Kate Power & Steve Einhorn - Ukalaliens®

Artist Information

Biography

Songwriters, folksingers, artists of many stripes with a lifetime in music, Kate Power & Steve Einhorn hail from the Pacific Northwest and play to a growing audience worldwide.

The creative force behind the socially-conscious music center known as Artichoke Music in Portland, Oregon (1981-2006) Kate & Steve now tour with thirty ukes-to-share under the Ukalaliens moniker and using simple songs and a lifetime of experience they teach beginners how to play and sing in between concert engagements.

Original folk with traditional roots, Kate & Steve deliver the real deal in a push-button world with two sublime voices, warm strings and great songwriting. Romantic, funny, authentic and beautiful, their fresh songs and old stories capture hearts and the ears with good medicine that lift the spirits of audiences everywhere.

Pete Seeger wrote "Your music is WONDERFUL! I love your harmonies. Keep on!" . From the "Kitchen Waltz" on Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" to the Grand Prize for "Travis John" for "songs that make a difference" from Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul & Mary at the Kerrville Folk Festival (Music2Life 2006), "Kate & Steve write new songs that feel like old friends" says Tom Paxton. "So earthy and fresh is your music. I love it." - Lloyd "Tommy" Doss, Sons of the Pioneers

Singer Tracy Grammer says, “Their music embodies reverence -- for the craft of songwriting, for the folk tradition, for the audiences they sing to and for this complicated, terrible, beautiful world that we live in. Kate's earthy banjo and her emotive voice ring with compassion and hope; Steve's spot-on guitar leads and wry sense of humor are grounding, organic, the perfect complement. But all time stops when they sing together. Close your eyes and listen to that blend, friends -- that's where the love really shines through."

Kate & Steve "bring us to that place that can only be reached at the hands of journeyman artists. The power and precision of their performance gives [me] the complete trust to lean into the music, to get lost in it." - NW Examiner

Kate Power & Steve Einhorn started out in the folk clubs of New York City in the 60's. They moved to the Pacific Northwest and never stopped playing and sharing their songs at home and across the country. Their music resonates with harmony, humor and insights from the musical theatre of everyday life within the American landscape.

Instrumentation

Kate Power - 5-String Banjo, DADGAD Guitar, 6-string ukulele
Steve Einhorn - Guitar, ukulele

Discography

2010 - Ukalaliens "Play the Uke" DVD 1 & 2 - Homespun
2009 - Ukalaliens Songbook & CD, Release Date 10/1/09
2008 - "Bicycle Songs", Released 9/15/ 08
2008 - "Brick & Mortar", Released 6/1/08
2008 - "Celtic Women 3: Ireland", Hearts of Space compilation/various artists, “Bridget O’Malley”
2008 - Choreography by Josie Moseley of "Travis John" for Oregon Ballet Theatre
2007 - Soundtrack: "Military Families Speaking Out" using "Travis John"
2003 - "Pearls: A Tribute Collection" & "Travis John"
2002 - "Now & Then"
2002 - "Tales from Puddletown"
1999 - "Harbour"
1997 - "Celtic Twilight 4: Celtic Planet", Hearts of Space compilation/various artists - “Wild Wind” by Kate Power
1995 - "Kate Power: Dancing in the Kitchen"
1995 - "Celtic Twilight 3: Lullabies", Hearts of Space compilation/various artists, “Castle of Dromore”
1982 - "Steve Einhorn: Whole World Round", Kicking Mule release
1982 - "Wildgeese: Celtic Music of the Great Northwest” with Kate Power, Produced by Micheal O’Domhnaill

Links

• Poster Blank
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Quality Folk
• Ukalaliens
• Last.fm
• 11 x 17 Poster Blank
• Ukalaliens Songbook

Audio

• Kitchen Waltz
  Listen  
• Travis John
  Listen  
• Annabelle
  Listen  
• Wallowa
  Listen  
• Barbershop
  Listen  
• Bridget O'Malley
  Listen  
• Hwy 101
  Listen  
• My Love
  Listen  
• Pretty Little Girl (for Lucy)
  Listen  
• El Belle
  Listen  
• Liberty
  Listen  
• Cycle Safety Swing (Bicycle Safety Swing)
  Listen  
• Under the Moon
  Listen  

Lyrics

• Annabelle
• Barbershop
• Bridget O'Malley
• Cycle Safety Swing
• Crush
• Hwy 101
• Kitchen Waltz
• My Love
• Pretty Little Girl (for Lucy)
• Travis John
• Under the Moon
• Wallowa

Video

Kitchen Waltz at the Red Hare Finale

Photo Gallery

Press

• Kate Power & Steve Einhorn - From Artichoke to Living on the Road [+ Show ]
  

  A fun and in-depth review of the latest in the adventures of Kate & Steve, Ukalaliens, concerts in e...A fun and in-depth review of the latest in the adventures of Kate & Steve, Ukalaliens, concerts in exotic places, life on the road and home in the northwest.

