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Nathan Weinbender

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All Stories

A&E >  Entertainment

Billy stays busy

Will Oldham records so often and collaborates with so many other musicians that he starts to lose track of his newest material as he’s listing it off: There’s the tribute to British folk singer Shirley Collins, his work with Chicago electronic duo Bitchin’ Bajas, records with the Cairo Gang, Trembling Bells and the Everly Brothers cover album with singer-songwriter Dawn McCarthy . “Then I’ve been writing a song with a couple of guys here in Louisville,” he continues. “I guess the days are full enough that I’m just trying to remember back to …” He trails off for a moment, then: “Oh yeah, and I made a record this year. It doesn’t come out till September, though. That seems like a million years away.”
A&E >  Entertainment

Play shows poet’s darker side

Although Shel Silverstein is best known today for his whimsical picture books and best-selling anthologies of children’s poetry (“Where the Sidewalk Ends,” “A Light in the Attic”), he was just as prolific a satirist, cartoonist and songwriter. Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris and Peter, Paul and Mary all recorded Silverstein originals. Much of Silverstein’s non-kid lit work is gleefully dark and surprisingly bawdy. I still remember getting my hands on a copy of his “Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book” as a child and ignoring the warning that it was for “adults only.” Most of the jokes sailed over my head, but I recall being taken aback by how inappropriate it all seemed, thinking, “Shel ‘The Giving Tree’ Silverstein wrote this?”
A&E >  Entertainment

Longevity marks Camaros’ success

A lot has changed since the Camaros played their first show at the Baby Bar in December 2008. Back then, they almost exclusively covered songs by L.A. punk legends X, copying the band’s fast, furious playing style and back-and-forth guy-girl vocals, and they were content to play for free beer and burritos. Countless shows and two albums of original songs later, the Camaros are one of the most popular and enduring live acts in Spokane. Since ’08, local venues have opened and closed and bands have formed and broken up, but the Camaros are still around when the dust settles.
A&E >  Entertainment

Robinson focuses on growth

Upon first listen, it’s easy to classify the music of Rich Robinson. Much like the output of his band The Black Crowes, it’s rollicking roots rock with some Southern influences, a little folk and the occasional banjo melody that flirts with bluegrass. The more time you spend with the songs, however, elements of country and blues start bubbling up to the surface. It’s the very definition of Americana. While traveling on a tour that brings him to Spokane on Wednesday, Robinson explained that he’s careful not to let the conventions of specific genres shackle him artistically: He goes into the studio, and what comes out is what goes on the record. Whatever influences might reveal themselves on a given track, it’s rock ’n’ roll through and through.
A&E >  Entertainment

Rogue Wave heads MarmotFest

The KYRS Music Fest is returning again this year, but with a catchier name: MarmotFest. Like last year, the festival will bring live music and family activities to the picturesque Glover Field in Peaceful Valley, and everything – from the sound system to the stage lights – will be entirely solar powered. Even the food trucks and beer garden are environmentally conscious, and the festival provides a bike corral for those who choose to pedal down. (See Page C15 for more on the festival’s kid-friendly activities.)
News >  Features

4000 Holes celebrating 25 years in Spokane

Everywhere you turn in 4000 Holes, the Beatles are grinning back at you – from posters hanging around the store, cardboard cutouts in the corner, vintage memorabilia behind the counter, a Fab Four clock shaped like a gold record on the wall. It seems perfectly appropriate, since the store basically owes its genesis to John, Paul, George and Ringo. Bob Gallagher, the longtime owner of the Spokane record store, says he became obsessed with the Beatles sometime in the ’70s, and in his quest to get his hands on anything and everything related to the band, he fell unassumingly into the record business.
A&E >  Entertainment

Rogue Wave heads MarmotFest

The KYRS Music Fest is returning again this year, but with a catchier name: MarmotFest. Like last year, the festival will bring live music and family activities to the picturesque Glover Field in Peaceful Valley, and everything – from the sound system to the stage lights – will be entirely solar powered. Even the food trucks and beer garden are environmentally conscious, and the festival provides a bike corral for those who choose to pedal down. (See Page C15 for more on the festival’s kid-friendly activities.)
A&E >  Entertainment

Tradition of originality

It’s been the thrust of countless conversations for months now: This year marks the 40th anniversary of Expo ’74 in Spokane. But it’s also very close to the 40th anniversary of another regional institution, the Spokane Jazz Orchestra, which was founded as a nonprofit arts organization in 1975 and is the oldest community-supported big band in America, said conductor Tom Molter.
News >  Features

