“It’s more fun in the trees.”
— Lady Marilyn
Lady Marilyn and I hit the road last weekend for a raid into the Willamette Valley — to McMenamins Edgefield where Billy Strings was making a two-night stand. Brian and Mike McMenamin have built an empire of food, libation and live music across the Pacific Northwest since 1983. They repurpose old and often decrepit community landmarks into pub/hotel/venue complexes. Some are small neighborhood pub establishments. Edgefield is 74 acres of vineyard/ garden/hotel/ restaurant/mini-pubs/distillery/brewery/music venue and crafters’ quarters. It was once a poor farm, and then a nursing home, before becoming the exceedingly cool place it is today.
In the Garden at McMenamins Edgefield.
We drove across the Warm Springs Indian Reservation and up past Mt. Hood for the first time in a while and were reminded just how magnificent the landscape of our state truly is. McMenamins Edgefield is in Troutdale about 20 minutes east of Portland, so we had to make a sortie into the heart of the city. Destination: Powell’s City of Books.
Hadn’t been there since January 2020, and a thing or two has happened since then. The proliferation of homeless camps on the streets and onramps to freeways exploded during the pandemic, and the downtown core became a combat zone during the George Floyd protests/riots in the summer of 2020 and beyond. The evidence of all that is pretty apparent. Lot’s of boarded up buildings, lots of graffiti, lots of tents.
Powell’s remains a treasure trove.
I went in hunting for two specific books for the King Philip’s War podcast (yep, I’m doing that). I snagged one — King Philip’s War: Civil War in New England, 1675-1676, by James D. Drake — and passed on the other. Of course, the real pleasure in raiding Powell’s is turning up unexpected plunder, and on that front I scored big.
Found a tight copy of T.V. Bulpin’s Lost Trails of the Transvaal, which pretty well rounds out my collection of books by that wonderful tale-teller of the South African frontier. Found a cheap copy of Savage Scene, a biography of borderlands scalphunter Jim Kirker, my old copy having mysteriously vanished. Harris & Sadler’s The Secret War in El Paso: Mexican Revolutionary Intrigue, 1906-1920 leapt of the shelf and into my hands and I couldn’t believe my good fortune, because it’s used, cheap but in new condition.
The only book I paid full blow for was Martin Pegler’s Sniping Rifles in World War I, because I was just standing there in the book store reading it page-for-page.
A lightning strike, then run back to the farmlands…
*
If you haven’t run off down the Billy Strings sidetrail yet, get after it. He’s truly a once-a-generation talent. We had him booked for the Sisters Folk Festival back in 2017, when he was a rising phenom, but that festival was canceled due to wildfire. We’ll never get him now. He sold out two nights at the 6,500-capacity Edgefield, and is the only artist in their summer series booked for two nights.
We saw him at the Under the Big Sky Festival in Montana last summer. That Friday show was all about Ryan Bingham for Lady Marilyn — until Billy Strings absolutely blew the doors off. My “I don’t really like bluegrass that much” wife now knows his whole repertoire by heart.
Marilyn jacked up her knee a bit, so we sought “accommodations,” which we were told would allow her to bring in a chair taller than those generally allowed. What they didn’t tell us was that we were to be confined to a roped-off area. Yeah, no, not doing that. Instead, we found a corner where the hippies were dancing and the chair-height police’s writ did not run. And, as Marilyn noted, it’s more fun in the trees.
See, there’s a big crossover between the still-vibrant world of the Grateful Dead and the accelerating magic bus of Billy Strings.
Billy occasionally plays a Dead song or two (his version of Wharf Rat is stunning), and he was invited to create music for a Robert Hunter lyric, which he turned into the show-stopping Thunder, which we got to experience Saturday night.
I felt like I’d touched a standing stone and fallen back through time to 1985 and the Dead at Ventura County Fairgrounds. The environment was perfect for it — after all, one of McMenamins Edgefield’s tiny pubs is Jerry’s Ice House, where Marilyn had a “Ramble on Rose” while Casey Jones drove his train high on cocaine.
