Live From Yakima!

Live From Yakima!

By Heather Caro

 

Yakima’s array of downtown venues has brought with it a new mix to the local music scene.  From bluegrass to blues, opera to oldies, there is a tune for every taste. Here are a few that we think are definitely worth the cover charge.

Cody Beebe and the Crooks

With two solo albums already under his belt, Selah native Cody Beebe is no stranger to the stage. He and his band, Cody Beebe and the Crooks, combine a melting pot of sounds and styles including blues, rock, folk and jazz to create their “Americana” voice.  Whatever the billing, there is lots to love about the catchy, energetic acoustics they bring to the stage.

“We are all upstanding citizens and college graduates,” says Beebe of the band’s criminally-inspired moniker (Beebe holds a civil engineering degree).  “So the ‘Crooks’ only implies that we steal hearts I guess,” he adds with a grin.

 

 

 

 

With a new album set for release this spring (recorded at London Bridge Studios – of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden fame) and an upcoming Northwest tour, Cody Beebe and the Crooks will likely be stealing hearts for many years to come.

Hear It: Cody Beebe and the Crooks play venues ranging from Lower Valley Wineries to sold-out clubs in Seattle; they have even opened for Grammy-nominated rapper Afroman.  They swing through the Yakima area every couple of months – watch for them at Sportcenter, Sage Restaurant and Gilbert Cellars.

www.myspace.com/codybeebe

Wayman Chapman

Between wailing guitar licks and a voice like melting butter, Wayman Chapman has been a fixture of the local music scene for years.  And while Chapman’s soulful blend of R&B, jazz and funk has taken him around the world, playing and recording with such notables as Oleta Adams and the late Larry Knechtel (of Bread fame), the Yakima native never strays long from the Valley where he first put down his musical roots.

“We play all over the place, depending on the crowd,” laughs Chapman of his varied playlist, which includes everything from the blues to Sinatra covers.  “I do what I like to call a ‘grown-folks night,’ where people can still come to dance and just have a good time.

Hear It: Wayman Chapman frequents locales throughout the Northwest, but when at home he hangs his hat at Yakima’s Speakeasy and Santiago’s.

www.waymanchapman.com

Coyote Ridge Bluegrass Band

Though only performing together for about two years, members of this Yakima band are well versed in their medium, and Coyote Ridge Bluegrass Band has already developed a loyal following.  Playing traditional, gospel and progressive bluegrass music with a big ol’ helping of down-home southern charm, Coyote Ridge entertains and captivates audiences of all ages.

“People often blow off bluegrass as too country or hillbilly,” says John Young, who plays mandolin and emcees for the band with a self-proclaimed “front porch kinda ease.”   “But,” he continues, “as folks listen to us, they quickly find that the acoustic is demanding, intricate and complex behind the Hee-Haw curtain.”

Hear It: The band’s rambunctious music is a house favorite at Gilbert Cellars in Yakima, but you can also find Coyote Ridge Bluegrass Band playing Northwest hometown celebrations such as the Zillah Bluegrass Festival and the Whistlestop Music Festival in Toppenish.

www.coyoteridgebluegrasswranglers.com

 

 

 

 

Star Anna & the Laughing Dogs

With a distinctive voice at once world-weary, impassioned and gritty, Star Anna and her band the Laughing Dogs will simultaneously break your heart and bring you back for more.

They’ve gathered acclaim for albums (The Only Thing That Matters was released in 2009) and performances from critics including National Public Radio and Sound magazine.  But in spite of the (much-deserved) attention, Ellensburg native Star Anna has managed to stay sweetly authentic with a sound that’s true to her rural upbringing.

“Growing up in the country and being surrounded by hills and fields and big sky, stars and stuff,” Star Anna once said in an interview with San Diego News Network, ”I think it has a lot of influence on me.”