• The Ukalaliens are Coming! [+ Show ]
  

  THE UKALALIENS, a folk duo including Kate Power and Steve Einhorn, have been conducting retail clini...THE UKALALIENS, a folk duo including Kate Power and Steve Einhorn, have been conducting retail clinics coast-to-coast sponsored by Kala brand ukuleles. Authors of the book "The Ukalaliens Songbook, A Beginner's Guide to Ukulele Fun" and companion CD, Kate and Steve have shared the stage with folk luminaries such as Pete Seeger and have performed on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion.
  
  In their clinics, the Ukalaliens effectively demonstrate how easy it is to turn non-players into ukulele strumming enthusiasts within a few minutes. After sitting through the hour-long session, many attendees have gone on to create their own ukulele communities or clubs that frequently get together to jam and play songs. Dan Ross of Columbia River Music, The Dalles, Oregon, stated, “the Ukalaliens helped to build the ukulele community here and to sell instruments. We have a uke group that now meets to jam at a winery two or three times a months. They usually come back to buy more than one ukulele. They buy them for their friends, grandkids.”
  
  According to Jimmy Dougherty, manager of George's Music in Jacksonville, Florida, “The Ukalaliens are a fun and interactive duo who provided some unique entertainment to our customers. We would love to have them back in the future!” The workshops provide excellent opportunities for stores to reach new customers and non-musicians. Attendees often invite their friends and family to join in the fun, creating a community atmosphere.” The book & CD is the next best thing to being there. - January 2010
  
  

• Miz Kitty's Parlour & Vaudevillian Revue [+ Show ]
  

  Miz Kitty's Parlour & Vaudevillian Review at the Mission Theatre, Portland, Oregon...(Excerpt)...
  Miz Kitty's Parlour & Vaudevillian Review at the Mission Theatre, Portland, Oregon...(Excerpt)
  
  The first to come on are Kate Power and Steve Einhorn. You probably know them, at least, from Artichoke Music, the store they ran for 26 years and turned
  into a Portland institution. Along the way, they've developed a national reputation as folk musicians, singers and composers.
  
  As they move into "Highway 101", with Power on banjo and Einhorn on guitar, I am sent immediately to that place of safety that can only be reached at the hands of
  journeymen artists. The power and precisio of their performance gives me the complete trust to lean into the music, to get lost in it.
  
  Then Power takes out a ukulele and begins "Before You Go", a song she wrote for Einhorn. He joins her on guitar. It is a sweet song with sweet harmony. Like all good folk songs, it sounds as if nobody wrote it. It is as if it's always been there."

• Review - The Ukalaliens Songbook [+ Show ]
  

  Folk troubadours Kate Power and Steve Einhorn have created a magical introduction to the wonderful ...Folk troubadours Kate Power and Steve Einhorn have created a magical
  introduction to the wonderful world of ukulele playing with their book
  and CD project Ukalaiens Songbook: A Beginner’s Guide to Ukulele Fun.
  And that’s just what this delightful little book and CD are, fun! From
  the whimsical original illustrations by Steve to the diverse collection
  of simple folk tunes the book will immediately have the aspiring
  ukuleleist strumming and singing right from the get-go. For the more
  adventurous players the book also includes a number of beginning
  finger-picking patterns and left hand techniques. Another feature unique
  to the book is handy “flip-flap chord charts" that pop up from the book
  to demonstrate how to play the tunes in a variety of keys. Steve’s
  pleasant voice guides you patiently through uke basics and the 19 tunes
  contained on the CD, which include folk classics Careless Love, Crawdad
  Hole and Shady Grove, in addition to, the lovely original tunes
  Annebelle, Under The Moon and Pretty Little Girl. As an added bonus, the
  CD contains the glorious harmony singing of Kate and Steve which have
  made them Northwest folk icons. Kate and Steve project a nurturing
  spirit that warmly welcomes all to the experience of playing and singing
  with others. Their relaxed, no hurry, presentation is the perfect
  welcome to beginning musicians of all ages. I would recommend the
  Ukalaiens Songbook to anyone wishing a throughly enjoyable musical
  introduction to playing the sweetest of stringed instruments, the ukulele.
  - Jim D’Villle
  

