Rachel Blumberg | |
|---|---|
 Rachel Blumberg playing drums for Bright Eyes | |
| Background information | |
| Born | February 10, 1969 Portland, Oregon, U.S. |
| Genres | Indie pop, folk rock |
| Occupation(s) | Musician |
| Instrument(s) | drums, percussion, vocals, ukulele, banjo, accordion, piano |
Rachel Chaiya Blumberg (born February 10, 1969) [1] is an American musician, artist, and filmmaker, best known for her tenure as the drummer for the indie rock band The Decemberists.
 | This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(November 2022) |
Blumberg was born in Portland, Oregon in 1969. She is the daughter of Naomi Blumberg, a Portland cellist and President Emerita of the Oregon Cello Society, and Bernie Blumberg, a professional musician and a public school music teacher, supervisor and principal.
In addition to drumming for The Decemberists, Blumberg was a member of many Portland-based indie bands, including Sissyface, Boycrazy, Norfolk & Western, The Minders (briefly) and M. Ward's backing band. [2]
She spent most of 2007 lending her drumming and singing talents to the touring Omaha indie band Bright Eyes on the Four Winds and Cassadaga tour. [2] In 2007 and early 2008, she recorded new records with Norfolk & Western, M. Ward, and Jolie Holland. [3]
Blumberg has recorded with Providence, RI band The Low Anthem and performed with Califone, Death Vessel, and Honeybunch. She has performed her own music under the monikers Manzanita and Arch Cape. [4]
In addition to drums and singing, she plays ukulele, banjo, accordion, piano, and other various stringed, electronic or percussion instruments. [2]
Blumberg has taught for many years at Portland, Oregon's Rock and Roll Camp For Girls and its Girls Rock! Rhode Island offshoot. [4]
Blumberg makes music videos using stop motion animation and a variety of other techniques including painting, collage, and puppetry. Notable videos she has directed include "Dry Town (Demo)" by Gillian Welch, [5] and "Jules and Jim" by Nada Surf; others include songs by Musee Mechanique, Dramady, and Tom Hagerman. [6] [7] Blumberg says her animation style was influenced by the work of the Brothers Quay and Jan Svankmajer. [8]
As a visual artist, she has shown her work in Portland, Oregon and Omaha, Nebraska. Notable musicians who own her work include Gillian Welch, Jonathan Richman, Matthew Caws of Nada Surf, Jenny Conlee of The Decemberists, and Laura Veirs.[ citation needed ]
| Authority control: Artists |
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Kill Rock Stars is an independent record label founded in 1991 by Slim Moon and Tinuviel Sampson, and based in both Olympia, Washington, and Portland, Oregon. The label has released a variety of work in different genres, but was originally known for its commitment to underground punk rock bands and the Olympia area music scene.
The Decemberists are an American indie rock band from Portland, Oregon. The band consists of Colin Meloy, Chris Funk, Jenny Conlee, Nate Query (bass), and John Moen (drums).
Picaresque is the third studio album from The Decemberists. It was released in 2005 on the Kill Rock Stars record label. The word "picaresque" refers to a form of satirical prose originating in Spain, depicting realistically and often humorously the adventures of a low-born, roguish hero living by their wits in a corrupt society.
Colin Patrick Henry Meloy is an American musician, singer-songwriter and author best known as the frontman of the Portland, Oregon, indie folk rock band the Decemberists. In addition to vocals, he performs with an acoustic guitar, 12-string acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bouzouki, harmonica and percussion instruments.
5 Songs is a six-track EP by the Decemberists initially self-released in 2001. It is the first record the band released. The misleading title owes to the fact that the final track, "Apology Song", was written after the original self-produced CD was released. Meloy liked it so much that it was added to the album when it was re-released by Hush Records in 2003.
Kaia Lynn Wilson is an American musician from Portland, Oregon, best known as a founding member of both Team Dresch, a revered 1990s queercore punk band, and The Butchies, a pop-rock spin-off from her solo work. In addition to singing, songwriting and guitar, Wilson co-established and operated Mr. Lady Records from 1996 to 2004.
Quasi is an American indie rock band formed in Portland, Oregon in 1993 by former spouses Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss. Joanna Bolme performed and recorded with the group as a bassist from 2007 to 2011.
Jennifer Lynn Conlee-Drizos is an American musician, best known as the accordionist, pianist, organist, keyboardist, melodica player, and occasional backup singer and harmonicist for the indie rock quintet The Decemberists.
Hush Records is a Portland, Oregon based record label founded by Chad Crouch.
