As my fedora-topped friend and I stride through the nippy dark along the frosted sidewalk, there’s no doubt in my mind it’s the chilliest night of this winter so far in Portland. We’ve hiked up to NoPo (North Portland) to the Secret Society Ballroom to see the beautiful Ashia Grzesik play a special EP release show for her most recent offering, Bison Rouge.
The nighttime hum of the power plant adds a slightly oppressive dreamlike quality to the street. At the corner sits a little clutch of restaurants and cafés. The Wonder Ballroom nearby looms up out of the clear night, humpbacked and friendly, like an enormous whale limned in red glow. That’s how my memory paints it, though perhaps the red is in spirit only. It’s a crimson kind of evening, and red is everywhere. Bordello red. Heartbeat red. Borscht red.
Step upstairs, past the Secret Society Lounge and a couple settee-strewn seating areas, and enter the Secret Society Ballroom, built in 1907 and past host to such fraternal organizations as The Woodmen of the World and the Prince Hall Masons. Red is in full force here, the walls hung with enough scarlet velvet to outfit a glamrock marching band. The only formal seating in the ballroom is along the walls to each side of the stage, salvaged church pews and vintage theater seats. A sprinkling of tall bistro tables decorates the perimeter of an enormous carpet in the center of the room directly below the stage. The carpet is completely covered when we arrive, its pattern barely glimpsable past the sprawling limbs and blond dreadlocks of circus hippies and straight families and flower punks, and whatever colorful melange can be used to describe Portland’s eclectic middle-class bohemian crowd on a Friday night. As an aging hipster with purple (today) hair who can afford $8 glasses of wine but will still take umbrage at the price, I fit right in.
I’d heard Grey Anne would be opening the show and was very much looking forward to seeing her as well. I hadn’t expected the Strangled Darlings to be playing as I arrived, and am sorry to have missed them in my flurry of jacket removal and air kisses in the general direction of a couple acquaintances. By the time I’ve paid for wine and milled my way to a viewing spot, the Strangled Darlings are packing down. I know they’re playing this Saturday, March 5th, at the Alberta Street Pub, so maybe I can catch them then.
Grey Anne is even more fabulous live than I thought she’d be. I’d enjoyed her Facts N Figurines release, and had once had the great good fortune to hear her sing in my next door neighbor’s living room. Just one song. Just once. Getting to hear an entire set and see her in her element is a treat. She’s a one-woman show, using breath and strings and simple drum along with recorded bite-loops to back up her own voice with . . . her own voice. Her live performance is to be experienced rather than described. There’s a hypnotic comfort to her music and a raw veracity to her lyrics which make you follow her through her landscape with an Alice in Wonderland sort of participatory voyeurism.
Ashia, too, is as gorgeous as advertised. She’s one of those performers who takes the stage with an embracing enthusiasm which invites you right up into her world. She’s just returned from a stint in Europe to promote Bison Rouge. One doesn’t need to wonder how it feels to be back here after shows earlier this month in Kraków, Poland (with “retro circus band” Vladimirska), Wroclaw (at the Capitol Theater), and at Prague’s The Red Room. One doesn’t need to wonder because she launches right in, tells her audience how it was to travel through Europe and describe Portland to people everywhere — this wonderful, quirky town, with its circus performers, its unicyclists, its accordion players in the street and its fresh vegetables in house gardens, its kale and beets and pumpkins. . .
It’s hard not to adore Ashia. I don’t fight it. How can one not fall in love with a self-described “cello geek” in a bustle and feathers singing songs in multiple languages about pubic hair and borscht and grandmothers and whiskey? And if her solo projects aren’t enough to woo you, Ashia has a rich history with impressive projects like The Portland Cello Project and Vagabond Opera and even Cirque du Soleil.
And this night, here, in the Secret Society Ballroom with its red curtains and church pews and floor cushions and lounging Portlanders, Ashia’s range and inclusiveness are in full play. All night long, the stage is a rotating cast of cellists, belly dancers, burlesque, accordion players . . . only Ashia remains constant, cello nestled between her fishnetted thighs. Her spirit and energy sweeps the crowd along, her charm palpable, her music engaging and rewarding. Who, I ask you, could pass up the chance to hear “Prosto do Nieba,” the “Polish Grandma Song”?
Who?
(Secret Society Ballroom in Portland, Oregon, February 25th, 2011)
Comments