• Two mothers, two sons, one banjo [+ Show ]
  

  Kate Power is doing something kind of silly this afternoon. She's going all the way to Texas to... Kate Power is doing something kind of silly this afternoon. She's going all the way to Texas to sing one three-minute song.
  
  Yes, it's kind of crazy. But it's not as if Power is missing much back home in Portland. Just the graduation this evening from Grant High School of her son, Ben.
  
  It was Ben who made the call.
  
  Right after they got word that Power's song "Travis John" was a finalist at the renowned Kerrville Folk Festival, there was a family meeting. Ben took one look at the list of judges -- the likes of Tom Chapin, Judy Collins, Tom Paxton and Peter Yarrow -- and said, "Go."
  
  
  This all started three years back. Power, who, along with husband Steve Einhorn, owns the hallowed Artichoke Music store in Southeast Portland, was teaching a songwriting workshop at Fishtrap, the literary gathering held each summer at Wallowa Lake in Eastern Oregon.
  
  Just days earlier, news had reached Portland of the death of Travis John Bradach-Nall, a young Marine who was among the first Oregonians killed in Iraq. Another Einhorn son, Eli, had been a student at Grant High with Travis John.
  
  Early on the day of Travis John's funeral, Power -- whose heart has a string tying her direct to magic -- found herself sitting out front of her Wallowa cabin, cradling her banjo.
  
  She was just picking at the strings, she says, watching the lakefront deer graze, when she heard herself singing what became the haunting "Travis John."
  
  A few weeks later, Power recorded the song at Billy Oskay's Big Red Studio in the Columbia Gorge. Everyone involved in the taping that day says there was something special about the session. Only later did they learn that Travis John had been on the hammer crew that built the studio.
  
  Jonathan Nicholas - The Oregonian, Living Section
  

• Sunset Magazine - Travel & Culture [+ Show ]
  

  At 8 p.m. on a Friday night, a crowd has assembled in the lofty performance room of Artichoke Mu... At 8 p.m. on a Friday night, a crowd has assembled in the lofty performance room of Artichoke Music, a shop in Portland's Hawthorne District. Steve Einhorn - owner, songwriter, performer, and raconteur - takes the stage and plays an original composition on his guitar. Soon he's joined by his wife, Kate Power, also a songwriter and co-owner of Artichoke, for a 40-minute set. Two more artists follow in an evening of music that has echoes of the '60s but remains strikingly contemporary.
  
  "I'm a happy man," says the 54-year-old Einhorn, "especially when I'm making music with Kate." It's impossible to distrust the statement.
  
  Now nearly 35 years old (Einhorn has owned it for almost 25 years), Artichoke is a Portland institution. Up front, the retail shop is a wonderland of beautifully made instruments: guitars, banjos, violins, mandolins, dulcimer, Irish wooden flutes, concertinas. Behine that area are teaching studios. And the Backgate Stage offers a busy schedule of performances.
  
  Stephen R. Lorton - Sunset Magazine
  

• Review - Sing Out! Magazine [+ Show ]
  

  Wow. It took many listens to the first track of this release, "Travis John," to not break down c... Wow. It took many listens to the first track of this release, "Travis John," to not break down crying. A smiling photo of the late 21-year old, who was killed by a land mine in Iraq in July, is included alongside the notes about the song. Singing in the first person as the young soldier, Kate sings of pride in answering a call to be his country's own hero. The banjo is gentle and the lyrics are timely and powerful. "Travis John" creates a life story behind one name in the numerous lives lost due to war. For those fond of macabre connections, Kate learned later that Travis had helped with the construction on the the very building where she recorded the tune.
  
  Following this first song are samples from four previous releases by the couple, creating a sort of "best of" without actually calling it such. Of the 13 tracks they include 11 originals, Jesse Winchesters' "If I Were Free" and the traditional "Castle of Dromore" arranged by Kate. Instrumentally, expect accordion, mandolin and pedal steel here and there. "Nova Scotia" features the late John Cunningham on violin, from the CD which he helped to produce: Dancing in the Kitchen.
  
