by Jonah Barrett for OLY ARTS The Oly Old Time festivities on Saturday will include a square dance with Portland-based band Uncle Wiggily. Originally formed by the late Bill Martin and friends, Uncle Wiggily’s sounds encapsulate the music of old-fashioned square dances of the 1920s and ’30s. Today Uncle Wiggily consists of Amy Hofer and …
by Christian Carvajal for OLY ARTS To read Sarah Vowell’s bestselling nonfiction works or hear her frequent appearances on public radio is to experience our history through the eyes of, in her own words, a “partly cloudy patriot.” Her most recent book, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, is a quirky biography of a French …
by Kelli Samson for OLY ARTS Olympia’s Bow Weevils are returning to The Oly Old Time Festival, the site of their 2016 debut. Prior to forming The Bow Weevils, Ruby Neatherlin (bass, fiddle, washboard), sisters Annie (fiddle, songwriting) and Ellie Davis (fiddle, guitar) and brothers Hatcher (guitar, mandolin) and Rizley Cox (banjo, fiddle, mandolin) played …
VISUAL ARTS REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Based on previous experience, I expected anything but traditional at in an exhibition of work by faculty and staff at The Evergreen State College. I expected political art and identity art and conceptual art, and I was surprised at how much traditional art there was—not that …
Olympia bookseller Andrea Y. Griffith of Browsers Bookshop provided readers of OLY ARTS with her book recommendations for Pacific Northwest authors for our winter 2017 edition. THE HIDDEN LIVES OF OWLS Leigh Calvez Bird books are huge in Olympia, and Seattle-area author Calvez recently held a jam-packed reading at the Olympia Library. A beautiful book …
WEEKEND PREVIEW is your weekly guide to events in Thurston County. This week, there are more than enough theater performances to keep you in your seat, waiting for lights to dim and curtains to raise in theaters across Olympia. Click here to listen to our podcast version of Weekend Preview, sponsored by Alan Fuller of …
by Adam McKinney for OLY ARTS Music history is lined with family bands, with qualities spanning the good (the Everly Brothers), the bad (the Jonas Brothers) and the indescribably weird (the Shaggs). Those examples are all sibling acts, and that avoids the potential sleaziness of parents promoting their children as music acts. It’s easier to …
by Molly Gilmore for OLY ARTS In “Playback Theatre,” the action on stage comes, not from books or scripts, but from the minds of audience members who are invited to tell their stories and see them come to life on stage. But at a Playback performance Feb. 10, books and personal stories will share the …
by Molly Gilmore for OLY ARTS Rufus Wainwright has been described as Canada’s most flamboyant man of music. Beneath the flash, though, there’s plenty of substance. Wainwright, who laughingly describes himself as a “gay troubadour,” will perform for a reduced fee at the third annual “Gayla,” a benefit for Pizza Klatch, an organization that supports …
by Adam McKinney for OLY ARTS It’s a sad fact that a lot of people, even those who would consider themselves passionate fans of music, still have a blind spot when it comes to classical and chamber music. Perhaps it’s possible that years of classical music concerts being big-ticket affairs have conditioned people to view …