Nick Jaina

Soundtrack to the play Girls Who Drew Horses

nickjaina — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 22:45:32 +0000

This winter I worked on the music for a play by my friend Meghann McCracken. The play, Girls Who Drew Horses, debuted at the Allways Theater in New Orleans in January 2010. I went back to Portland afterwards and recorded the music with my friend Kaylee Cole. The resulting soundtrack is available on Bandcamp for pay-what-you-will download.

“A woman lost in travel finds herself confronted by ghosts of her youth through dialogue with an abandoned Japanese doll. Shifting in time, place and perspective, Girls Who Drew Horses is a meditation on establishing identity and discovering freedom within its metaphysical boundaries.”

My SXSW Schedule looks like this…

nickjaina — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 21:06:09 +0000

March tour to SXSW

nickjaina — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:24:19 +0000

I’ll be touring the middle of this country with a drummer and bassist, first playing songs at the True/ False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri, and then going to SXSW in Austin.

I’ll also be playing some other shows in between. Check the shows page to see the dates. More will be added soon.

When I get back to the Northwest, I’ll be singing in Anais Mitchell’s folk opera Hadestown. I’ll be singing the part of Orpheus, and Corin Tucker from Sleater-Kinney will be singing the part of Persephone.

An interview about the new album

nickjaina — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 21:06:53 +0000

Matthew Singer at Willamette Week in Portland did a great job weaving together the story of all the songs on my new album. Check out the extended web interview here.

Portland Cd Release Show and Western Tour

nickjaina — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 03:05:26 +0000

Hello. I’ll be officially releasing my new album in Portland Wednesday August 24th, and following that with a tour of Western and Mountain States for two weeks in September.

The Portland show will be at Mississippi Studios and will feature the vocals of Kaylee Cole, Laura Gibson, Tahoe Jackson and others. Also on the bill are three of my favorite bands: Dovekins from Denver, Spirits of the Red City from Minneapolis, and Run On Sentence from Portland. The tour will feature Kaylee Cole and me trading vocals with a four-piece band accompanying.

You can see all the dates on the right of this page.

New Album Out Today, Digitally

nickjaina — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 21:18:16 +0000

My new album “The Beanstalks That Have Brought Us Here Are Gone” is officially out in the digital world today. You can listen and download over at Bandcamp, or at iTunes. A physical release (ew, gross) and proper tour will be coming in a couple months.

So many wonderful singers lent their talents to this project. Please have a listen, at least for their sake.

The racial composition of Portland

nickjaina — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:14:13 +0000

My recent column is about hipsters in Portland, and how the racial composition of a city matters in terms of the type of conversation the residents have about race. It’s a lot less dry than that description makes it sound, honest.

It’s also about the rapture that didn’t happen on May 21st. If it HAD happened, it would’ve looked something like this.

Wouldn’t THAT have been awesome!?

A Portland preview of the ballet music

nickjaina — Sun, 29 May 2011 22:33:58 +0000

I’ve been working on a ballet and choral music project with some people in New York over the last year. I’m pleased to say that it’s now complete and I’ll be able to preview it with our little ensemble in Portland on June 30th.

Amanda Lawrence and Nathan Langston will be joining me onstage at the Alberta Rose Theatre. We’re calling ourselves the Satellite Ensemble and excited to present this music without the dance.

This will be the only foreseeable time that you can hear this music on the west coast. The full premiere of the ballet with dance will be in New York City in October.

Cover Artist Brooke Weeber

nickjaina — Wed, 25 May 2011 17:07:39 +0000

My friend Brooke Weeber designed the cover for my new album The Beanstalks That Have Brought Us Here Are Gone. We talked over different ideas of creating artwork that had more depth than an illustration, and we came up with the idea of building a diorama. All I told her was that I wanted some bees in it somehow and she took it from there.

To the right is a different diorama she made, this one not quite as awesome or righteous as the bee-filled one she made for my album cover, but still pretty cool. Just kidding, everything she makes is a golden expression of God’s will.

She’s got a bunch of great illustrations, prints, cards and such at her site. You should get to know her.

A Spontaneously Magical Performance

nickjaina — Tue, 24 May 2011 19:00:22 +0000

A couple years ago I attended a dinner hosted by Michael Hebb. He likes to put artists and gastronomes in the same room with wonderful food and try to spark conversation. He told me that I should get up after the meal and play with the incredible singer Tahoe Jackson. It was a great idea, but the only issue was that I’d never played with her before and we had no material. I had recently played “At Last” at a wedding and suggested we should do that. She shook off that suggestion and said that I should just play “something in 6/8 time.”

Scott and William were there too and I just started in on something on the piano and she started singing and it turned into an amazing, unrepeatable spontaneous seven-minute song.

Seattle radio station KEXP was there with cameras and caught the whole thing on video. You can watch it here.