Hard to miss Tambourine Man at clubs and shows

Michael Ransford opens a cupboard in his kitchen and pulls out a box that jangles when it’s moved. From the box he removes a canvas bag, emblazoned with the logo and autographs of Seattle Americana band Cody Beebe and the Crooks, and the jangling intensifies. He starts removing one tambourine after another from the bag, each one a different shape and circumference, some made of plastic and others wood, until there are nine forming a circle around him on the floor. Most of the tambourines have been reinforced with tape and nails, and each one has magic marker arrows drawn around the inside rim to denote which side to strike.
A&E >  Entertainment

Just don’t ask them about the SATs

Most of the stories that have been written about California band Cherry Glazerr in the last year get hung up on the fact that two of its three members – vocalist and guitarist Clementine Creevy and drummer Hannah Uribe – are still in high school. “I’m sort of worried about people taking pity, like, ‘They’re really good for being 17,’ ” Creevy said. “I’d rather talk about how I came up with a particular riff, or Hannah’s favorite drum kit or whatever. I’m sort of dreading it when walking into an interview. It’s like, ‘Here we go. They’re going to ask how old we are, and then we’re going to have to talk about the SATs.’ They love that, and I don’t know why.”
A&E >  Entertainment

Taking ‘Happy’ to heart

Playwright Robert Caisley recalls participating in a playwrights’ workshop at London’s Royal Court Theater led by Harold Pinter, and one of the students asked whether Pinter’s new play, which had just premiered on the West End, was a comedy or a drama. “All my plays are comedies,” Pinter responded, “until they stop being comedies.”
A&E >  Entertainment

Just don’t ask them about the SATs

Most of the stories that have been written about California band Cherry Glazerr in the last year get hung up on the fact that two of its three members – vocalist and guitarist Clementine Creevy and drummer Hannah Uribe – are still in high school. “I’m sort of worried about people taking pity, like, ‘They’re really good for being 17,’ ” Creevy said. “I’d rather talk about how I came up with a particular riff, or Hannah’s favorite drum kit or whatever. I’m sort of dreading it when walking into an interview. It’s like, ‘Here we go. They’re going to ask how old we are, and then we’re going to have to talk about the SATs.’ They love that, and I don’t know why.”
A&E >  Entertainment

Taking ‘Happy’ to heart

Playwright Robert Caisley recalls participating in a playwrights’ workshop at London’s Royal Court Theater led by Harold Pinter, and one of the students asked whether Pinter’s new play, which had just premiered on the West End, was a comedy or a drama. “All my plays are comedies,” Pinter responded, “until they stop being comedies.”
A&E >  Entertainment

Buyers’ market

On a drizzly Tuesday afternoon, there’s hardly any foot traffic down the 200 block of North Wall Street. On Saturday, though, the street is going to be packed with art vendors, food trucks, a beer garden and a live music stage as a part of Bazaar, a new one-day art and music event presented by Terrain. Think of it as an open-air market for local artists and craftspeople to sell their work, and more than 50 individual artist’s booths will be set up outside.
A&E >  Entertainment

King Buzzo unplugs punk for solo album

Although he’s been making music for the better part of three decades, Buzz Osborne is now heading off in a strange new direction, and he’s not really sure where it’s going to lead him. Osborne, better known by his stage name King Buzzo, founded the alt-metal band the Melvins in Montesano, Washington, in 1983. Their sludgy, insistent brand of punk, although never quite commercially successful, was instrumental in establishing the Seattle grunge sound of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Kurt Cobain, a high school friend of Osborne’s, often cited the Melvins as his favorite band, and he co-produced their 1993 album “Houdini.”
A&E >  Entertainment

‘Lucky’ shows off ‘real Seattle’

Whenever you’re watching a movie that’s set in Seattle, you might notice a handful of landmarks that filmmakers use as a sort of visual shorthand to illustrate where the characters are. Pike Place Market, perhaps, or Pier 54. Seattle Center, maybe; the Space Needle, almost certainly. Megan Griffiths’ film “Lucky Them,” which starts playing today at the Magic Lantern Theatre, is very much a Seattle story, but you’re not going to see stock footage of the Space Needle or Mount Rainier. Like Cameron Crowe’s Seattle-centric Gen X comedy “Singles,” Griffiths’ film takes place in rock venues and dive bars – the Comet Tavern and the Crocodile, for instance – places where countless Pacific Northwest bands got their start.
A&E >  Entertainment

Mirror Mirror solidifies lineup, popularity

Jason Campbell has been playing as Mirror Mirror since early 2008, and up until recently it seemed as if he never played with the same backing band twice. An organ player would quit, only to be replaced by another. Sometimes he’d perform with no organ player at all. Or the band’s drummer would leave, and there’d be an electronic drum machine in his place at the next show. “It’s never been my intention to have a different lineup every time,” Campbell said. “I’d lose somebody in the lineup, and then somebody would come along and say, ‘I want to play in your band,’ and we’d start over again.
A&E >  Entertainment

