Listen to Black Prairie's Wild Ones Soundtrack

By Patrick Filbin at 9:40 AM on May 17, 2013

Black Prairie—a Portland band featuring four members of The Decemberists musically adapted Jon Mooallem’s novel Wild Ones with an 11-song soundtrack that was released this week....  read more

Found in: Music, News

Catching Up With Black Prairie's Chris Funk

By Taylor Evans at 9:00 AM on September 14, 2012

The members of Black Prairie read like a who’s who of the Portland music scene. Made up of three Decemberists, Chris Funk, Nate Query and Jenny Conlee, Bearfoot and the Woolwines’s Annalisa Tornfelt and Dolorean’s Jon Neufeld, the band will release their second album, A Tear in the Eye is a Wound in the Heart , Sept. 18. With its combination of styles, the album is an eclectic mix of folk, bluegrass and European sounds. The album plays around with new elements, including the addition of vocals and drums....  read more

Found in: Music, Features

Album Stream: Black Prairie - A Tear in the Eye is a Wound in the Heart...

By Brian Tremml at 12:40 PM on September 10, 2012

Black Prairie has announced the arrival of their second album, “A Tear in the Eye is a Wound in the Heart…” which is due out Sept. 18. Black Prairie—the exploratory, back-porch ensemble founded by The Decemberists’ Chris Funk, Nate Query and Jenny Conlee—will also be hitting the road this fall in support of their new record....  read more

Found in: Featured Audio

Chris Funk's Favorite Moments of Pickathon 2010

By Chris Funk at 7:00 AM on August 16, 2010

Pickathon is a music festival located just outside of my town, Portland, Ore. It feels like you stepped onto what I’d always pictured Neil Young’s farm circa Harvest to be like, but with a view of Mt. Hood....  read more

Found in: Blogs, List of the Day

Black Prairie Releases Video and New Tracks, Announces Tour

By Whitney Baker at 5:00 PM on August 3, 2010

Black Prairie quickly became one of our favorites when the band released its debut, Feast of the Hunters’ Moon, back in April. The side-project-turned-rightful-band boasts several members in common with the hugely-popular Decemberists, including bassist Nate Query, organist/accordionist Jenny Conlee and multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk, plus vocalist/violinist Annalisa Tornfelt and guitarist Jon Neufeld. Recently, the group just announced its first-ever tour dates and dropped two new downloadable tracks....  read more

Found in: Music, News

Getting to Know... Black Prairie

By Rachael Maddux at 6:00 AM on May 13, 2010

"She was right behind a woman who asked us to sign her chest..."  read more

Found in: Music, Features

Fourteen Furniture Songs: A Playlist For Movers

By Rachel Dovey at 9:30 AM on April 9, 2010

I just moved into a new apartment last week, and finding cheapish furniture has been a chore. Chairs, tables, beds, lamps: There are a lot of things that need go into a house before it stops looking like a hermitage. Since I’ve got domestic wares on the mind, here is a playlist all about the things I’d like to have. The problem? All these silly musicians sing about are “Broken Chairs” and “Torn Blue Foam Couches”—damaged things, I suppose as some kind of metaphor for the fleeting nature of material goods. But I’d like a nice set of Ikea bar...  read more

Found in: Blogs, List of the Day

Black Prairie: Feast of the Hunters’ Moon

By Kristen Callihan at 9:00 AM on April 8, 2010

Instrumental quintet bridges continents Combining the forces of Jenny Conlee, Chris Funk and Nate Query of The Decemberists with folk musicians Annalisa Tornfelt and Jon Neufeld, Portland’s Black Prairie crafts an eclectic mix of traditional bluegrass and eastern European sounds. Though peppered with Tornfelt’s wispy vocals, this debut album is primarily instrumental, shifting between twangy folk (“Atrocity at Celilo Falls”), fiddle-heavy bluegrass (“Back Alley,” “Annie McGuire”) and gypsy swoon, full of weeping strings and bouncy accordions (“A Prairie Musette,” “Tango Oscuro”). The melodic ebb and flow through time and space is full of surprises—just when you’ve settled into the rootsy...  read more

Found in: Music, Reviews

Ten April 2010 Albums Worth Checking Out

By Austin L. Ray at 7:00 AM on April 3, 2010

Remember the other day when everyone was fooling each other with reckless abandon?  read more

Found in: Blogs, List of the Day

Eric Estrada & Mini Me + My 9 Other Favorite SXSW 2010 Moments

By Josh Jackson at 7:00 AM on March 22, 2010

This was my eighth SXSW. But it was the only one where I took a picture of Eric Estrada and Verne Troyer, so the other ones really don't count. Here are my 10 favorite moments from SXSW 2010:  read more

Found in: Blogs, List of the Day