Hear It: Though Star Anna and her band regularly play Ellensburg and Seattle venues – we think it’s worth the drive to see them perform live – watch the Sportscenter stage for scheduled appearances.

staranna.com

Buzz Bands:  Up-and-coming groups to keep on your musical radar

 

 

 

 

Short Bus Bobby

Rowdy and rambunctious with a know-it-by-heart ‘70s rock n’ roll playlist, a show by Short Bus Bobby is always a good time.  The dark-shades-donning members of the band include upstanding locals Randy Hyatt, Phil Luther and father-son duo Chad and Pat Peterson. The band plays “a gig a month” at venues around Yakima and has developed a strong Short Bus fan base. Get on the bus!  Watch for Short Bus Bobby at Sportscenter as well as local festivals throughout the Valley.

Adrienne Bousquet

Performing sultry jazz and crooning covers of Frank Sinatra, Etta James and Dinah Washington, among other classic greats, this blond bombshell is an “old soul” (though not yet out of her teen years).  Bousquet, a Prosser native, performs at Yakima’s Sage Restaurant as well as other local venues when she’s not away at college.

http://www.myspace.com/adriennebousquet

Kyle Smeback

Singer/songwriter Kyle Smeback’s breezy acoustic style is a breath of fresh air to the local music scene.  Catchy guitar riffs and rich vocals blend to create a sound both unique and yet comfortably familiar.  Smeback can be heard regularly at venues around Yakima, including Sage Restaurant and Gilbert Cellars.

http://www.myspace.com/kylesmeback

Culture Club:  Broaden your musical horizons

Juan Barco

Born in Texas, Juan Barco spent his youth working as a migrant worker and learning the art of Tejano music.

After settling in the Lower Yakima Valley, Barco went on to receive his Masters Degree in Social Work from the University of Washington, but he also continued to play music in conjunto bands.  Barco’s band was among the few selected to play at the opening of Benaroya Hall in Seattle.  His was also the first to play Tejano music at the Seattle Center Experience Music Project, where his work was featured in the “American Sabor” Tejano music section, and is slated for viewing at Washington, D.C.’s, Smithsonian in 2011.  Today Barco plays primarily in the Seattle area, though he also tours local school districts teaching the importance of education and maintaining a rich cultural heritage.

www.juanmanuelbarco.com

Yakima Valley Light Opera Company

This newly-formed local musical troupe is raising quite the stir – and an encore or two – with their lively renditions of popular arias such as selections from “La Boheme” and “Carmen.”  And though performances are often sung in German, French or Italian, you don’t have to be an opera buff to enjoy the show.  Watch for the troupe at Seasons Performance Hall and Greystone.  Brava!

 

 

Closing the Loop: An Unconventional Journey

Closing the Loop:  An Unconventional Journey

By Heather Caro

BJ Wolf is not a stereotypical knitter. You might picture a grandmother fashioning a two-sizes-too-small sweater.  Or a young mother carefully crafting booties for her infant.  But whatever you might imagine of the typical knitter, it is probably not the six-foot, outdoorsy persona of BJ Wolf.

But then again, Wolf is anything but typical.

Dressed in athletic pants and an REI pullover, Wolf, 46, looks more likely to be lugging a mountain bike than a Tupperware tub overflowing with perfectly knitted scarves.  Fidgeting in his favorite chair at Northtown Coffee House, Wolf is a constant blur of motion as he excitedly describes the transition from creating knits for family and friends, to what is now a business endeavor.

Seemingly unaware of the curious eyes peeking from around newspapers, Wolf begins extracting lengths of colorful knits. There are classic scarves and modern loops, designed to be wrapped around the wearer’s neck.  There’s even a Nordic-style hat that can be made into a neck warmer with the release of a drawstring – custom made for a snowmobiler with a habit of losing hats while warming up at the lodge.  “It’s sort of urban old-country with an outdoor influence,” Wolf says of his functional designs. “Everything I make I want people to be able to wear in everyday life.”

