Songwriter Monica Offield returns to the spotlight in Sisters

Monica Offield is back in Sisters' limelight. The singer/songwriter performed last Thursday evening to a crowd of well over 100 at FivePine Lodge and Conference Center's weekly concert series Music on the Pond. Singer/songwriter Reed Thomas Lawrence backed up Offield and played a couple of sets of his own tunes. Lawrence, an acoustic rock musician, is an active member of the Central Oregon music scene.

The event was the third in the weekly series of buffet dinner concerts FivePine is offering on the lawn behind the conference center through the month of September.

"We're having a real variety of people. It's definitely increasing every week. We've had more people every time. We're getting all of the people who are staying here at the lodge, as well as locals, as well as other people coming from Bend. It's really great," said FivePine events manager Kendra Littrell.

Offield, a 2006 Sisters High School graduate and one of the stars of the school's Americana Project, received a long-awaited kidney transplant four months ago, on April 10. Thursday night's performance was one of Offield's first public appearances since her surgery.

"My health is good. Everything is going fine," Offield told The Nugget.

Offield played three new songs that she has written since her operation. "She Sits Alone" grew out of poems that Offield has written and expresses her feelings at different junctures on the journey she has experienced this past year.

She also performed for the first time ever the first blues song in her repertoire, "Dances with Time Blues."

Offield's third new composition is one she wrote only hours before Thursday's performance. It has not yet been titled.

"It's just about getting through the day; it's just about having friends and having them help you. You take life experiences and put them in song whether you know it or not," she said.

In her spare time, when not working at Martolli's Pizza, Offield is developing a demo CD of original works that she hopes to have ready for distribution this fall.

"Mainly it's going to be acoustic," she said. "I'm just going to send it out to local artists, maybe some artists who come to the folk festival and just kind of see where that takes me."

Offield, who has performed on the main stage of the Sisters Folk Festival three times, is the youngest artist the festival has ever hired to perform. She is not scheduled to perform this year. However, she will be working at the festival.

"I'll be at some of the stages just helping out the artists and everything and helping people to their seats and whatnot," she said.

Offield met Lawrence at a songwriting contest in Bend on April 1, just 10 days before her surgery.

"This is their first time performing together," Offield's mother Ginger Offield told The Nugget.

When Offield was recovering from her surgery in Portland, Lawrence came to Portland to jam with her.

"That's when he picked up on a lot of her songs and was starting to put some different background into them," Offield's mother said.

Lawrence recently received first-place honors at the ninth annual Central Oregon Songwriters Association competition in the rock category for his song "Is She Gonna Let Me In." He placed second in the folk category for his tune "Smooth Electric."

Musicians from Sisters High School's Americana Project will perform at this Thursday's event for a Mexican fiesta. The buffet will be served starting at 6:30 p.m. with music from 7 to 9 p.m.