Show starts at 7:30pm • Doors Open at 6:30pm
LIVE WIRE MEMBERS RECEIVE 15% OFF
COVID-19 and General Ticket Information is available HERE.

BRUCE CAMPBELL

Bruce Campbell is a prolific actor, producer, writer, director, and cult icon. Appearing in over 100 movies and television shows, he is particularly well known for his iconic portrayal of Ash Williams in the Evil Dead franchise. Some of his other notable roles include Sam Axe on the USA Network series "Burn Notice," and appearances in the "Spider-Man," "Ash vs Evil Dead," and "Xena: Warrior Princess" franchises. His latest role sees him starring in the new Peacock series "Hysteria!," where he plays a small-town Michigan chief of police.

HARI KONDABOLU

Hari Kondabolu is a critically acclaimed comedian, writer and podcaster whom The New York Times calls "one of the most exciting political comics in stand-up today." His groundbreaking 2017 truTV documentary, "The Problem With Apu," sparked a worldwide conversation about representation, with The Nation hailing it as "a devastating critique of the ultimate comedic sacred cow: 'The Simpsons.'" His latest special "Vacation Baby" marks his most personal work, documenting his journey into parenthood during the global pandemic. Beyond his acclaimed stand-up work, Kondabolu co-hosts Netflix's "Snack vs. Chef" and previously co-hosted the popular podcast "Politically Reactive" with W. Kamau Bell.

BLITZEN TRAPPER

Led by singer/songwriter Eric Earley, Blitzen Trapper blend country, folk, Southern rock and progressive Americana. Launched roughly two decades ago in Portland, they garnered early attention with a series of self-released albums before breaking out internationally with a pair of critically acclaimed LPs (2007’s Wild Mountain Nation and 2008’s Furr) that would cement their status at the forefront of the modern indie folk revival. Their radiant new album 100's of 1000's, Millions of Billions is inspired by Earley's Buddhist studies, offering a captivating take on rebirth and transcendence. Bandcamp featured the album on their Spring 2024 Hotlist, marveling "somehow, after nearly 25 years, Blitzen still remains un-trapped.”

DANEZ SMITH

Danez Smith is the author of three previous poetry collections, including Homie, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Don’t Call Us Dead, winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection and a finalist for the National Book Award. Danez's poetry and prose has been featured in Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The New Yorker, GQ, Best American Poetry, and on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Their latest collection, Bluff, was written after two years of artistic silence (during which the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Minneapolis became the epicenter of protest following the murder of George Floyd) and reckons with their role and responsibility as a poet and with their hometown of the Twin Cities. 

SARA SCHAEFER

Sara Schaefer is a critically acclaimed stand up comedian, writer, and artist. Her Comedy Central Stand Up Presents half hour special debuted in November 2019 and she was the co-host of MTV’s late night show Nikki & Sara Live. Sara published her first book, Grand, in 2020 and has written for numerous television programs including Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, The Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, Would I Lie To You, and The History of Swear Words. She won two Emmy awards for her work at Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. In recent years, Sara’s satirical sketches have been viral hits, including Comedy Ad, Quarantine Barbie, How To Sell a TV Show in 3 Easy Steps, and MeResearch. The New York Times called her new solo show Going Up “ambitious and nimble” and “a feat of comedy.”

MORGAN PARKER

Morgan Parker is the author of young adult novel Who Put This Song On?; and the poetry collections Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, and Magical Negro, which won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award. Parker is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, winner of a Pushcart Prize, and a Cave Canem graduate fellow. Her debut book of essays, You Get What You Pay For, traces the difficulty and beauty of existing as a Black woman through American history, from the foundational trauma of the slave trade all the way up to Serena Williams and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

RACHEL KHONG

Rachel Khong is the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction, and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR; O, The Oprah Magazine; Vogue; and Esquire. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Cut, The Guardian, The Paris Review, and Tin House. In 2018, she founded The Ruby, a work and event space for women and nonbinary writers and artists in San Francisco’s Mission District.

DANIELIA COTTON

Danielia Cotton is no stranger to reinventing herself. Growing up in Hopewell, NJ, Danielia was raised on a steady diet of classic rock behemoths like AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, and the Rolling Stones. With a powerful first album that launched her career, Small White Town, Danielia was selected as “Artist to Watch'' by WXPN out of Philadelphia. Danielia's latest project, Charley's Pride: A Tribute to Black Country Music, pays homage to trailblazer Charley Pride - the first Black American voted into the Country Music Hall of Fame - while infusing the songs with a fresh, modern approach that is all her own. 