Wolf came by his characteristic “old country” designs honestly, having learned the art of knitting from his Scottish grandmother, Annie Kemp, or “Nannie,” by the age of 4.  “As young as I can remember I was drinking tea, eating shortbread and knitting,” grins Wolf. “It was probably her way of getting me to sit still.”

Thick woolen sweaters and scarves were a staple in Wolf’s family, as he recalls his visits to Nannie’s hometown of Troon, a coastal fishing village in Scotland.  He describes Troon as quaint, and yet “cold, wet and miserable.”

“The windows are painted open over centuries because they believe in the fresh air,” says Wolf.  “The best way to warm up is by wearing knitted stuff.”

Nannie’s lessons stuck, and Wolf continued knitting into adulthood. “I don’t like to stay in one place very long, so it’s good for when I’m watching movies, baseball games, whatever,” says Wolf.

Knitting became a way to fill downtime when Wolf joined the Army in his late teens. “I wanted to travel, to see the world,” says Wolf.  The military allowed him to do just that.Wolf’s military career encompassed the next 10 years of his life.  Wolf thrived in the high-stress atmosphere of a special-ops unit where he cross-trained as a medic, but it eventually became all-consuming. “The travel culture wears (on you) after a while,” says Wolf.

When it was time to move on from his military career, Wolf decided to enter the medical field. Working at both local Yakima hospitals, he used skills learned in the Army to memorize each physician’s preferences for medical equipment and eventually helped create a new “procedure specialist” position for himself. In the hospital setting, Wolf once again found a fast-paced, high-intensity atmosphere that complemented his personality.  There, he worked long stretches of time without taking a day off, sometimes for months on end.“I’m a bit of a workaholic,” Wolf admits sheepishly.  The grueling schedule and demands he placed on himself predictably led to burnout and so he decided to switch gears and left the medical field last year.

“In the Army and at the hospital, people counted on me to be there when they needed me.  I’m a pro at that to a fault.  I put everything and everyone ahead of myself,” says Wolf. “But for health and everything else, I needed to rest and relax – I could feel it,” he continues. “I don’t want to work myself to death or illness. I need to take care of me and still find a way to be productive.”

“I’m recharging,” Wolf says with a shrug as he describes how his quest to find equilibrium led him back to the unconventional hobby of knitting.  Though Nannie passed away nearly 10 years ago at the age of 86, it is through her long-ago lessons that Wolf may have finally found a way to balance work with relaxation.

“When you enjoy something, you take comfort in it,” says Wolf. “That’s what knitting is to me.” And for now at least, Wolf seems content to channel his seemingly boundless energy into creativity, as he plans his next ventures with knitting needles in hand.

Under the name BJ Wolf’s Mercantile, Wolf’s collection of knits includes scarves, hats, fingerless gloves, cowls and loops ranging in price from $35-$175.  Many of the knits are his own design and though each piece echoes his Scottish roots, Wolf finds inspiration in the Yakima Valley as well.  Knits on his Web site have names like “The Tieton” and “The Brownstown.”  Wolf says he also chooses color combinations based on the natural color palette in the Valley.  “I want to put some of where I live into what I do.”

Today, Wolf spends his days doing what he loves: networking with friends and family and retailing his knits on his website and places like Yakima’s Wild Lucy’s.

“I gather ideas from wherever I go,” says Wolf, “and I’ve been around a little bit.”

For more information, go online to www.bjwolfmercantile.etsy.com or email him at bjwolfmerc@gmail.com.

Denise Risley

The bustling ICU is alive with alarms, blaring lights and myriad staff rushing to perform their own tasks when Denise Risley, 30, an intensive care nurse at Yakima Regional Medical and Cardiac Center, keys her pass code into the locking doors.  Standing a slight 5 foot 2 inches tall with copper highlights and dark-rimmed glasses, Risley calmly navigates the chaos to a kitchenette, an oversized bundle wrapped in surgical drapes balanced in her hands.

