind the closed door.

Inside, Reitherman and Smith are fine-tuning a phrase of music being played by TMTS’s flutist, Galen …

It’s a Friday night in mid-January and my camera and I are driving to Tacoma. Making my way from the metropolitan Seattle skyline and further into the southern point of Puget Sound I acknowledge the distance with the growing static in my radio transmission. As the clarity of KUOW’s coverage on the upcoming inauguration begins to fade, the highway signs count down the distance to my destination.

Settling on the local top 40 station, I pull off highway 16 and onto Sprague Avenue. I’m heading to the house of Mike Cooper, singer and songwriter of Canon Canyon. The band having recently caught the ear of my editor at Sound, I am assigned to shoot the duo as it prepares for its Saturday performance at New Frontier, a newer venue just outside of the Tacoma Dome.

My plan this Friday night is to meet up with Cooper, aka Coop, at his place, drop off my equipment, then head to a party some of his friends are throwing. The party is a benefit show for local record label Dear Records and is being held in the house that also serves as their headquarters.

Afterwards I will crash on the bachelor’s couch and spend the majority of tomorrow getting to know my host.

When I pull to a stop near 10th and South Ferry Street, Coop steps out of a surprisingly large white Ford pickup truck. Even in the dark I take notice to the U.S. Army sticker on the …

It is Wednesday afternoon in Phinney Ridge, and the span of city blocks serving as perimeter to the Woodland Park Zoo is crawling with concert-goers and their evolved versions of lawn chairs. Each of the four main entrances to the Zoo has developed a healthy line behind its large sign reading “Tonight’s Show is Sold Out.” Near the Will Call line, a teenage volunteer looks on to the growing numbers of patient fans and suggests to his comrade “maybe the zoo will go crazy this time, with a huge mosh pit or something…”

A man in the line at Will Call looks to the stranger next to him and replies, “He obviously hasn’t listened to Andrew Bird.” Everyone within earshot laughs. Kids.

Inside the barriers of zoo helpers and food stands, a calm and empty lawn awaits. While Josh Ritter wraps up his sound check, a young man stands up from his lone perch in the front row and is introduced to the folk singer. After shaking hands with Ritter, the youth says that he just happened upon an opportunity to let himself in, bypassing the large and abundant lines outside. Not prepared for his bit of luck, he finds himself resorting to sticks and rocks to stake out his piece of the lawn for those of his friends who were not so lucky.

5pm and the gates have opened, a fact made obvious by the hundreds of men and women stampeding to the front of the …

“It’s like musical theater!” proclaims the woman next to me as the lights of the Triple Door go up. The show is over and Peter Morén has just left the stage, sauntering up the main isle through the applauding audience.

His decision for this exit style (versus disappearing into the safety of the backstage) is not the Swedish musician’s first act of bravery.

The show began with the lovely vocals of Dawn Landes, an energetic songwriter reminiscent of a female country star of the 1960s. With a boyish, if not masculine sense of tempo her music has an intriguing grit to it, despite her feminine tone and white cowboy boots. The androgyny is pleasing and lends particularly well to the Tom Waits cover she closes on.

Tobias Froberg, a supporting member of Morén’s band, follows Landes with his collection of originals. Setting a new mood for the evening with a theatrically dry and unsuspecting humor, Froberg has an interesting vocal presence of his own.

“This is a fantastic song I wrote.” He says straight-faced to the audience. Then he looks to his drummer with his adorable and apathetic Swedish accent. “Don’t fuck it up now, Doug.”

Although his musical styling is a bit more dissonant than I am prepared to enjoy, I fall in love with Froberg’s performance. Thanks mostly to his cunning wit and fearless testament to his own talent, I actually begin to believe my poor reaction to his music is, in fact, a direct result of my own ignorance.
“I …