  Pearls arouses the kind of simple memories that produce grounded love. This release is a winning purchase for any new ear to the unpretentious talents of this couple. I love this CD.
  
  Angela Page - Sing Out!
  

• The Power of the Song [+ Show ]
  

  Portland songwriter Kate Power raised a boy who graduated from Grant High School with Travis Joh... Portland songwriter Kate Power raised a boy who graduated from Grant High School with Travis John Bradach-Nall, the young Marine killed July 2 in Iraq. Power missed the funeral; she was teaching songwriting that week at Fishtrap in Wallowa County. That day, as she sought solace with her banjo, she heard herself singing what became the haunting "Travis John."
  
  Back near the big city August 3, Power, in the ghostlike "voice" of Travis, recorded the song at Billy Oskay's Big Red Studio in the Columbia Gorge. Everyone involved was silenced by the power of the session. Only later did they learn Travis had been on the crew that built the studio.
  
  Jonathan Nicholas - The Oregonian
  

• World's Largest Guitar Band Plays "This Land is Your Land" for Longest Time! [+ Show ]
  

  July 4, 2003 The concept is every horn player's nightmare: hundreds of guitarists playing one...July 4, 2003
  
  The concept is every horn player's nightmare: hundreds of guitarists playing one folk song in unison -- for an hour. The same three simple chords repeating, ringing through the brain pan until it becomes numb. Attack of the strings, a fright of strummers, controlled cacophony.
  
  But even the most jaded jazzer, the most erudite classical fan, couldn't help but be a bit moved by the communal, albeit bizarre, scene that took over Pioneer Courthouse Square on Sunday. Officially 502 guitarists from all over the Northwest gathered together with their instruments to play and sing Woody Guthrie's 1956 folk anthem, "This Land Is Your Land," to raise money for Sisters of the Road Cafe, and to set a world record.
  
  And set it they did. "Guinness Book of World Records" recognized the gathering that afternoon as The World's Largest Guitar Band.
  
  Organizers Kate Power and Steve Einhorn of local guitar shop Artichoke Music saw the concept attempted last year in Woodstock, N.Y., but they said it was poorly organized and got rained out. Still, the two took the idea and applied it toward a good cause, setting the record and raising money for their "charity of choice," the nonprofit Old Town restaurant that helps feed the poor and homeless. The event raised nearly $10,000 for Sisters of the Road.
  
  "It's really over-the-top fund-raising," said Debbie Fox of Sisters of the Road, who also played drums for the event. "It's really unique and very Portland. We'll have to break it next year."
  
  To make it into the record book, the group had to follow the rigorous Guinness specifications, meaning all who played had to be officially registered, plus, the instruments had to be guitars. So those few who showed up with autoharps, lutes and mandolins weren't part of the number count, though they were allowed to play.
  
  Registration began at 10:30 a.m., and until about 1 p.m. people with their guitars filtered in slowly. There were other activities to keep folks occupied during the countdown: face painting, balloon animals, info booths, food, ice cream and drink stands. But most chose to sit and strum, sharing music and warming up by playing the likes of Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, while finding the few shaded spots on a sweltering June day.
  
  Peter Mitchell of Portland, a nursing professional wearing a tie-dyed T and a holding a Conn guitar, had been playing for only a few months but wanted to be a part of the day. "We need to bring music back into life," he said. The Woody Guthrie fan said that the song's lyrics transcend pettiness. "Music binds us."
  
  Guitarists arrived in droves as downbeat grew near, toting everything from new Ovations to battered acoustics, shiny National guitars to old faithfuls covered in bumper stickers.
  
  The crowd ranged from families with children to indie rockers and old folkies.
  
  Sidney White, 8, of Portland brought her tiny guitar and her parents. Her reason for playing was simple. "I wanna have fun," she said with a smile.
  
  Bart Plimmer, 15, arrived from White Salmon, Wash. More a drummer, the spiked mohawk-wearing teen played guitar because he thought it would be cool. "I just decided it would be a pretty big event. I wanted to be active with other musicians."
  
  After a group tuning, the backing band on stage, led by Power and Einhorn, hit the downbeat at 2 p.m. Some in the crowd looked dazed, others struggled to find the chords and some improvised. But for the most part, the whole thing was mostly in tune and on beat.
  
