WOW Hall 45th Anniversary Celebration

            On Tuesday, December 29, the Community Center for the Performing Arts and Threadbare Print House proudly host the WOW Hall 45th Anniversary Celebration, a FREE online event featuring WOW Hall artists from over the past four and a half decades including Babes With Axes, Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, Cynthia Valentine’s Dance Empowered, David Rovics, Honey, Hot Buttered Rum, Laura Kemp Trio, Medium Troy, Moonalice, Peter Rowan, Rob Tobias, Steel Wool, The Sugar Beets, Wallflower Order, Yonder Mountain String Band, Yungchen Lhamo and Zero.    

This free event runs from 5:00 to 9:00 pm and will be available on both YouTube and Twitch.  Link will be posted at www.wowhall.org. For more information please call 541-687-2746.

Dubbed a Eugene supergroup, Babes With Axes combined the talents of Laura Kemp, Katie Henry, Debbie Diedrich and TR Kelley.  They released two albums –both recorded live in concert at the WOW Hall.

            The WOW Hall been called “The House The Daddies Built”. 

Steve Perry and his bandmates had been selling out the WOW Hall on a regular basis for eight years before 1997’s “Zoot Suit Riot” became a national hit.  The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies have been voted the WOW Hall’s Favorite Local Band for 1994, 1995, 1997, 2008, 2015 and 2019.  WOW!  How’s that for long-lived popularity?

Cynthia Valentine’s Dance Empowered combines fitness exercise and a love of music for beautiful results.  This class was so popular that, pre-COVID, it was held at the WOW Hall three times a week.

David Rovics is considered one of the finest political songwriters of this century.  Currently based in Portland, Rovics tours regularly on four continents, playing for audiences large and small at cafes, pubs, universities, churches, union halls and protest rallies.  His music is featured on Democracy Now!, the BBC, Al-Jazeera and other networks and his essays are published regularly.  The 200+ songs he makes available on the web have been downloaded more than a million times.

Moonalice is formed from previous members of the Flying Other Brothers and has been touring since 2007.  Led by Roger McNamee aka "Chubby Wombat Moonalice" (bass, guitar, vocals 2007–present) the core musicians -- Pete Sears (bass, keyboards, accordion, vocals 2007–present), Barry Sless  (bass, guitar, pedal steel guitar, vocals 2007–present) and John Molo (drums 2009–present) have recently been joined by the T Sisters and The New Chambers Brothers.  Their March show at the WOW Hall was canceled due to COVID.  Not to be deterred, the band toured online.

Watch every show LIVE and archive at http://www.moonalice.com -- 600+ shows of audio, 500+ of video, 900+ posters on MoonTunes player!

Progressive bluegrass band Hot Buttered Rum has been playing the WOW Hall for two decades. The band is Bryan Horne (double bass & vocals), Erik Yates (banjos, guitars, woodwinds & vocals), James Stafford (drums & percussion, mandolin), Zebulon Bowles (fiddle & vocals) and Nat Keefe (guitar & vocals). 

This is a group of guys with something to sing about.  Two tremendous decades of these “somethings” have led Hot Buttered Rum to their latest contribution, Something Beautiful.  Recorded and written in the hills the band has loved since their earliest days, Hot Buttered Rum stayed close to home in all respects on their latest album. With special appearances by fellow Californians Holly Bowling on piano, Barry Sless on steel guitar and California state champion Alex Sharps on fiddle, Something finds the band in rare form, loose and inspired in the way folks can be when they truly love making music together.

            Laura Kemp is beloved by Eugene music fans and for good reasons.  She has performed all over the world in various configurations, but we still think she’s all ours.  Laura has released seven studio albums and two live albums.  Her Laura Kemp Trio consists of herself on guitar and vocals, Sean Peterson on upright bass and Jeremy Wegner on mandolin, banjo and vocals.

Led by brothers JoJo and Jesse Ferreira, Medium Troy calls their music "Bohemian Dub". It’s a mix of all sweet music.

The band’s first self-produced and engineered album Bohemian Dub was released in 2006.  Soon they were packing shows with a dedicated following in the Eugene area.  Medium Troy was voted the WOW Hall’s Favorite Local Band for 2007, 09. 10. 11 and 14.  Medium Troy gave birth to the Bohemian Dub Orchestra, a multi-media conglomerate that created the Bohemian Dub Ball.  In May, 2014, Bohemian Dub and the CCPA co-produced a show involving over 100 performers held at the city’s Hult Center.

GRAMMY-award winner Peter Rowan is a bluegrass singer-songwriter with a career spanning over five decades.  He is gracing us with a previously unreleased recording.

Influenced by folk, blues, reggae, country and Jewish roots music, Eugene’s Rob Tobias has his own stamp of originality hat is both familiar and distinctive.  Some of his music has been described as “Jewish Americana”.

