The Canadian indie-pop duo Tegan and Sara are coming back to Portland to play the Bagdad Theater in late July. Earlier this year they teamed with Portland producer (and Death Cab for Cutie guitarist) Chris Walla to record their follow up to last year’s critically acclaimed CD So Jealous. Their latest project titled The Con was recorded at the PDX uber-studio Kung Fu Bakery and is scheduled to be officially released just after their Portland appearance.

6:30 door, 7:30 p.m. showtime | $20 advance, $25 day of show | All ages
Buy tickets here

There is something special about Portland. If you live here you already know that. If you don’t you’ll know sometime soon. Commissioner Sam Adams, Portland’s Arts and Culture Czar, drew more than 300 people from the creative community last night to the Gerding Theatre to discuss in person his ideas for unlocking the city’s ‘creative capacity’ as he calls it. What does he mean by creative capacity? Read on…from Sam’s web site -
“What is Creative Capacity? Creativity helps make Portland a better place to live, a stronger competitor in the global marketplace and an incubator of innovation. An individual artist in a studio, a software firm start-up, a theatre company, a research and development arm, a manufacturing company—Creative Capacity is the ability of these endeavors ability to be more innovative, more creative and more successful. Strengthening this capacity to innovate has tremendous potential to contribute more to our community economically, socially and educationally. In the past few years, some have even argued this capacity is fundamental to our success in a globalized marketplace.

The Oregonian jumped on board too.

Good Magazine asked a musician to write and then sing a love song to the Portland tram…check it out.

Recording music is taken seriously at Tape Op..

So the Tape Op conference is under way and a quick run through the vendor area finds hundreds of grown men [this conf is women-light, go figure,] drooling over racks of compressors, mixers, mics, speakers and amps. All I can think is that using these components these days makes for a very expensive way to record music that will be instantly turned into a 128kb MP3 file….

While M Ward is one of the few big names in music to move away from Portland we Oregonians still call him one of our own. Besides he hasn’t had much time to hang out in his new home state (New Hampshire) since landing the opening spot on the Norah Jones world tour. Matt, as we like to call him here in P-town, will be appearing with Norah at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on June 30th. For tickets and additional info click here.