Her entrance draws a small crowd of onlookers as the baby blue papers are drawn back to reveal the glossy modern painting that is Risley’s latest creation.  Textural elements such as glass and metal fill the piece, contrasting painted neutrals with a singular shock of red.  This particular painting is slated for the home of a prominent neurosurgeon in the valley, his name the latest addition to a rapidly expanding list of patrons who have commissioned Risley’s distinctive art.

“My work is sort of random and abstract,” Risley, a Yakima resident, says with a laugh, as she lists the recycled elements she routinely incorporates into her work.  Everything from EKG papers to sawdust, unused sterile packaging from medical procedures to tiny shards of glass from the time her 11-year-old used a slingshot to fling an ink pen through their sliding glass door.  Risley has enlisted co-workers in her search for unusual materials as well, bringing back colored sand from vacation spots around the world.  Pieces such as these are combined with color and other materials to create a look at once modern and uniquely classic.

“Sometimes people want to know what their artwork will look like (before it is completed), but I never know until it’s done,” shrugs Risley.  “I just add and take away until I like how it looks.”  Her patrons must like what they see as well, since Risley, who custom creates each piece after visiting where it will be hung, has more requests than she is able to fulfill.

Risley’s art sprang – as is often the case – from hardship.  Life has not always been rosy for the busy mother of three.  Two years ago, all that was normal came to a grinding halt when her 3-year-old son, Seth, was sent to the hospital for an appendectomy following abdominal pain.  The surgery went well; however, Seth’s blood pressure was abnormally high afterward.  Further testing found a 1 1/2 lb., grapefruit-size-tumor on Seth’s left kidney.  Risley rushed Seth to Children’s Hospital in Seattle, where he was diagnosed with Wilm’s Tumor, a treatable form of kidney cancer.  The tumor and Seth’s entire left kidney were removed immediately, and he began more than six months of chemotherapy.

Though Seth began to recover physically, the surgery and subsequent treatment left him reserved and withdrawn, not the spirited 3-year-old he was before his diagnosis. Unable to walk due to an epidural for pain control, Seth was confined to bed or a red wagon that his parents pulled him in as they walked the hospital grounds.

In an effort to help her son play again, Denise began art therapy with Seth while still in the hospital.  “We had to find things to do with him that didn’t require walking,” says Risley.  Gathering art supplies from the staff at Children’s Hospital, Risley and the staff held up paper for her son and helped him paint.  Framed paintings created by the two during Seth’s hospitalization still hang in their home as a reminder of time spent together there.

As they returned home to begin Seth’s recovery, Risley, without the aid of formal art education, continued painting in part for her own benefit.  “I didn’t have any control over what happened to Seth,” says Risley. “I needed to be able to do something (I could control).”  But what brought Risley’s artwork from personal hobby to a blossoming talent was the chance showing of a piece she had created as a housewarming gift for a group of co-workers.  When her co-workers found out the work was an original and not able to be purchased in a store, a tongue-in-cheek bidding war began.  That afternoon began her journey to a passion and a secondary income that today allows Risley to spend more time at home with her family.

Risley’s artwork has been commissioned by professional offices including The Yakima Valley Youth and Family Coalition and Yakima Neurosurgery Associates, as well as the homes and private offices of prominent colleagues and co-workers from the community.  Yakima Chest Clinic features a painting in its remodeled patient waiting room to celebrate its recent name change to the Lung and Asthma Center of Central Washington. Outside the medical community, her work can be found displayed downtown at Tim’s Downtown Tasting Room.  And during her first showing at Allied Arts Center’s Juried Art Exhibit in July, Denise brought home the Delma Tayor Artist’s Award.  Not a bad resume considering Risley has been showing and commissioning her artwork publicly for less than two years.

Today, Seth’s cancer is in remission and, says Risley, to watch him play there is little indication that just two years ago his health had been in such jeopardy.  Risley’s return to work came with a greater appreciation of her children and a promising career unfolding from a difficult time in her family history.  Her paintings, with found objects from her life incorporated within each design, are a little like Risley herself:  bold and exceptional with an ability to transform what was once broken into a work of art.