  Each verse rang in at 20 seconds, with roughly 180 verses covered in the hour. It started off rousing, with members of the band adding their own positive lyrics. After 20 minutes, the repetition wore. After a half hour, it was like being on Disney's "It's a Small World" and not being allowed to get off. Hopeful cheers rang out at the 15-minutes-left announcement, and the music built up. At the end, all raised their guitars in unison and cheers.
  
  "You all are as crazy as we are," Einhorn shouted.
  
  "That was a blast," one participant said. "That was 45 minutes more than I needed, but it was a great event," said another, nursing blistered fingers.
  
  Yes, music bound Portland together for a brief afternoon, raised money, awareness and set a record. And the bunch might even have a go at it next year, too. Have to break the record they set.
  
  AP - Guinness World Record Set - The Oregonian
  

• The Heart of Music Beats in Portland [+ Show ]
  

  December 6, 2002 Steve Einhorn and Kate Power call it “kitchen music” — the kind that ind... December 6, 2002
  
  Steve Einhorn and Kate Power call it “kitchen music” — the kind that indulged the passions of ordinary people everywhere before the tyranny of “the performer” intruded.
  It was second nature, the two say, for people to get together to sing, play instruments and share songs, the vessels for passing stories from one generation to the next.
  Reviving the art of kitchen music is a large part of what Einhorn, owner of Artichoke Music, and Power, his wife and business partner, are all about.
  Artichoke — given its name by original owner Judith Cook-Tucker three decades ago because “artichokes are all heart” — is as much a nurturing oasis as it is a business.
  The rare and vintage acoustic instruments displayed on the maple walls of the Hawthorne District business leave little doubt it’s a store.
  But the Artichoke School of Music in back and the Backgate Stage beyond — both usually alive with sound — show that Artichoke is far more than a store. It’s a place where rank amateurs and big-name folk artists feel equally at home.
  The school draws its faculty from a contingent of 40 professional musicians. The intimate and acoustically ideal Backgate Stage, which seats just 50, has hosted performances by musical names that much larger venues would kill for — folk singer and songwriter Tom Paxton, mandolinist David Grisman, folk music legend Odetta, Irish fiddler Kevin Burke and vocalist Rebecca Kilgore, to name a few. Paxton even led a songwriting workshop there.
  The business ministers with equal facility to novices chasing a dream and to an array of the country’s most renowned folk artists.
  Carolyn Sparling, 50, is typical of the novices. Although she was brave enough to beat back breast cancer, she couldn’t overcome her fear of singing in front of an audience — until a friend brought her to Artichoke’s Saturday Song Circle. Now she’s one of the circle’s regulars.
  “Folks are welcome to sit in and pretend they’re invisible until they’re comfortable, and then before you know it, they’re singing and playing along with everyone else,” says Power, who organized the circle a year and a half ago.
  For seasoned professionals, Artichoke is a sophisticated resource as well as a place where they can recharge their musical batteries.
  The Backgate’s intimacy, jazz singer Kilgore says, “creates a camaraderie between the performers and audience.”
  Einhorn and Power “have created a place where you can find rare instruments, a place to perform, and a place to further your musical development,” says Marv Ross of the popular Oregon Trail Band. Ross and his wife, Rindy, led the rock group Quarterflash, whose 1981 megahit “Harden My Heart” went platinum.
  “Their impact,” Ross says, “is immeasurable — it’s something that filters down through the music community in Portland and affects us all.”
  Says Portland music industry consultant Lisa Lepine: “Being artists themselves, they have created a performance space that … allows for creative magic.”
  Their legacy, Lepine says, is Portland’s vibrant folk music scene.
  Another thing that sets Artichoke apart is Einhorn’s ability to find obscure and vintage acoustic instruments — a service that is the core of the business.
  Two buyers from Japan show up on Einhorn’s doorstep annually with a shipping container to snap up some of his finds. The Artichoke Web site (www.artichokemusic.com) is tapped worldwide for Einhorn’s lists of acquisitions.
  Singer-songwriter Jackson Browne and Grisman — whom The New York Times has dubbed “the Paganini of the mandolin” — are valued customers.
  In an age of mass-market guitar centers, Artichoke is a rarity, Ross says. “It’s an oasis for the serious musician who wants more than just the lowest price.”
  “They’re experts at appraisal and research on rare and varied instruments,” says bassist Glen Moore of the internationally renowned jazz group Oregon, which shows up on occasion at the Backgate.
  