DANZY SENNA

Danzy Senna is the author of four previous works of fiction, including the bestselling Caucasia and, most recently, New People, as well as a memoir. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, she teaches writing at the University of Southern California.

STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES

Stephen Graham Jones is the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians. He has been an NEA fellowship recipient and a recipient of several awards including the Ray Bradbury Award from the Los Angeles Times, the Bram Stoker Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Jesse Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, and the Alex Award from American Library Association. He is the Ivena Baldwin Professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder.

ALEX FALCONE

Alex Falcone started comedy in Portland, OR where he eventually won Portland’s Funniest Person, was twice named an Undisputable Genius of Portland Comedy, and got an ice cream flavor named after him by Salt & Straw—which is one of many things he has in common with The Rock. He’s appeared in several episodes of Portlandia as one of Fred’s nerdy friends and was asked to do standup on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He's also the author of a best-selling romance novel about a mummy, and his videos have been viewed more than 250 million times. And one time he bowled a 268.

JOHNNY FRANCO & HIS REAL BROTHER DOM

São Paulo natives Johnny Franco and his Real Brother Dom are shaking up the Portland, Oregon music scene with their charm and charisma. Serving up 5-day weekends every week, no stage is too big or too small for their iconic and hilarious brand of entertainment. The duo was signed by producer Sterling Fox on his label Blanket Fort in 2020. Johnny's debut EP "Experience Report #1" combines sophisticated lyricism and original vocal stylings with a unique jangly Brazilian beat. Past performances include Treefort 2022, Jam in the Van 2022, and Pickathon 2024, along with numerous sold-out shows in Portland. Their humorous delivery of crowd-favorite originals and unique interpretations of classics produce an irresistible urge to move, laugh, cry, and applaud.

Show starts at 7:30pm • Doors Open at 6:30pm
LIVE WIRE MEMBERS RECEIVE 15% OFF
COVID-19 and General Ticket Information is available HERE.

CARVELL WALLACE

Carvell Wallace is a writer and podcaster covering race, arts, culture, film, and music for a wide variety of news outlets, including writing profiles for GQ, Esquire, Glamour, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. He has also hosted multiple podcasts, including Closer Than They Appear, which explores race and identity in America, and Finding Fred, which focuses on Fred Rogers's teachings and their use within systems of oppression. In 2019, Wallace co-authored The Sixth Man with Golden State Warriors forward Andre Iguodala. After building his career on writing unforgettable profiles, he has now turned the focus on himself in his memoir Another Word for Love, examining his own life and the circumstances that frame it—to make sense of seeking refuge from homelessness with a young single mother, living in a ghostly white Pennsylvania town, becoming a partner and parent, and raising two teenagers in what feels like a collapsing world. Kirkus calls the book "an intricate and exhilarating memoir—heartbreaking, humbling, and hopeful. An exquisite, soulful must-read."

JAMIE LOFTUS

Jamie Loftus is a comedian, Emmy-nominated TV writer, New York Times bestselling author, and podcaster. She writes and hosts popular limited-run podcasts—"My Year in Mensa" (2019), "Lolita Podcast" (2020), "Aack Cast" (2021), and "Ghost Church" (2022)—and co-hosts, with screenwriter Caitlin Durante, "The Bechdel Cast." Her first book, "Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs," was called "a wonderfully weird and wild mashup of history, social commentary, personal revelation and food journalism" by BookPage and "laugh-a-minute" by Kirkus. Her latest project, "Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)," is a weekly podcast that takes a closer look at the internet's main characters – one part reported, one part interviews, and one part Jamie collapsing her permanently internet-damaged brain – and was named one of "The Best Podcasts of 2024 (So Far)" by Vulture.

DANIELLE DURACK

A rising star in the indie-rock world, Danielle Durack emerged from the Phoenix music scene boasting pop hooks and dramatic flair. Her 2019 album Bashful, led by the hit "Sunshine," was a breakthrough, landing her on Spotify's "New Music Friday" and touring with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. 2021's No Place was a towering breakup record achievement, with standouts like "Broken Wings" and "Eggshells" drawing attention from Pitchfork, NPR and more. On her third album, 2023's Escape Artist, Durack showcases growth from heartbreak through diaristic, emotionally deep songwriting. Written during lockdown, it explores themes like escapism, trauma and tumultuous relationships across tracks like the melancholic "Jackson" and "Good Dog." An atmospheric journey of healing, the cathartic Escape Artist cements Durack as an incisive, sensitive voice in indie-rock's next generation.

