Koho Bistro/AZUL Lounge & Wine Bar

On May 24th, Jackie & Jason will debut at Eugene’s hottest new music venue — AZUL Lounge and Wine Bar located at 2101 Bailey Hill Road (across from Churchill High School). AZUL is the latest addition to Kim and Kevin Hyland’s Koho Bistro, which has long been a west side favorite for outstanding seafood and fine wine. They’ve now expanded, creating AZUL Lounge and Wine bar next door, featuring the best local musicians as well as specialty cocktails, wines by the glass and a fabulous bar menu. Come enjoy this relaxing oasis, and see why it’s called Eugene’s “gem in the urban wilderness.”

Koho Bistro/AZUL
May 24, 2008
9pm - midnight or later
2101 Bailey Hill Road
(in the shopping center across from Churchill High School)
www.kohobistro.com
(541) 681-9335

Territorial May 8th

The second Thursday in May will again find us at Territorial’s Tasting Room on 3rd Ave from 7-10pm.

Each month we devote our 2nd set to covering an entire album, first song to last, and for the month of May we’ll be performing our interpretation of U2’s album “The Joshua Tree”… The whole concept was inspired by Jason’s aunt, Susan Cowsill and the Susan Cowsill Band and their “Covered in Vinyl” series. We call our version “Stealing The Covers”. It’s been a very rewarding challenge and the response has been phenomenal. Hope to see you there!

Thursday, May 8, 2008
7:00 pm - 10:00 pm
Territorial Vineyards & Wine Company (Tasting Room)
907 W 3rd Ave, Eugene, OR 97401
(541) 684-9463
www.territorialvineyards.com
Eugene’s hidden jewel. Visit Territorial’s state-of-the-art winery and swanky tasting room in downtown Eugene.

May Album Announced!

After much eager anticipation, Jackie & Jason proudly announce the album they will cover for their special second set in May …

U2’s The Joshua Tree

Featuring hits such as “Where the Streets Have No Name”, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and “With or Without You”, this album skyrocketed Bono and the boys to super stardom in 1987.

Don’t miss Jackie & Jason’s interpretation of this classic album, first song to last:

May 8, 2008 (the 2nd Thursday of the month, as usual!)
7pm - 10pm
Territorial Vineyards and Wine Company
907 W 3rd Ave, Eugene, OR 97401
(541) 684-9463

No cover. Ages 21 and over. Sample the amazing Territorial wine selections while enjoying the music and complimentary bread, cheese & snacks.

A full size pdf of the poster is available on our Free Stuff page!

Return to The Vintage - April 26th

That’s right! After a brief hiatus, Jackie & Jason will be back for Late Night at The Vintage (839 Lincoln Street, Eugene, 541-349-9181), Saturday, April 26th from 9pm to midnight. All ages welcome!!

This charming downtown hideaway specializes in fondue (both cheese and chocolate) and in sweet and savory crêpes. The menu also features such options as pizza pot pie and original cocktails like the Lava Rock.

There’s no cover charge, great atmosphere, fantastic food/drinks & service with a smile! Come join us for an amazing evening!

My dog became a bird…

Just before my dog became a bird and flew away I was doing laundry. It’d been raining steadily for over nine years and I’d grown quite accustomed to the pattering tinsel sound of it hitting the aluminum shed outside my home - a sound heard from any room in the small house. When it stopped I waited, cataloging and reevaluating my new and quieter, environment. I noticed for the first time that the windows were sadly in need of cleaning.

Looking out, I watched a conference of small birds saturate themselves with dust from under the carport (obviously well watered already, and now working to maintain their optimum wing oils) speaking to one another in that arcane language of birds. Avian bathing practices are varied: Chickadees, yellowthroats, wrens, buntings, and waterthrushes tend to dart in and out of water, immersing and rolling, before returning to shore flicking wings and vibrating feathers; The Wrentit, usually found in habitats where pools of water are scarce, wets its plumage with dew from vegetation, while birds with weak feet, such as swifts and swallows (who spend most of their time flying), dip into the water during flight, getting their baths “on the wing” so to speak; Those with stubby, weak legs, like most woodpeckers and nuthatches, simply expose their feathers when it’s drizzling. On that day, I was watching a host of House Sparrows and thus the dust bath made perfect sense following the constant rains. Feathers, you see, are marvelous and intricate devices, but keeping them functional requires constant care. As unfeathered animals, it’s easy to forget this, and it would do us well to consider such things on occasion.