  The hippie thing
  
  Einhorn, 52, a singer, songwriter, guitar player and recording artist in his own right, bought Artichoke in 1981 after knocking around the Northwest for a few years doing his “hippie thing.”
  He was raised in Teaneck, N.J., and his father gave him his first guitar when he was 13. To pick up lessons, he used to hang out at music shops in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Much of his vision for Artichoke evolved from those experiences.
  It doesn’t hurt that he was born into an entertainment-oriented family. His parents, Anne and Marvin Einhorn, — now 79 and 82 — still work as New York stage actors. For a couple of decades into the early ’80s, Marvin Einhorn was a director of NBC’s “Today” show.
  When Einhorn first came to Portland, he worked as a carpenter building stage sets for KOIN (6) and wrangled a side job working at Artichoke, which at the time was on Northwest 21st Avenue.
  In those days, the place was run by three partners who didn’t exactly see eye to eye. Einhorn bought into the business in 1981 and eventually made an offer that the last partner standing couldn’t refuse. The store was moved to a site at Southeast 35th Avenue and Hawthorne Boulevard in 1985 and to its current location, 3130 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd., in 1997.
  
  Musical chairs
  
  If Einhorn is the heart of the business, Power, 51, is the soul.
  She has been the impetus behind Artichoke’s musical offerings, which include the monthly First Friday Variety Revue, the music school, and a wide range of workshops and concerts.
  A Boston native who grew up harmonizing with seven musically inclined siblings — four brothers and three sisters — she has played and recorded with the Northwest Irish band Wildgeese, and her credits include several successful CD releases, among them “Dancing in the Kitchen.”
  Two new collaborations with Einhorn, “Now & Then” and “Tales From Puddletown,” have just been released.
  Power arrived in Oregon in 1977 knowing little more about the state than what she’d learned from some Oregonians she had met at a peace rally in Washington, D.C., in the late ’60s.
  “I saved my money for a year, packed my van, and my brother Steve and I caravanned across the country without ever looking back,” she says.
  Soon after she arrived she went in search of a set of hammers for a hammered dulcimer, which is how she discovered Artichoke — and Einhorn.
  She and Einhorn were married, and Power joined the Artichoke staff full time in 1994.
  “Kate came along at exactly the right time,” says a smiling Einhorn.
  She still has the dulcimer hammers — which she uses to toss pasta.
  Giving back to the community is important to Einhorn and Power.
  Which is why they do things like organizing an annual raffle for Sisters of the Road Cafe. This year they hope their donation of a 1971 Martin D-35 guitar valued at $2,000 will raise as much as $10,000 for the cafe, which ministers to street people.
  They also open the Backgate to community gatherings, reason enough, perhaps, for Einhorn’s tongue-in-cheek honorific: “the mayor of Hawthorne.”
  The one lament Artichoke’s owners have is that they are so busy — the store is open seven days a week — that they don’t have as much time as they would like to cultivate their own musical talents.
  “We play in between everything else we do,” Power says.
  In the end, Artichoke is a labor of love.
  “It’s not really about money, it really is about people and music,” Power says.
  And that’s the point. “Artichoke is successful,” Einhorn concludes, “because of the human connection.”
  
  Daniel J. Curran - Portland Tribune
  

• PORTLAND to ZIMBABWE, with Strings Attached [+ Show ]
  

  PORTLAND to ZIMBABWE, with Strings Attached by Margie Boule - January 17, 2002 Musicians ... PORTLAND to ZIMBABWE, with Strings Attached by Margie Boule - January 17, 2002
  
  Musicians make music. It's what they do - discovering truths in progressions and phrases, curling up in the spaces between the notes.
  
  But Crispin Mungure was so driven to catch the melodies in his mind that he did more than make music. He made his own guitar.
  
  It's likely you've never seen a musical instrument as crude as Crispin's handmade guitar. In his tiny village of Weya in rural Zimbabwe, 17-year old Crispin lives with his father and younger siblings in a mud hut on communal land, land with marginal agricultural promise that was given to native Zimbabweans when white colonists came to their part of Africa. The economy in Zimbabwe is near collapse; in the village of Weya, known for its women artists, there is no money to buy musical instruments.
  
