The Cedar Presents
ROSE CITY BAND with El Khat
Sunday, September 15, 2024/ Doors: 7:00 PM / Show: 7:30 PM
All Ages
Standing
$20 Advance, $25 Day of Show
This is a standing show with an open floor. To request seating or other access accommodations, please go to our Access Page.
For Cedar presented shows, online ticket sales typically end one hour before the door time, and then, based on availability, tickets will be available at the door.
LISTEN
ABOUT THIS SHOW
The Cedar welcomes Rose City Band, a self-described cosmic Americana project. A mellow and textural cosmic country jam band led by Ripley Johnson, who is also the founder of Wooden Shijps and member of Moon Duo.
“Slow Burn” by Rose City Band - (official music video by Mickey Miles) Video courtesy of Rose City Bands Official YouTube Channel.
ROSE CITY BAND
Rose City Band’s country psychedelic rock evokes the wide-open spaces of the American west and free spirits who call it home. The project of acclaimed guitarist and vocalist Ripley Johnson, Rose City Band has extended beyond the studio and lives in tandem as a live ensemble featuring some of the finest players in contemporary rock: pedal steel guitarist Barry Walker, keyboardist Paul Hasenberg, bassist Dewey Mahood (aka Plankton Wat) and drummer Dustin Dybvig. Their latest album, Garden Party (Thrill Jockey, April 2023) is a celebration of summer and all it brings: communal gatherings, the respites offered by nature, and an appreciation for even the simplest beauty, from 12-foot sunflowers to a contorted carrot planted in the spring. Freedom, contentment, and joy were the sources for the songs. From the soaring guitar solos, to the driving rhythms, the elegant pedal steel lines to the organ grooves, Garden Party has a live band’s energy captured in exquisite detail.
At its inception Rose City Band focused on what songwriter Johnson calls “porch music”. Recorded largely at Center for Sound, Light, and Color Therapy in Portland and mixed by John McEntire, Garden Party features guest appearances by Moon Duo bandmates John Jeffrey on drums and Sanae Yamada on synths, as well as Rose City Band live performers Hasenberg on keyboards and Walker on pedal steel. With the musicians in his life in mind, Ripley’s porch has opened up for each player to step into. Despite being tracked primarily as a solo endeavor the recordings capture the twists and bends of a fully realized ensemble, and in a nod to bands such as the Grateful Dead it doesn’t stop there. “The songs won’t really be finished until we play them on the road,” says Johnson.
Like all great music, Garden Party taps into the listener's emotional center and takes them to their happy place – their sunny spot. The album is an invitation to recalibrate, a joyous ride where the band’s sounds surround and embrace you. Ripley says it best: “I always like when an album starts in one place, and ends in another.” What a beautiful journey it is.
To learn more about the Rose City Band:
EL KHAT
Back in 2019, El Khat began to hone their sound in garages and warehouses. Experimenting with DIY homemade instruments, as an expression of a minimalist life philosophy, led the trio to create a collection of Arabic tunes of Yemeni origin. While the detachment from any nation or any flag is a driving force behind the group, the heart of their music and heritage is rooted in the culture of Yemen. The constant divisions that have been created by wars and immigrations has pushed out a reassembled identity, something that is strongly felt in El Khat's music. With two albums behind them and a third to be released in autumn 2024, El Khat is constantly in motion as they share their art globally."El Khat make joyful clatter...everything is recycled metal, plastic or wood, all coming together in a funeral march that sounds like a huge, disgruntled animal shaking itself into life." -- The Financial Times.
El Khat’s 3rd album mute belies its title as it careens out of the speakers with a raucous intensity. Mute. As a noun, it means refraining from speech, a device placed over the bridge of a stringed instrument, or something that temporarily turns off sound. As a verb, to mute is to deaden, muffle, or soften sound. Muting is the opposite of openness and communication and for Eyal el Wahab, the man behind El Khat, it’s a vital word, one which he’s chosen very carefully for the title of the band’s third album.
“Every distance between two people is an opportunity for conflict. Two of anything creates sides and sides create conflict. In such cases, there will be muting,” el Wahab explains. Mute is an album that explores distance, speech - and the lack of it. It’s a series of musings on people, places - and leaving. The record began life with the core of El Khat – multi-instrumentalist el Wahab, percussionist Lotan Yaish and organist Yefet Hasan – recording in an isolated village underground shelter. “My state of mind at the time affected the compositions even before I wrote the music,” el Wahab notes, “and the isolated location gave us a chance to make sense of that.” Following those sessions, in the summer of 2023 the group emigrated to Berlin; a far cry from Jaffa, where they’d largely grown up. The move was an expression of the nomadic urge that has been a constant in el Wahab’s life, one that flows directly into his work.“These songs are about emigrating, leaving someone or somewhere. I don’t think I’ve stayed in any one place for more than a year. For us Arab Jews whose families were forced to leave Yemen, it really began with that big move and our families’ arrival in Israel, a land with a constant muting of the ‘other’.” Mute, he feels, is “a big and meaningful record.” It’s a story of endings and new beginnings. “But that’s true of all our albums” el Wahab insists. “They’re about relationships and the struggle to see two sides as a whole and not something that ends with muting and conflict. The songs here are about old loves, country, family. They are about feelings and identity.”
El Wahab keeps reinventing himself: even his career has been an act of self-invention. Unable to read music, he still managed to talk his way into the Andalusian Orchestra, playing cello by ear until he learned music theory and instruments he uses on his albums, like the blue gallon (actually a jug) or the kubana (named after a type of Yemeni bread) are also self-invented. These handmade, one-of-a-kind instruments sit at the heart of mute. He’s always made music from the items others discard. Everything is recycled and reused, and nothing is wasted. This same minimalist spirit echoes in El Khat’s melodies.
To learn more about the El Khat:
