November 4 writeup on Oregon Live
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November 2 Story in The Portland Tribune
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October 31 Story on PDX Live
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Read the story in The Portland Mercury about Siren Nation!
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Listen to Interview on KBOO fm with Siren Nation performers Myshkin, (Myshkin's Ruby Warblers), and Sailor Banks, (aka Sugar ShortWave, Myskin's Ruby Warblers)!
www.kboo.fm/node/4301
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Read about Siren Nation in The Oregonian A& E
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Read the Just Out COVER STORY all about Siren Nation. Click to view the article online - or download the .pdf!
Story starts on page 22 - full schedule on p. 25!
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BREAKING NEWS:
Team Dresch Reunite to headline Siren Nation Festival!
The Gossip cancels performance.
On October 10, 2007 The Gossip sent Siren Nation an email via their manager stating their intent to cancel their contracted performance at Siren Nation in order to perform in Europe.
Siren Nation is honored the Iconic Portland Band Team Dresch has graciously offered to step in and perform in their place.
Team Dresch
In the early 1990’s Team Dresch was a part of a group of brainy, technically proficient bands like 66 Saints (later Parini ), Juned, Huggy Bear, the Lookers, Slant 6, Containe, and Ruby Falls that kept the focus on breaking new ground creatively and politically. No other artist exemplified that two-pronged attack as beautifully as Team Dresch, the four-piece from Portland who were essentially the Ramones of their time.
In 1994 the band dropped Personal Best, one of the finest debuts in punk-rock history; it sounds as potent today as it did when it was released jointly by Donna Dresch's Chainsaw Records 13 years ago (earlier pressings were jointly released by Chainsaw and Jody Bleyle's Candy-Ass Records ). This 24-minute hurricane of self-proclaimed "lesbionic punk rock" is a barely contained capsule of sleek pop hooks being mercilessly overdriven by the dual guitars of Dresch and Kaia Wilson and hammered heavenward by Marci Martinez's adrenalized drumming. The call-and-response vocals of Wilson and Bleyle (who also handled bass and occasional guitar duties) gave both political weight and fierce beauty to anthemic punk screeds "Fagetarian and Dyke" and "Hate the Christian Right!" while their sweeter solo moments on tracks like "She's Crushing My Mind" and "Growing up in Springfield" were both moving and mesmerizing. Recorded in a scant five days in Seattle (at producer John Goodmanson's shoebox-sized Fremont studio), Personal Best set the bar so damn high that the band faltered on their follow-up, 1996's Captain My Captain, and dissolved shortly thereafter. Dresch returned her attention to her label, releasing the first two records for Sleater-Kinney, a band clearly inspired by Team Dresch's trademark vocals and disciplined musicianship.
The Siren Nation Festival
Celebrating Women, Art, and Community
When: November 1-4, 2007
Where: Portland, Oregon
Featured performers include: Team Dresch, Mirah, Tracy Grammer, Alela Diane, Swallows, Liv Warfield, Siren’s Echo, Swan Island, Jamie Stillway, Ashleigh Flynn, Marisa Anderson, Sugar Shortwave, The Flat Mountain Girls, Myshkin’s Ruby Warblers and more.
For a schedule of festival events, times and venues please go to: www.sirennation.com
For more information on the Siren Nation Festival please contact Natalia Kay at info@sirennation.com or December Carson at december@sirennation.com - Visit us at: www.sirennation.com or www.myspace.com/sirennation
Click to Download the Siren Nation Festival 2007
Press Release
Need a High Rez Siren Nation Logo? Click one of the logos below to download:
Team Dresch
Swallows
Liv Warfield
Sugar ShortWave
Alela Diane
Myshkin's Ruby Warblers
Blübird
Swan Island
Mirah
Siren's Echo
Ashleigh Flynn
Tracy Grammer
Marisa Anderson
The Flat Mountain Girls
The Jamie Stillway Trio
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Music review: Ain't nobody's business if they sing like Billie Tribute - Female vocalists, each in her own way, honor the great jazz singer
Monday, March 26, 2007 by
LYNN DARROCH
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"I can't remember the first time I heard Billie Holiday; she was just always there," said jazz singer Tahoe Jackson Saturday at a Billie Holiday tribute at the Blue Monk.
Yes, the influence and inspiration of Holiday, whose rhythmic flair and distinctive phrasing have defined jazz singing since the 1930s, is that pervasive. And this showcase event, sponsored by the women's arts support group Siren Nation, offered the best kind of tribute. The singers addressed the tunes Holiday made famous, but performed them each in her own way.
Holiday showed that the essence of great American singing is a unique and highly musical approach that allows the vocalist to make a song completely her own. And though the seven duo and solo acts didn't always hit that high mark, in every case the spirit was willing.
Lisa Mann, with the acclaimed Janice Scroggins on piano, provided the most fully realized performance in a set that combined smooth swing with gravelly blues. The voice Holiday always wished for, however -- "I always wanted Bessie's big sound," she said, referring to blues pioneer Bessie Smith -- belonged to Jackson, with her rich lower register that rose from spoken lines to soulful shout.
Though Holiday never had Smith's voice, she made up for it with magical phrasing. Which is why the imaginative treatment of standards by the duo Felina, including a darkly minimal "Good Morning, Heartache," was appropriate and charming in its unpolished enthusiasm, as was Anne Adams' ironic version of "Pennies From Heaven."
Musical highlights were also provided by the authoritative Piedmont finger-picking guitar of Mary Flower, whose bluesy "Ain't Nobody's Business" also evoked Holiday's independent attitude. Alt-country singer Little Sue reminded listeners of the fragility in the young Holiday's voice with a delivery of "In My Solitude," made poignant by the thin edge of a country keen.
Amoree Lovell had the courage to attempt Holiday's anti-lynching ballad, "Strange Fruit," reminding us of her importance as a pioneering African American as well as female artist. One of the highest-paid jazz performers of her day, Holiday died in poverty at age 44.
The performance was a benefit for Siren Nation's Women's Arts and Music Festival, scheduled for November and intended to inspire and empower women and girls through art and education -- itself a fitting tribute to Holiday.
Lynn Darroch is a Portland writer. lynndarroch@yahoo.com
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Just Out :: December 2006
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The Weapon They Have Is Music
Siren Nation takes Portland women’s community to the next level
by Tony le Tigre
Portland’s very own women’s music festival is in the works. The project, dubbed Siren Nation, is moving toward fruition thanks to the work of co-founders Tamara J. Brown and Natalia Kay and has already taken on the look and feel of a full-on community event.
The project’s compilation disc features a stellar lineup including Virginia Lopez of the Mambo Queens, Kaia Wilson of The Butchies and Team Dresch, Stolen Sweets, Sugar Shortwave, The Gossip and Pink Martini. Voices from the Siren Nation, spun from Sarah Dougher’s Cherchez La Femme label, comes out Dec. 15 with a spectacular release party featuring performances by many of the contributors and an “all-girl mini-bike dance troupe” dubbed The Sprockettes.
The CD release, however, is only the first step toward the festival itself, slated for November 2007 at Crystal Ballroom and other venues. “We’re just starting to do booking,” Kay says. “In about a month we’ll know our headliners.”
Brown and Kay, business partners with their own company, Tough Titties Productions, conceived the festival during a dinner conversation that took place in the summer of 2005. They then hooked up with December Carson, head of the Siren Music booking company, and the three of them formed the core of the developing project.
Kay—a self-described dyke who is “not afraid of the F word” (feminist)—met Dougher while booking music for Mississippi Pizza Pub. “I approached her because she was involved with Lady Fest, and she suggested her label sponsor the CD.”
Dougher recalls: “I asked, ‘Why isn’t it Lady Fest?’ And they said, ‘We wanted to reconfigure it for Portland.’ ” She adds, “Lady Fest has never been super high on diversity.”
Siren Nation is not the first women’s music festival to come out of the Rose City—there was a short-lived predecessor called the Daisy Chain Music Fair in 2001—but based on the sheer lineup of talent and local names involved, all signs point to its potential as a major new hub of Portland’s diverse women’s community. Kay promises the fest will encompass “a broad range of music including, but not limited to, punk, indie, folk, electronica, hip-hop, jazz, Americana, old-time and bluegrass.”
“Diversity is the key to the success of the festival,” Kay adds. “Siren Nation will reflect the reality that women are playing all different kinds of music.”
The festival’s main fiscal sponsor is In Other Words, a nonprofit women’s bookstore in North Portland. “I think it’s going to be sort of like the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival but with an indie, queer, DIY sensibility that reflects Portland,” co-manager Rebecca Luxenberg says. “I think of [Michigan] as a staunchly second-wave, feminist, lesbian, goddess event, but Siren Nation is part of the third wave of feminism, and it’s different.”
Brown agrees. “We’re looking for a very urban setting, rather than sitting around naked in the countryside,” she laughs. “Not that I have anything against that.”
In addition to music, Siren Nation will include film, performance art and a marketplace geared toward local women-owned businesses and nonprofits that will help raise money to put back into the festival. “We’re looking to create partnerships within the community, offer services to women and girls, support women-owned businesses and make sponsorships,” says Kay. “We really want to do it up.”
Dougher says the festival will provide a valuable portal into the local women’s rock community. “Even though Portland is known for its support of women rockers, there aren’t so many systems where people can get enfranchised,” she says. “As someone who runs a label and is devoted to women and queer people, this is a really great opportunity for me to support my people and the infrastructure of music-making.”
Another notable local involved with the festival is Marie Fleischmann, proprietor of See Jane Run Productions. An advisory board member and consultant for Siren Nation, she is organizing a “really big pancake breakfast” slated for Jan. 14, 2007.
“It’s great to see how much community support we’ve had,” Fleischmann says. “We’re glad to provide something the community has been asking for for a long time.”
Far from a one-shot event, Siren Nation is envisioned as an ongoing annual festival that might even eventually expand beyond the borders of Portland. Kay hasn’t ruled out the possibility of touring.
“I’m open to being successful,” she says.
Holocene celebrates the release of Voices from the Siren Nation 9 p.m. Dec. 15 at 1001 S.E. Morrison St. Cover is $8. For more information visit www.sirennation.com.
Tony le Tigre is an artist, writer, student, fledgling publisher and brazen male hussy. E-mail him at anthonylockwood@gmail.com.