JOY SULLIVAN

Joy Sullivan is a poet, teacher, and author of the national bestseller, Instructions for Traveling West. She received a Masters in poetry from Miami University and has served as the poet-in-residence for the Wexner Center for the Arts. Her work has appeared in places like Goop, Oprah Daily, and The Sunday Paper. In addition to leading international writing retreats, Joy has guest-lectured in classrooms from Stanford University to Florida International University and is the founder of “Sustenance,” a community designed to help writers revitalize and nourish their craft.

Show starts at 7:30pm • Doors Open at 6:30pm
LIVE WIRE MEMBERS RECEIVE 15% OFF
COVID-19 and General Ticket Information is available HERE.

SHALOM AUSLANDER

Shalom Auslander was raised in Monsey, New York. Nominated for the Koret Award for writers under thirty-five, he has published articles in Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Tablet magazine, The New Yorker, and has had stories aired on NPR’s “This American Life.” Auslander is the author of the short story collection Beware of God, the memoir Foreskin’s Lament, and the novels Hope: A Tragedy and Mother for Dinner. He is the creator of Showtime’s “Happyish.”

PENNY LANE

Penny Lane has been making award-winning, innovative nonfiction films for over a decade. This includes six features – most recently Confessions of a Good Samaritan, winner of the Hope Award at SXSW 2023 – and over a dozen short films. Her previous films include Listening to Kenny G (Toronto 2021) for HBO, Hail Satan? (Sundance 2019) for Magnolia Pictures, The Pain of Others (Rotterdam 2018), Nuts! (Sundance 2016) and Our Nixon (Rotterdam 2013). A 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, Penny has been honored with mid-career retrospectives at the Museum of the Moving Image, San Francisco DocFest, Open City Documentary Festival and Cinema Moderne. And yes, Penny Lane is her real name.

SIMON SHIEH

Simon Shieh is a Taiwanese American poet and essayist and the author of Master (Sarabande, 2023), which was the winner of the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber Award and the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, as well as a finalist for the 2024 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He has lived in upstate New York and Beijing, China, where he co-founded Spittoon Literary Magazine, which translates the best new Chinese writing into English. From 2008-2014 he competed as an amateur and professional Muay Thai fighter in China, Brazil, Argentina, Thailand, and the U.S. Simon's work has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.

TROPA MAGICA

Tropa Magica was formed by brothers David and Rene Pacheco in 2018. Inspired by the songs and vibes of 90’s East LA backyard quinceañeras, baptisms, family gatherings and punk shows, their signature psychedelic cumbia fusion boasts a “troop” of new “magical” sounds, blending the guitar and rhythms of 60’s Peruvian Cumbias and 90’s grunge with a neo-southern psychedelic twist. The Chicago Reader recommends their shows "if you wanna get down to music that has the spirit of laughing in the sun while food cooks outdoors, of gazing up at a starry night sky while feeling small but content, [or] of hugging the people who matter most to you."

Show starts at 7:30pm • Doors Open at 6:30pm
LIVE WIRE MEMBERS RECEIVE 15% OFF
COVID-19 and General Ticket Information is available HERE.

EMILY NUSSBAUM

Emily Nussbaum is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she’s worked since 2011, originally as the magazine’s television critic. In 2016, she won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. Previously, she was the culture editor for New York, where she created the Approval Matrix. She is the author of I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution, which was a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Clive Thompson, and their two children.

SEAN JORDAN

Sean Jordan is a stand up comedian and podcaster who co-hosts the wildly popular podcast All Fantasy Everything. Sean was named Portland’s Funniest Person by Willamette Week Magazine, has written for Comedy Central, and he was named one of the “Comics to Watch” by Splitsider Magazine. In 2019, Sean charted at #2 on iTunes with the release of his debut stand up album *The Buck Starts Here *on A Special Thing Records. In 2022, Sean made his national television debut on The Late Late Show with James Corden and followed that up in 2023 by appearing on the Comedy Central "Featuring!" series. Sean recently released his first full length stand up special "Girl Dad" detailing the process of becoming a father. To quote Paste Magazine "The record explores the nitty gritty aspects of childbirth and fatherhood that Jordan wasn’t expecting going in, as well as IVF and vasectomy. Jordan is both genuine *and *genuinely hilarious."