The Sugar Beets recorded their first album, Paraloocha Moon, at the WOW Hall in 1992.  Over those 28 years the cast has changed only a bit and is still anchored by founding members Marty Chilla (guitar, vocals), Megan Bassett (vocals), Matt Keenan (bass), Scotty Perey (keys) and Jeremy Wegner (strings).  Over the years, their compatriots have included John Shenan, Tanya Voxman, Scott Herron, Brianna Bassett, Brian West, David Burham and Halie Loren.

Guess what, we get to see three different versions of The Sugar Beets!

            Acoustic Rock Reborn!  That’s Steel Wool.  Featuring Tim Mueller as songwriter, lead vocalist and guitar player; TR Kelley (Babes with Axes) on bass and vocals, Nel Applegate (Mudzidzi) on mbira, djembe, percussion and vocals, and Randy Hamme (Raventones) on drums, this Eugene band moves the heart and soul with stories of truth and joy and love and loss, and catches fire with three part harmonies, the haunting mbira, inventive bass lines, danceable grooves and world beat percussion.  The band played for the WOW Hall’s 40th Anniversary and is still going strong!

            The Wallflower Order Dance Collective emerged from a vibrant hive of alternative culture in Eugene in 1975.  Five young women, unaware of what their impact on dance and women’s history might be, became the Wallflower Order Dance Collective. They were Laurel Near, Krissy Keefer, Linda Rose, Alex Dunnette and Lyn Neeley. Krissy describes their earliest intentions, “I suppose at the beginning it was about strong women dancing. Not ballerinas or skinny modern dancers, but athletic dancers who did not shave their legs or wear make up, that had authority with a sense of humor and worked as a collective.” 

Part of the original WOWATHON, Wallflower Order was the Hall’s primary resident company for years. Wallflower was alive with folk forms, traditions, representing women’s traditions in particular, and celebrating spectacle (from virtuosity to camp) as a way to reach out, connect, inspire, teach, and be connected to social movements. Krissy recalls, “We’d perform for 300 women in the round at the WOW Hall and women would come up to us immediately afterwards to give feedback, to tell us what they liked and didn’t. There was an active back and forth dialogue: what is women’s culture and how did women want to be seen and to express themselves and what agenda did we want to set for the women’s movement?” 

 Eventually, the company relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area but made return performances as The Dance Brigade.

Yonder Mountain String Band has redefined bluegrass music beyond the traditional acoustic genre.  Originally from Nederland, Colorado, the group is composed of Dave Johnston, Allie Kral, Ben Kaufmann, Adam Aijala, and Jacob Joliff.  The band has released five studio albums and several live recordings to date.  Currently scattered across the country, they have continued to create music together remotely.

Yungchen Lhamo was born and raised in Lhasa, Tibet.  She crossed the Himalayan Mountains to Dharamshala, India, in order to pursue her dreams. Yungchen later moved to Australia, where she won the Australian Recording Industry Award (ARIA) for best world album in 1995.  Signed by Peter Gabriel’ Real World Records, she sang at Carnegie Hall, the Lilith Fair, and at the Royal Albert Hall in London.  She has performed at the WOW Hall as a solo artist and with the Women of the World tours.

San Francisco’s Zero is a Bay Area supergroup that was founded by Greg Anton (drums) and Steve Kimock (guitar), who played together in the Dead-spinoff Heart of Gold band.  The band’s early years also featured John Cipollina (Quicksilver Messenger Service), bassist Bobby Vega and Martin Fierro on sax.  Zero recorded their third album, Go Hear Nothin’, live at the WOW Hall in 1991.  Both Anton and Kimock have played the WOW Hall many times since in outfits such as The Steve Kimock Band and Gregg’s Eggs.

The Community Center for the Performing Arts is celebrating 45 years as caretaker of the Woodmen of the World (WOW) Hall, located at the corner of 8th and Lincoln in downtown Eugene.  The building was constructed in 1932 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.  The 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization was incorporated in 1975 to save the building from demolition and keep it in community hands.  To raise the down payment a WOWATHON – five days and nights of continuous entertainment – began on December 10, 1975.  By 1983 the mortgage was paid off but the organization has always struggled financially.  Today the CCPA is debt-free but the government programs that provided support under the CARES Act are about to end.  Until the WOW Hall can reopen, donations are the nonprofit organization’s (Federal tax ID# 51-0191790) main source of income.

 Thanks to a generous WOW patron, any contributions coming in before midnight on 12/29 will be matched fifty cents on every dollar up to $15,000. Donations are tax deductible and qualify the donor to make a matching grant to the Oregon Arts Commission eligible for a state income tax credit (limits apply).  

You can become a member of the Community Center for the Performing Arts via PAYPAL or mail a check to:

WOW Hall

291 W 8th Ave

Eugene OR 97401