Christopher Funk is an American musician and multi-instrumentalist best known as a member of the Portland, Oregon, indie rock band The Decemberists. He plays guitar, pedal steel, piano, violin, dobro, hurdy-gurdy, mandolin, saxophone, the theremin and many other instruments. According to Colin Meloy, as stated at the Pilgrimage Festival in Franklin, TN on September 27, 2015, Funk was originally given the middle name "Ryman" but a clerical error on his birth certificate resulted in his middle name being recorded as "Lyman."
Tarkio was an indie rock band from Missoula, Montana which included Colin Meloy prior to his forming The Decemberists. Tarkio broke up in 1999, but found new popularity in a retrospective released by Kill Rock Stars in 2006.
Norfolk & Western is an American indie rock and folk/rock band from Portland, Oregon, United States. They are not to be confused with the fallen flag railroad of the same name. An essential part of their stage set-up and sound is a turn-of-the-century Victrola Grammaphone. Norfolk and Western began as the recording project of Adam Selzer with friends, including M. Ward, playing various instruments, and evolved over time to become a fully orchestrated band. In the early days Norfolk and Western's sound was whispery, intimate, elegant folk music laced with creaky old instruments and atmospheric sound collages. Their live shows often feature band members switching instruments, sometimes even mid-song, as well as film accompaniment.
Rachel Carns is an American musician, composer, artist and performer living in Olympia, Washington, U.S. Raised in small-town Wisconsin, she went on to study painting and drawing at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City, where she completed her B.F.A. in 1991. Carns began her career as drummer for Kicking Giant, later collaborating with several bands, including The Need. She is a celebrated graphic designer, working under the name System Lux, and plays drums and percussion with experimental performance art group Cloud Eye Control.
The Silly Pillows were an American indie pop band formed by Jonathan Caws-Elwitt. They began as a home-recorded duo of Jonathan and his wife Hilary Caws-Elwitt, sharing tapes through the cassette underground. In the 1990s the band evolved into a studio-recorded full lineup, which dissolved in 2000. From 2005 to 2008, Jonathan and Hilary revived their home-recording career as "The Original Silly Pillows."
Molly Neuman is an American drummer, writer and publisher, originally from the Washington, D.C. area who has performed in such influential bands as Bratmobile, the Frumpies, and the PeeChees. She was a pioneer of the early-to-mid '90s riot grrrl movement, penning the zine which coined the phrase in its title. She also co-wrote Girl Germs with Bratmobile singer Allison Wolfe while the two were students at the University of Oregon; that title later became the name of a Bratmobile song.
Loch Lomond is an American indie folk band based in Portland, Oregon, founded as a solo recording project of Ritchie Young in 2003.
Susan and the Surftones is an American surf instrumental band. The band is considered part of the “third wave” of surf-revivalist bands that formed in the 1990s. The band was started in 1993 in Rochester, NY by lead guitarist Susan L. Yasinski, one of very few female lead guitarists in instrumental surf music. Influenced also by early Elvis and the Beatles, 1960s garage and 1970s punk music, their sound incorporates traditional surf with elements associated with these other genres, such as the use of the combo-organ. The band’s first recording deal was with Gee-Dee Records in Hamburg, Germany who released their first CD, WIthout A Word, in 1995. Subsequent releases on Gee-Dee and two other European labels, Surf Waves (Belgium) and OmOm (Italy), and four European tours, earned them a fan base in Europe as well as the US. Susan relocated to the west coast in 2000, and reformed the band in Portland, Oregon. They continued to release albums both on CD and as digital releases.
Laura Anne Gibson is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. She currently records for the U.S. independent label Barsuk Records, and the Berlin-based label City Slang. Gibson's most recent album Goners was released October 26, 2018.
Blue Giant is an American rock band from Portland, Oregon. An eclectic mix of country, indie rock, and psychedelic styles, Blue Giant have been called a Portland supergroup. The band was originally composed of the songwriters and musicians from Viva Voce, Kevin Leigh Robinson and Anita Lee Elliott, Chris Funk of The Decemberists, Evan Railton of Swords, and Seth Lorinczi of The Golden Bears, Circus Lupus & The Quails. Musically, Blue Giant could be characterized as rural psychedelic rock, with one music critic calling them a perfect country rock band.
Jeff London, is an American musician and songwriter from Queens, New York. He was a part of the Portland indie-folk music scene of the mid-nineties, inspired by artists such as Elliott Smith and Pete Krebs, and sharing stages with M. Ward, Colin Meloy, Sara Dougher, Ben Gibbard, and Ben Barnett. His album and compilation recordings on HUSH records and Jealous Butcher records from 1997 to 1999 established the connection between the sound of Portland indie-folk and a broader Portland-based songwriter school. London is a vocalist who plays acoustic and electric guitar, piano, bass, and harmonica. He is notable for his lyricism.
