Hello Loneliness!, Friday, Mar. 6-- Local Cut

Hello Loneliness!, Friday, Mar. 6

March 4th, 2009 [6:05AM] Posted by: Michael Mannheimer | 2 COMMENTS

The shambling Portland psychedelic-folk outfit leaves it all on the stage.

[WINE-STAINED FOLK] For a two-month-old band, Hello Loneliness! sure seems confident. “We’re kind of a supergroup,” says keyboardist Travis Wiggins, struggling to keep a straight face. “My idea for the band name was the Traveling Mutherfuckin’ Wilburys. I guess it didn’t stick.”

Practicing for the first time on a hungover New Year’s Day, Hello Loneliness! began as a collaboration between Wiggins and former Wooden Indian Burial Ground leader Justin Fowler. The duo’s original vision of recording an album of “public-domain folk songs” was quickly altered when friends Justin Riggs (Curious Hands) and Dan Galucki (Wiggins’ bandmate in Please Step Out of the Vehicle) joined the fray and HL!’s songs got, well, a little bit weird.

“We had a set of folk songs that Travis and I wrote together,” says Fowler, 28. “Then my friend gave me some hash and that kind of ruined the folk songs.”

Onstage, Hello Loneliness! makes a glorious racket. Its shows are something of a shambling mess, a reminder that the band has performed live for an audience more often than it has practiced. Fowler’s songs start off in a relatively straightforward fashion, but quickly slide into jam territory—like Wooden Indian Burial Ground with a wine-stained, LSD-for-breakfast vibe.

Fowler attributes the loose nature of his new material to both the purchase of a typewriter (“It’s almost like a percussion instrument when you really get going”) and to working with a band full of songwriters. Wiggins and Riggs front their own projects, and Galucki plays with so many other bands it’s hard to keep track of him. The quartet expects to expand in the coming months, as occasional member Zeb Dewar returns from Guatemala and Paul Seely joins on lap-steel after the Builders and the Butchers tour.

While Hello Loneliness! has priorities in Portland—finishing a three-song EP with engineer Ezra Fowler and reading Charles Bukowski’s Hot Water Music, the first entry in the HL! book club—its members know they need to hit the road on tour as soon as possible.

“It’s a bit ridiculous to play around town all the time unless you’re already big,” says Riggs. “It’s almost like jacking off in front of your friends: It can be fun, but you’re not going to make it by just doing that.”

SEE IT: Hello Loneliness! plays Friday, March 6, at Monochrome Gallery with Joe Demery. 7 pm. Free. All ages.

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