PINK MARTINI

Now in its 30th year, the "little orchestra" Pink Martini was founded by Thomas Lauderdale in Portland, Oregon in 1994. Drawing inspiration from around the globe and crossing genres like classical, jazz and vintage pop, their breakthrough 1997 hit "Sympathique" became an overnight sensation in France. Featuring a dozen multilingual musicians and songs in 25 languages, they've performed worldwide with more than 70 orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the Boston Pops, the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center, the Sydney Symphony at the Sydney Opera House, and the BBC Concert Orchestra at Royal Albert Hall in London. Notable appearances include The Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. On their indie label Heinz Records, Pink Martini has released nine studio albums selling over 3 million copies globally. The genre-defying band's unique sound transcends generations and cultures, blending global musical influences with a modern, exuberant spirit.

The Live Wire Speakeasy Series is a collaboration with our favorite Oregon winemakers. Domaine Drouhin Oregon Winery is one of the most beautiful in the region and produces some of the finest Pinot Noir and Chardonnay fruit in the world.

Your afternoon will begin with a wine tasting and tour of the Dundee Hills Estate Winery and Vineyard. You and your new friends (truly, our community is the coolest!) will then wind your way down to the “Secret Garden” where your host Luke Burbank will kick off the Live Wire recording, featuring a musical performance from acclaimed singer-songwriter Anna Tivel. NPR Music’s Ann Powers calls her “unmatched as an empath among her folk-leaning peers… [with] the voice of a wobbly angel and a gift for making the poetic palpable.” 

Settle into a dreamy music set followed by a cozy conversation, while you sip your wine and take in the majestic sights of the Willamette Valley.

We can’t wait to indulge in the final days of summer with you in this special way.

Tickets are VERY limited, so be sure to tell your friends and grab them while you still can!

Show starts at 7:30pm • Doors Open at 6:30pm
LIVE WIRE MEMBERS RECEIVE 15% OFF
COVID-19 and General Ticket Information is available HERE.

IAN KARMEL

Ian Karmel is an Emmy award winning LA-based stand-up comedian, actor, and writer. Ian was head writer for The Late Late Show with James Corden, and was one of the founding writers in the show's 2015 re-creation. His stand-up has been featured on Conan, The Late Late Show, Comedy Central, Netflix's The Comedy Line Up, and as Just for Laughs New Face in 2013. His debut comedy album, 9.2 on Pitchfork, was released in 2015. Ian hosts the weekly podcast All Fantasy Everything, where funny people and experts come together to fantasy draft pop culture. Ian played an instrumental role in Portland's comedy renaissance and was voted Portland's Funniest Person in their inaugural contest. His debut memoir, T-Shirt Swim Club, co-written with his sister Alisa Karmel, explore the daily humiliations of being fat and why it’s so hard to talk about something so visible. Kirkus calls it “a comic and philosophical exploration suffused with hard-won wisdom and charming wit.”

LAURIE KILMARTIN

Laurie Kilmartin is a comedian and an Emmy-nominated/WGA Award-winning writer for CONAN, who has also written for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, The Late Late Show, and Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn. She has performed standup on CONAN, The Late Late Show with James Corden, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Comedy Central and Showtime. Her standup special, 45 Jokes About My Dead Dad, made Vulture’s list of Top Ten Comedy Specials of 2016. Laurie has written two books, Dead People Suck and the New York Times bestseller Shitty Mom. She and fellow comic Jackie Kashian host a popular podcast about standup comedy called The Jackie and Laurie Show. Her new one hour comedy special, Cis Woke Grief Slut, is availale on AppleTV, Amazon Prime and YouTube.

NOË ÁLVAREZ

Noé Álvarez was born to Mexican immigrant parents and raised working-class in Yakima, Washington. His first book, "Spirit Run: A 6,000-Mile Marathon Through North America's Stolen Land," chronicled a four–month–long journey from Canada to Guatemala alongside other indigenous runners and was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. His latest book, "Accordion Eulogies: A Memoir of Music, Migration, and Mexico," is an odyssey to repair a severed family lineage, told through the surprising history of a musical instrument. Booklist calls him "an essential contemporary voice" and Publishers Weekly calls this book "[a] poignant blend of personal and cultural history."

LIZZIE NO

Singer-songwriter and guitarist Lizzie No has been hailed by NPR as "a magnetic performer and a rising star in the folk world." She burst onto the indie folk scene with her 2017 debut "Hard Won," praised by Billboard for being "simultaneously understated and fervent." After a dizzying five-year span (including appearances at AmericanaFest, the Newport Folk Festival, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, and SXSW, as well as tours with Iron & Wine, Son Little, and Adia Victoria), she found herself at the forefront of a new vanguard of genre-defying artists. Her latest album, "Halfsies," searches for freedom from the constraints of categorization, her own personal despair, and an increasingly violent and nightmarish American cultural and political landscape. Rolling Stone calls it "a daring leap forward that's bound to make new fans."