Once, our ancestors could speak to birds in the whistle languages (remnants of which can still be heard in some isolated parts of the world), but I believe the total untrustworthiness of the bird race eventually resulted in us simply not valuing anything they said, until finally, through disuse, we lost the ability to understand them altogether. For myself however, when I was a young man searching for answers (as young men are oft to do before they grow wiser) happenstance found me one day resting beneath an ancient Yew in a small churchyard, north of the north end of Loch Tay, in Scotland. Over many visits (it was an isolated and quiet place, and I valued those things even in my youth) the tree grew to trust me, and on a certain morning in March, two days before the new moon, when Mercury was nearing its inferior conjunction with the Sun, and the bitter winds of Cailleach Bheur, the blue-faced hag of winter, howled through the Shire as they had howled since All Hallows Eve, it shared with me it’s memories, not least of which was the memory of birds.

So I watched them, those Sparrows, and listened with an ear toward syntax: something about a Peregrine, and a cliff pockmarked with caverns above a far away sea. Then a warning that a terrible storm approached. Had it been any other species, the thought of a storm approaching might have given me pause, but birds, as I’d learned over time, are as prone to lie and brag to one another as they are to other races, so one can never be sure about anything they say. Though it was interesting nonetheless.

I folded a white, flannel shirt that had belonged to my eldest son when he was a toddler. I’d been cleaning out closets and came across it. I held it for a long time that morning, feeling many things, and for no particular reason placed it in the laundry basket. I recalled a time several years before when birds had watched as Kwan Yin’s head was removed from her body and cast into the ferns beneath a Japanese maple beside my home. “There is no repairing that,” I’d heard one speak to the collective, “they may be able to reattach it, but it will never be fixed.” “Yes,” affirmed the collective, “there will always be a scar, even after it fades.” Being birds, they clearly didn’t understand the complexity of the situation, but there was a truth in that too… I suppose there’s truth in everything somewhere, but I digress.

Before my dog flew away, he was like any other Labrador Retriever, a family pet (I didn’t hunt) who enjoyed our company and loved the children. I was totally unaware he had ambitions beyond eating, thinking about eating, and barking at the potential threats only he could see or hear. But I saw him that day the rain had stopped, sitting on the wet grass, a small Wren perched atop his head leaning down and whispering as one of the House Sparrows (newly dusted I might add) held his ear aloft with a furious flapping of wings. It was curious. A dog’s language is actually very close to that of the birds, though at a far lower pitch of course, and their hearing is far superior. I wondered if the Wren was just not educated in the ways of dogs, or if it was concerned with being overheard. I don’t know much about the rules of avian society, but I believe teaching wingless animals to fly is frowned upon (the lack of wingless flying animals in the skies seems to support this assumption), which would explain why in the end my dog turned into a bird rather than just flying away in his canine form. In any case, the Sparrow was straining to keep the ear aloft and before long grew tired, and the ear flopped back into it’s usual place beside my dog’s head. The Wren gave the Sparrow a look that might have been an exasperated “huff” if it was human and spoke louder, indicating that my first assumption may have been right.

In reality, there was no reason for the Wren to speak any louder. Just about any dog could have heard it perfectly clear from several feet away, and this of course begged the question, why was the Wren talking to the dog at all? Clearly they didn’t know each other well, and birds rarely conversed with other races anymore. It soon became clear.

I listened. I was intriqued. It was such a simple thing really.

And then? My dog turned into a bird and flew away.

I felt happy for him. Turned out he’d always wanted to fly, and though he was content with the eating, the thinking about eating, and protecting the home from potential threats, he wasn’t thriving, he didn’t feel alive. He was just content. Most dogs (and people I might add) are perfectly content with being content, and they maintain safe, low expectations of themselves embracing the non-extrodinary, the doable and the average. But sometimes one is born without wings and despite this they want to fly. My dog was like this. You’d have never known it of course, he played the part of a content animal very well. But it wasn’t enough and he flew away.

