Thanks for checking out another edition of Is This Real. If you like what you've read so far, do me the kindness of subscribing or sharing it around with your loved ones. It's a passion project that will only survive with a little encouragement from y&
Some of the best music being made in Portland today is built from the sounds of the outside world. A handful of deep listeners armed with fancy parabolic microphones, handheld Zoom recorders, or their smartphones set off into natural habitats or unusual corners of the city, ears trained for little
Hey friends! Thanks for taking some time to read this week's edition of Is This Real. Just a quick note from me to start things off. You may notice that I haven't asked you to pay for a subscription to this little publication. That's
Hey all! Thanks, in advance, for reading this week's edition of Is This Real? Wanted to jump in right quick with a little note: When I started this, the idea was to do album reviews every week on top of original journalism. But as I thought on it
In 2021, the Albina Music Trust (AMT), the nonprofit collective working to archive and honor the history of Black music in North and Northeast Portland, dropped its first Albina Soul Walk. As I reported at the time, “the Albina Soul Walk is an audio tour that, using smartphone GPS, directs
Welcome, my lovely subscribers, to the first proper edition of Is This Real?, my newsletter covering the Portland music community. Glad to have you with me. My plan is to send out new posts on Tuesdays and Thursdays. One will be devoted to feature stories, while the other will be
Sometimes I get these feelings, and I don't know what to say... Greetings, friends, and welcome to my new newsletter venture. You may remember from my previous newsletter ventures and my time working as a freelancer for everyone from Rolling Stone, SPIN, Pitchfork, Bandcamp, Village Voice, and many