‘Nation’ building

When George A. Romero was making his game-changing horror masterpiece “Night of the Living Dead” in 1967, he reportedly paid each of the Pennsylvania locals who portrayed the film’s flesh-eating ghouls a single dollar and a homemade T-shirt that read “I was a zombie in ‘Night of the Living Dead.’ ” It probably didn’t mean much at the time, but it’s a distinction that most modern horror aficionados would actually eat raw flesh for.
A&E >  Entertainment

‘The Foreigner’ succeeds on multiple levels

Larry Shue’s “The Foreigner” isn’t so much a comedy about mistaken identity as it is about convenient omission. The titular character is confused for someone he isn’t and chooses to play along with it. In assuming a role of an immigrant lost in translation, he learns about himself and the strangers around him. The show, which is currently playing at Interplayers Theatre, is set in a fishing lodge outside of Atlanta in the early 1980s. Our protagonist is Charlie Baker, an unassuming British traveler who is distraught, he says, because his wife is wasting away in the hospital back at home. He tells his traveling companion Sgt. LeSueur, an explosives expert in the British Army, that he doesn’t want to speak to anybody in his fragile emotional condition, so LeSueur convinces the lodge’s owner that Charlie can’t speak a word of English.
A&E >  Entertainment

‘The Foreigner’ succeeds on multiple levels

Larry Shue’s “The Foreigner” isn’t so much a comedy about mistaken identity as it is about convenient omission. The titular character is confused for someone he isn’t and chooses to play along with it. In assuming a role of an immigrant lost in translation, he learns about himself and the strangers around him. The show, which is currently playing at Interplayers Theatre, is set in a fishing lodge outside of Atlanta in the early 1980s. Our protagonist is Charlie Baker, an unassuming British traveler who is distraught, he says, because his wife is wasting away in the hospital back at home. He tells his traveling companion Sgt. LeSueur, an explosives expert in the British Army, that he doesn’t want to speak to anybody in his fragile emotional condition, so LeSueur convinces the lodge’s owner that Charlie can’t speak a word of English.
A&E >  Entertainment

Civic revives forum for new works by local playwrights

It’s been six years since Spokane’s Civic Theatre last hosted its Playwrights’ Forum Festival, which was an annual tradition for 25 years until it was retired in 2008. But Civic has been going through an extensive artistic overhaul in the past year, and in keeping with the changes, it’s brought the festival back, premiering six new short plays by Northwest writers.
A&E >  Entertainment

Lasting charm makes ‘Guys and Dolls’ work

“Guys and Dolls” is one of the most famous musicals from Broadway’s Golden Age, and it’s been performed and duplicated so many times that its plot reads almost like theatrical shorthand. It won five Tony Awards in 1951 and was made iconic after its 1955 film adaptation, which starred Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando at the apex of their popularity. When a show is as popular and revered as “Guys and Dolls,” there’s the inclination to change, reinterpret and rework it from the ground up. But sometimes the best approach is to leave a great thing just as it is. Lake City Playhouse premieres its version of “Guys and Dolls” tonight, and Jillian Kehne, the show’s director and choreographer, says she wanted to play to the innate strengths of the story.
News >  Features

Sci-fi genre holds dark humor, lesser-known work

When it comes to finding science fiction films on Netflix’s instant streaming services, your choices are mostly limited to the classics (“Metropolis,” “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”) and a whole lot of direct-to-DVD garbage (would you rather sit through “Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark” or “Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation”?). Inspired by the release of the Tom Cruise vehicle “Edge of Tomorrow,” which opens today, I decided to compile a handful of overlooked films that belong to a genre which is so frequently mishandled and disrespected. Here are five, in alphabetical order: • “eXistenZ” (1999) Canadian auteur David Cronenberg (“Videodrome,” “Naked Lunch”) has always used hallucinogenic imagery, flagrant sexuality and gooey special effects in his work, and “eXistenZ” plays out like a winking compendium of all his pet themes. Jennifer Jason Leigh stars as a video game designer whose creations involve deeply immersive virtual reality – umbilical-like cords are plugged directly into players’ spines – and she’s on the run from a crazed fan who wants her dead. With her impromptu bodyguard (Jude Law), she must retreat into the realms of her own game before she and it are destroyed. The film was unfairly compared to “The Matrix,” which had taken over theaters a month earlier, and was effectively buried, but it’s a crafty, twisty, darkly funny head-trip.
A&E >  Entertainment

Guitarist Frisell finds energy in music’s malleability

There was something about the allure of an electric guitar that appealed to Bill Frisell before he’d ever picked one up or had even been in the same room with one. Growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, as American culture was being consumed by rock ’n’ roll and popular music was steeped in the sound of Fender guitars, Frisell knew he’d eventually become a musician. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do,” he said during a recent phone interview. “Thinking back to way, way before I even owned a guitar, maybe even before I thought about playing one, I had a fascination with it. Even just the object itself was this cool-looking thing.”