When I sit alone considering things in ways I hadn’t considered before, I try an understand what his life must have been like. He must have had to hide his secret desire to fly, keeping it safe within his reach, but far from others, with their propensity to set reachable and doable goals, their need to equate completeness and accomplishment with self-worth, and their tendency to define themselves though those things they do. It must have been hard for one that has no wings, yet wants to fly.

I still wonder what arrangement was made between my dog and the Wren, especially on days when the rains stop. I would like for him to fly to me and tell me his tales as a bird, whether or not his heart is truly free now. Later tonight, I’ll fly to the top of the tallest thing I can find and watch for a break in the clouds, a glimpse of the stars that were so numerous, so seemingly infinite in number, that I so loved in my childhood, in those early days before the rains came. I remain eternally grateful for the conversation between my dog and a Wren I was lucky enough to overhear. It’s a simple thing really, to fly. Strange that so many are content not to.

Incidentally, no storm ever came; It was just a bird bragging, trying to make itself seem important.

Promotional Posters

It seems a lot of people like the posters we make to promote our shows. A few months ago we started branding them to look like the album we were covering in the second set (Tracy Chapman, The Police, etc), and it became some kind of a ‘thing’. So now people wonder, when they wonder about such things, not only about the album we’ll play that month, but what the poster will look like. As artists, and avid wonderers ourselves, this is cool and allows us to visually play with some of the musical elements sans the music, while providing others with something they are seeming to like.

We’ve decided to put the posters up on our site here so they can be downloaded and printed in all their wonder. It’s my personal hope (and further hope that Jackie agrees) that the posters will be used for something more creative and innovative than just hanging on a wall (unless the wall happens to itself be unique in some way). If you choose to download and print a poster and end up using it for something other than hanging (e.g. insulation in your home, a giant Jackie and Jason paper airplane, origami, a paper hat, etc.) please email us a photo of how it was used. In the case of the J&J Paper Airplane I’d prefer an in-flight photo, but it’s not required of course. You can also email us a photo of you holding the poster or poster-creation (especially if it’s a wearable creation like a hat) and we might just take a photo of us holding the photo of you with the poster just for the fun of it and put it on our non-yet-needed-or-existing UPU (Unique Poster Usage: acronym pronounced yoo-poo) page. We can be emailed at booking at jackieandjason.com.

The posters can all be found on the Free Stuff page, and will be continued to be updated.

New Free Stuff

We’ve added a few full length songs samples to the Free Stuff page. We’ll keep adding stuff here, so check back often. We’re thinking of offering full-size versions of our posters each month for download from this page as well; Feel free to add a comment to this post if there is interest in us doing that, or any other feedback you may have. Thanks!

April Fools’ Day

Everyone seems to get a kick out of April Fool’s Day except me. I must admit it is my most dreaded day of the year.

Wikipedia notes: “The day is marked by the commission of hoaxes and other practical jokes … the aim of which is to embarrass the gullible.”

That explains it … I was once told that if I were to look up “gulllible” in the dictionary I would find a picture of myself. Of course, I looked.

I was wondering if this freakish tradition was something uniquely American, but I soon learned it originated in Europe. It has all kinds of legitimate holiday background, but the trickster part apparently started in France. “The French traditionally celebrated this holiday by placing dead fish on the backs of friends.” What?? Go figure.

Of course, I just realized whoever wrote that might be preying on my gullibility as well… hmmmmm….

I was in Tucson…

I was in Tucson when it happened.
All at once,
The mountains rose up,
Shook themselves off and walked away.

In some ways it was uneventful,
but from my vantage,
looking out at an unbroken and even horizon,
I know that somewhere there can be found
a conference of ancient giants,
newly awakened -
greeting the dawn.

New Web Page

So, we have a brand new web site … and as much as there are people out there who just want the music info, some people find us interesting as human beings traveling this earth and want to know what we’re thinking about. Go figure. So this “Personal Ponderings” page is basically our blog where we will write whatever weird thoughts cross our minds. We are artists at heart, so G*d knows what will cross our minds at any given time. If you just want to know about the music and upcoming performances, you should skip this category altogether. If you find us interesting individuals aside from the music, this is where you’ll find our other random thoughts about life, the Universe and everything (42). If you choose to join us, welcome. If not, you’re welcome as well! Enjoy!