There’s a remarkable bronze sculpture of Jerry Garcia as a tree-spirit off in the woods at the edge of the venue.
All of this hit right in the x-ring of my cultural crossroads. Old-school Oregon.
Down front to catch Sam Grisman doing a guest turn on bass for the David Grisman tune “Sugar Hill Ramble.”
My phone takes crap video, so I’ll post other people’s efforts from this tour if you want a taste of what this is all about.
lane batot says
Used Bookstores are seriously dangerous places, Jim–you be careful out there! Speaking of South African adventures(you were and often are…..), did you ever see a GREAT South African survival adventure movie “Sands Of The Kalahari”(1965)?? GAWD, I LOVED that movie as a kid–considered too violent and harsh for young kids back in my childhood days, and my parents absolutely FORBID me to see it, but you know kids-I found a way! I enjoyed it all, but I mainly loved the BABOONS in it! Big old dog-headed Chacma Baboons! Laughable these days, that parents were warned not to let young, impressionable kids watch it! Although as far as it influencing me–I don’t know– I DID grow up and went to Africa and lived with baboons(and chimps) for awhile….. Anyhoo, I rewatched the film over the years, and finally found a reasonable DVD copy for myself, not that long ago. But well you know the manipulative temptation of that Computer Trading Tyranny–AMAZON! They sent me a “suggestion based on your orders” of THE NOVEL(never knew it existed before!) “Sands of Kalahari”(no “the” in the novel title) the film was based on! OF COURSE I HAD to get it–only got around to reading it lately–EXCELLENT! Highly recommended for Frontier Partisan folk into South African adventures and writing!!! The movie followed the book very well, but there were some surprises for me–changes done for the film–but not terrible ones. The book, of course, had much more in depth character development, and descriptions of the lore and wildlife and the Bushmen’s appearance in the story. Loved it! The copy I bought awhile back was reasonable–presently(I just checked), it is not so reasonable…..but perhaps another cheap copy might pop up one day!
Matthew says
The great thing about used bookstores is the thrill of discovery when you find something you have been looking for for years or something you did know was out there but you realized you wanted.
Quixotic Mainer says
One of my favorite used book stores, slain unfortunately during the plague, was run by a pair of aggressively eccentric old ladies. They had integrated a Thai restaurant and cafe’ of all things into one side, and grabbing a Thai Ice tea and rifling the stacks was always something to look forward to. The corpse of the building reanimated as a head shop, like everything that closed during the pandemic…
If “Red King’s Rebellion” wasn’t the book you passed on for King Phillip’s War, I would gladly donate it to the cause! Just let me know.
JimC says
It was not. I’d be most interested. Deuce Richardson thinks highly of that one.
Quixotic Mainer says
It’s a pretty good version of the events, and does a really good job with the principal player’s backgrounds and personalities. If you want to hit my email with an address, I’ll send it over.
JimC says
Much obliged!
Brian H. says
Looking for a copy of “My Confession” by Chamberlain was an eye opener. I ended up ordering “U.S. Dragoon” from Gorgazon. Getting off the farm this time of year is impossible. I’ve got some friends on the Billy Strings train. They are Dead-icated. We did manage to see Bob Dylan a few weeks back. We’ve seen him a lot over the years and unfortunately I’d say it was just a pretty mechanical exercise for him this last go. He very well might die on the road. Or live forever.
JimC says
I very stupidly sold a copy of My Confession because I needed cash and could get $50 for it. Now I can’t replace it for much less than $200. That and selling a Marlin .45-70 with 24″ octagon barrel are two of the dumbest moves I’ve made.
Brian H. says
I hear ya on the “sorry I sold that gun” stuff.
David Wrolson says
Brian H>>>>”Getting off the farm this time of year is impossible”<<<<
Didn't know there was another farmer here. Where are you at?(Roughly)-I don't expect you to give the address over the internet (LOL). I am in west-central Minnesota.
