Wine Bars and Women! :)

We had a wonderful time this past week. Tuesday (3/4) was the creative day for this year’s Lullaby Project with the Oregon Symphony and Marianna is now the Artistic Director for the project. By the end of the day, we were all in tears listening to lullabies of all styles including one sung in Spanish.

On Wednesday(3/5), we played at Corkscrew Wine Bar in the cutest neighborhood in Portland - Sellwood! :) We had a marvelous time, met some new folks, and Mar got a chance to play keyboard on a couple tunes in preparation for her gig on Saturday.

Saturday(3/8), Mar played Song Suffragettes at the McMenamin’s Kennedy School. It was an evening of music written and performed by women to celebrate International Women’s Day, produced by Naomi LaViolette. Mar played keyboard for herself on 2 original tunes - Just Beginning and The Moon Sees You and played snare and was joined by The Cider Janes (amazing trio with vocal harmony!) for our song Little Bee. We all did Hand in My Pocket by Alanis Morissette to close out the evening. It was a very inspiring, uplifting evening and we had a beautiful crowd (Reece was there cheering!). We heard “I needed this” from a lot of people there, and it really did lift our hearts to be in community. Feeling so grateful for all the ways we get to connect through music. See you out there!

Valentine's Day on the Portland Spirit!

We had a lovely time playing on Friday and Saturday as the lovers cruised the Willamette River onboard The Portland Spirit. Thursday night’s snow melted just in time for us to commute on Friday and downtown was extra festive, as the Winter Light Festival was taking place. It felt great to see downtown bustling with beautiful sights and people.

We’ve played this cruise almost every year since 2014 and Marianna used to work on the boat so it is a very familiar, fun place with some of the same staff there so it always feels like a little reunion.

We played lots of ballads and love songs and had a lot of folks up slow dancing with their sweetheart. On the second night, we even had some professional swing dancers on board who, as it turns out, had seen Mar at a gig with the Cascade Zephyr Swing Band recently. Small world! We also had the marvelous Susannah Mars onboard with her husband and our friend Marilyn, who used to work on Broadway in New York!

Love to you all.

Le Coupe!

On Thursday, we ventured out to the Lair Hill neighborhood to check out Le Coupe, a new champagne bar! We heard about it from the marvelous Shelly Rudolph, who was planning to host a piano bar/singalong that night but unfortunately had to call out sick. The equally marvelous Paul Ward led gracefully from the keyboard and we had a truly magical evening. The place seats about 25 people and is a classy but unpretentious spot with nice marble tables, a lovely selection of bubbly, cocktails, and N/A drinks, and warm, friendly staff (and they put potato chips on your table! Pairs remarkably well with bubbly!). It was full of folks there to listen and to sit in and we met some fabulous singers and a wonderful trumpet player (Derek Becker). Paul called us up to do some tunes (the only time he got a break!) and we played a couple of originals and later did a standard. Cheers!

Donna Jones and Paul Ward 🎶