  So Crispin took a single plank of rough wood and carved it in the shape of a guitar, hollowing out the body until it looked like an empty bowl. Across the top he affixed a piece of flattened metal cut from a colorful vegetable oil can, with a hole in the middle. He fastened it to the body with handmade nails fashioned from scrap copper. He scratched fret marks across the neck with a knife and fashioned rough pegs from wooden sticks. Now all he needed were guitar strings; he removed brake cables from old bicycles in his village, stripped off their plastic sheaths, unwound the wire and affixed it to his guitar.
  
  The tone was tinny and faint. But Crispin had his guitar.
  
  "The person who works with me in Zimbabwe, named John, said to me, ‘There's this guy in Weya who's a really talented musician. He's composing music as well as playing and singing. You have to hear him,’” recalls Dick Adams. After years as a professor at Lewis & Clark College, Dick left in 1999 to create the nonprofit Zimbabwe Artists Project, to help the women of Weya become self-sufficient by marketing their art in America. Last fall Dick was in Zimbabwe and heard Crispin play his homemade guitar.
  
  Dick was so taken by Crispin's talent that the next time he phone Portland he suggested that his wife, Wendy Rankin, stop by Artichoke Music in Portland and pick up some real guitar strings for Crispin's guitar. Dick's brother was about to visit Zimbabwe and could deliver the strings.
  
  So Wendy went to see Steve Einhorn, who owns Artichoke Music with his wife, Kate Power.
  
  For the uninitiated, Artichoke Music is a retail store that sells musical instruments. "But it's also about the music," says Steve. "We need the retail business to pay for the teaching we do and for the performance space in the back. It's very important that we continue making music."
  
  Wendy described Crispin's guitar and asked about guitar strings. Steve Einhorn responded, "Sure, we have guitar strings. But would he rather have a real guitar?"
  
  A new shipment of Godin guitars had just arrived. "Their guitars are our bread and butter," says Steve. "We sell hundreds of them...and they're beautiful."
  
  Wendy called Dick in Zimbabwe, and he talked to his Zimbabwean associate, John. Would it cause a problem in the community if Crispin had a nice guitar? Would it get stolen? John thought it was a good idea.
  
  Steve picked out a beautiful blue acoustic guitar, put it in a case and tossed in guitar strings, and Dick's brother carried them to Africa.
  
  "We drove down these ravines and tracks ... to Crispin's homestead," say Dick. "John said to him some wonderful and wise words" about the need for Crispin to obey his father, continue his commitment to his studies and care for his younger siblings.
  
  Then they opened the case and handed Crispin his new guitar. "He was stunned," says Dick. "It was just the most wonderful thing. Crispin started playing. His friend, Tatenda, took out sticks and started using the guitar case as a drum." Crispin put on an Artichoke Music T-shirt; Dick took pictures of him with his new guitar.
  
  And then Dick asked if Crispin would consider giving his handmade guitar to Steve Einhorn in gratitude. "You could see in his eyes there was no question," say Dick. "He was delighted to have this guitar and delighted to give up the other one."
  
  So that's how Crispin Mungure’s guitar ended up on the wall at Artichoke Music, in Portland's Hawthorne district. "We deal with a lot of gearheads who have a lot of money, and they've been on the Internet and have learned everything there is to know about everything there is to know," says Steve. "How to emphasize this, how to get rid of feedback - and they're not playing music."
  
  "This kid wanted to play music and he's very poor, so he made himself a guitar." Steve's customers ask about the rusted, rough-looking contraption: "Everyone is so moved by it, so taken by it." Steve says the guitar "is a symbol of what it's really all about; making and performing music. It's a reminder. It's a charm."
  
  Margie Boule - The Oregonian
  

• 
  

Setlist

Varies to suit the setting ...

- Kitchen Waltz
- Travis John
- Cycle Safety Swing
- El Belle
- My Love
- Wallowa
- Barbershop
- Crush
- Annabelle
- Nova Scotia
- Hillbilly Lovesong
- Bridget O'Malley
- Nothin' Doin'
- Barbershop
- Before You Go
- Ole Dad
- These Are My Mountains
- Under the Moon

Original, traditional and folk songs, including occasional covers from Celtic, World & Americana, Jugband and swing influences. Sets are created to engage audiences of all kinds. Vast repertoire of original and traditional songs.

Basic Requirements

Calendar