Corn, beans wheat hay and cattle here.
Plus I made a big mistake and built some hog barns in the late 90's and got my financial ass kicked from here to Sunday.
Padre says
I was amazed by the beauty of Oregon on my first visit there this past spring for a clergy gathering at Mount Angel. As I left the airport I was dismayed to see Portland and environs appeared to be just like what I remember of California cities with their vast expanses of strip malls and big box stores. But as soon as I got out of Clackamas I was amazed by the beauty of the landscape and how many family homesteads I was passing. (And the large numbers of heirloom livestock varieties I spotted on the small farms.) It’s a shame that such a special place gets run by Portland and Salem.
On my way back to the airport I made a (relatively) quick stop at Powells. There was a lot of police presence in the central downtown area, but you could tell where they stopped patrolling. I’ve never seen anything like the homeless camps lining the streets, and I’ve been to Seattle!
JimC says
Yeah, it’s bad — bad for everybody. Portland’s downtown used to be vibrant. I know a couple who owned a high-end restaurant in one of the hotels who are now in Bend. They survived COVID but could not survive the riots and the deterioration of the environment. I also know a Portland detective who is counting the days until he can retire here. The past two+ years have been utter shit for the PD — hamstrung by a city government that pandered to hooligans until they realized that they were encouraging the destruction of their own city. When they tried to pull their head at least partially out of their asses, it was too late. It will take years of concerted effort to turn it around, and that will not happen because they continue to elect literally crazy people and spineless twits to the city commission.
Padre says
Sadly, Anchorage has placed itself on the same trajectory. The city Assembly is overwhelmingly united in giving the homeless population a free pass and advancing every crazy lefty cause. Their latest stunt is granting themselves power to remove the elected mayor for pretty much any reason they deem worthy. More and more old-time Alaskans are moving to the outlying towns, which just makes the elections that much more lopsided.
If it weren’t for my church I’d be looking at ways to get out, myself.
JimC says
This pattern is so prevalent — and the perpetrators are so blinded by ideological cant that they seem unable to see what they have sown and are now reaping.
Greg Marshall says
We haven’t been to Portland in a couple of years. It used to be a favourite destination for us, but even then there were parts of the city that were turning into no-go zones. It very much saddened me to see such a civilized city torn by conflict.
I’ve got a lot of sympathy for the unhoused, but you can see what happens when various levels of government choose not to address the issue at any level, from root cause to practical consequences. There are lessons to be learned from societies that have dealt with homelessness and addiction successfully. Unfortunately neither your country nor mine have figured this out. Things aren’t much different north of the Medicine Line.
Re McMenamins: We’ve stayed at two of their locations (The Old St.Francis School in Bend and the Hotel Oregon in McMinnville). Very enjoyable in both cases. They are to be commended in their efforts to recycle older buildings for newer uses, and for investing in their own back yard.
I didn’t know about the music venue at this one in Troutville. We’ve attended concerts a bit further up the river on the Washington side at Mary Hill Vineyard, but never in your state.
Thanks for the tip on Billy Strings. Have to chase this one. I never thought when I was a kid I’d wind up loving this music.
JimC says
Enjoy.
Westley Wu says
I see that you are prepping a podcast on King Philip’s War and that is really exciting. I started a book called ‘Diary of King Philip’s War’ by Benjamin Church I found at the library which you might find interesting.
I’ve read many books on the war and have always found it so interesting as it seemed to foreshadow future relations between Natives and European colonists. I did not know too much about Church besides he was an excellent Woodland fighter. The book is a good for his personal insights on the action and there is a good intro from the Editors (book is from 1975).
Benjamin Church seems to be a really appropriate figure for the Frontier Partisans site, maybe an original Frontier Partisan!
JimC says
Absolutely. It was actually a sidetrail about Church’s sword that got me thinking that I really should cover Church and King Philip’s War. He has a legit claim to being the OG Frontier Partisan.