NightBoat Presents
A concert series bringing people together through live music recording and food. Promoting and collaborating with local artists and building community in Portland, OR. With support from the Regional Arts and Culture Council.
March 1, 2026
TWANS
Thoroughly contemporary and unpretentiously distinctive, TWANS is a true collaboration between Mike Lockwood (drums), Andrew Jones (bass), and Mike Gamble (guitar + FX). The trio’s sound is grounded in decades of collective experience across experimental, improvisational, and genre-agnostic music scenes, yet it consistently resists easy categorization. Each member brings a deeply personal musical history to the group: as individuals, they’ve worked with artists as varied as North Americans, Bobby Previte, Todd Sickafoose, and Julia Holter, as well as an ever-evolving cadre of their jazz and improvised-music contemporaries in New York, Los Angeles, and throughout the Pacific Northwest. Their backgrounds converge in TWANS as a shared language: one shaped by curiosity, risk-taking, and an almost telepathic sense of interplay.
Emerging from the turbulence of the pandemic with their full-length debut LeapDay (aptly recorded on February 29, 2020 ) the trio quickly began carving out a space for themselves on stages known for adventurous music. Since then, TWANS has performed alongside a remarkable lineage of boundary-pushing artists, including Fugazi alums The Messthetics, the Fred Frith Trio, Bill Orcutt with Zoh Amba and Chris Corsano, and MSSV featuring Mike Watt. These performances not only highlight the group’s versatility but also affirm their place within a broader community of musicians dedicated to expanding the possibilities of live, improvisation-driven music.
At the heart of TWANS lies a highly personal collection of compositions and an approach to improvisation that’s both deeply spontaneous and unusually cohesive. Their music can evoke meditative minimalism one moment and erupt into psychedelic odysseys the next. It might channel unhinged rock energy, dissolve into shimmering noise, or suggest folk songs from a future not yet discovered. But regardless of the direction the trio chooses in any given performance, there remains a core identity; an unmistakable aesthetic and shared joy of sonic exploration.
In an era where genre lines have become increasingly fluid, TWANS stands out not by rejecting categories, but by rendering them irrelevant. Their music is simply and entirely TWANS.
Nov 15, 2025
Kelli Schaefer
A few years disappeared into the dark forest of a global pandemic, but in the meantime Kelli Schaefer and her band trod through and emerged with a brand new record, Even Still. With two full-length records and two EP’s already under her belt, Even Still is another pivot in stylistic choice. Offering a fresh take on the age-old singer-songwriter trope, Schaefer delivers haunting melodies over swirling woodwinds, piano, classical guitar, and upright bass. These songs could be the soundtrack to a modern gothic, a playlist for a trudge through a muddy forest, the accompaniment to a subconscious mantra. As expected, Schaefer again demonstrates her refusal to confine herself to a single genre. She patiently excavates her past while firmly planted in the avant-garde.
April 13, 2025
The Apricots
The Apricots are an indie-folk-rock band from Portland, OR that thrives on vocal harmony. At their core, they're just a group of best friends that have found purpose in this band. Their songs will make you swoon one minute and groove the next.
JUL 7, 2024
Trio Subtonic
Trio Subtonic is a groove heavy power trio out of Portland, Oregon that blends genre bending funk with slow burning underground soul jazz. Led by keyboardist Galen Clark, Subtonic explores a coalescence of rock, soul, funk and jazz that simultaneously draws in listeners and pushes boundaries. Creating a sonic footprint reserved for more than just three people, Subtonic delivers soulful grooves, expansive improvisations and a deep pocket that compels audiences to try dance moves they didn't know they had.
FEB 17, 2024
AAN
Aan is an ever-evolving Portland based project led by singer/songwriter Bud Wilson. For well over a decade their music has waded through a primordial slurry of ART ROCK and EXPERIMENTAL POP, often lurching with calculated unpredictability into left turn ear worms. Aan consists of a 6-piece lineup with enough tones and textures to make even the most self assured sound person stress out.
NOV 18, 2023
NICK GAMER
Portland, Oregon’s Nick Gamer writes dark, cinematic Americana songs that sound equally at home in the western cosmos of Lucinda Williams and The Byrd’s Sweetheart of the Rodeo. A former guitarist for Japanese Breakfast and frontman of Le Rev, Gamer has traded indie pop hooks for the high lonesome wail of the pedal steel. His songs are a paean to the ashes of youth and the grim smile of moving on, conjuring the times feelings of isolation and dark nostalgic yearning without ever addressing the headlines directly.
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