News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Doug and Katie Cavanaugh's rustic musical haven, HarmonyHouse, hosted their first concert of the season and welcomed acclaimed bluegrass singer Rita Hosking and her band on a damp and rainy Saturday night. Hosking was the winner of the 2008 Dave Carter Memorial Songwriting Contest and part of the Sisters Folk Festival lineup for 2009.
With blue Christmas lights aglow and family dogs roaming the aisles, guests enjoyed the infectious folk tunes of a singer hitting full stride in her musical career.
The treasury of songs are raw and personal, inflected with sad memories of family and home, polished with heartfelt lyrics of warmth and the utmost sincerity, always finding that proper balance between sentimentality and soul.
"I like to write about stories and people and experiences and how precious those moments are," Hosking said, introducing a song off her newest album, called "Little Joe."
"It's about a gentleman who lived out in the deserts of southwestern Idaho at the turn of the century. A strange buckaroo and a wrangler who wore quirky clothes and saved all his money. He died one night of pneumonia after a winter night driving his cattle, and people finally figured him out - Little Joe was a woman!"
Hosking grew up in Shasta County, California, near Burney Falls. It was a depressed area with a lot of routine violence, and that atmosphere influenced the realism woven into her music.
"One of my old friends just contacted me on Facebook. He's out (of jail) and doing well and this song goes out to him," she said, flowing into a slow ballad called "Montgomery Creek Blues."
"One of the musicians I know came here to play once and said, 'wow, it's like being inside a great big guitar,'" Hosking joked.
"We do a classic house concert here, down to the letter of the law," said host and owner Katie Cavanaugh. "It's essentially a big private party and these are all my friends. We do it all for music's sake with a suggested donation and the proceeds go directly to the artist. It's the alternative to a noisy bar. We're so happy to have Rita here tonight."
Between sets, guests warmed themselves around the fire pit, sampled wines and homemade brownies or purchased CDs, and visited with the artist and her band.
Hosking had been busy since her last appearance in Sisters.
"In 2009 we had just released the latest album, 'Come Sunrise,' which is doing really well," Hosking said. "It was nominated for Best Country Album at the 2010 Independent Music Awards and we've been touring heavily behind it. One of my main goals was to get some people to help promote me, and I got a U.S. and overseas booking agent. They're not easy to find and pretty picky and tough to get."
This year, she recorded an EP with her daughter and husband, Sean, inside the 16 to 1 Gold Mine in Alleghany, California, with 20 minutes of mine-related songs complete with dripping water and crunching quartz.
"I wanted to bring out some family history about my grandfather, who was a miner and sang underground in the Empire Gold Mine in Grass Valley. There's a big tradition of singing with Cornish miners. My daughter, Kora Feder, sings on the EP as well, and she's the one who did the little music video."
Hosking was appreciative of the venue.
"HarmonyHouse is such a wonderful venue. I consider it an important development at the grasssroots level for music, and we see it spreading overseas too," she said. "It's been a saving grace for musicians in this tough economy without having to rely on promoters or dealing with performance rights organizations. It's a great movement to bring music into our homes and into our lives."
Next July, Hosking and her bandmates will be doing a summer band tour through Oregon and Washington and hope to come through Sisters again.
Her complete schedule and music catalog is at
Reader Comments(0)