Patricia Reser Center for the Arts • Beaverton Oregon

Show starts at 7:30pm. $35 General Admission (after fees), $25 Student & Under 35 (after fees)

Patricia Reser Center for the Arts Health and Building Policies are available here.

* This show is not included in our Portland Season pass.

ZAINAB JOHNSON

Zainab Johnson is a stand-up comedian, actress, and writer. Her work is based on her unique point-of-view, which was shaped growing up in Harlem as one of thirteen siblings in a black Muslim family.  Zainab debuted her very first one hour comedy special “Hijabs Off” on Amazon Prime Video, is currently a series regular on the Amazon Original hit series titled "Upload" from Greg Daniels, is one of the hosts for Netflix's show "100 Humans", and starred as Dr. Hanniel in the web series Avant-Guardians. She made her first late night stand up appearance on NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers  and had breakout appearances on HBO’s All Def Comedy,  NBC’s Last Comic Standing, and has performed at the JFL Comedy Festival in Montreal. She is a paid regular at The Comedy Store, The Improv, and Laugh Factory in Los Angeles as well as the Comedy Cellar in New York City.

IVAN MCCLELLAN

Ivan is a photojournalist and designer whose work has been featured in ESPN, GQ, Atmos, Elle, W Magazine, The New York Times and Dazed and displayed in museums and galleries across the country including, Portland Art Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, and Buffalo Bill Center of the West. His current project, Eight Seconds, is an exploration of Black cowboy culture around America, in which he reveals the connection between Black folks, the land, and animals creating a rich narrative, disrupting myths and stereotypes about contemporary Cowboys. His personal connections to the subjects in his photography offer a glimpse into a reality seldom presented by popular media.

KRISTIN HERSH

Kristin Hersh’s extraordinary four-decade music career is bookended by stints in Throwing Muses – the band she co-founded at age 14 – who blazed across the US grunge scene until their hiatus in 1997. She then continued to tour and release critically adored records, both solo and with her new band, 50FOOTWAVE. Throwing Muses regrouped in 2002, and Hersh also began to chronicle her life in book form, penning three memoirs. In her latest book, "The Future of Songwriting," Hersh meditates on the future of her craft and considers her future as a songwriter.

Show starts at 7:30pm • Doors Open at 6:30pm
LIVE WIRE MEMBERS RECEIVE 15% OFF
COVID-19 and General Ticket Information is available HERE.

AMANDA MONTELL

Amanda Montell is a writer, linguist, and podcast host living in Los Angeles. She is the critically acclaimed author of three nonfiction books, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language, and The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality (forthcoming April 9, 2024 from OneSignal). She is also a creator and host of the hit podcast, Sounds Like A Cult. Amanda’s books have earned praise from The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Kirkus Reviews, and more. Cultish was named a best book of 2021 by NPR, was shortlisted for several prizes including the Goodreads Choice Awards and getAbstract International Book Award, and is currently in development for television. Sounds Like A Cult won “Best Emerging Podcast” at the 2023 iHeart Radio Podcast Awards and was named a best podcast of 2022 by Vulture, Esquire, Marie Claire, and others.

Amanda’s essays and reporting have appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire, and elsewhere. She was born and raised in Baltimore, MD and holds a degree in linguistics from NYU.

ROGER REEVES

Roger Reeves is the author of two poetry collections King Me and Best Barbarian, and the essay collection Dark Days: Fugitive Essays. He is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a 2015 Whiting Award, and Radcliffe Fellowship from Harvard University. His essays and poems have appeared in Poetry, the New Yorker, Granta, the Yale Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Austin, Texas.

MEKLIT

Meklit Hadero, an Ethio-American vocalist, mixes the sounds of East Africa and the Bay Area so smoothly Silicon Valley should use her process to make a super blender. Her latest album When the People Move, the Music Moves Too was called “...compelling and wholly her own” by Afropop. A singer-songwriter with a love of collaboration, she’s also a TED Senior Fellow whose talk “The Unexpected Beauty of Everyday Sounds” has been viewed over 1.2 million times. Meklit is also the host of the podcast Movement, where she tells stories of global migration through music. Get ready to get down with Meklit.

BRIAN LINDSTROM

Brian Lindstrom is an award-winning filmmaker, whose previous projects include the documentaries “Mothering Inside,” which was instrumental in the advocacy movement which made Oregon the first state to pass a Bill of Rights for the Children of Incarcerated Parents, and “Alien Boy: The Life & Death of James Chasse,” an intense examination of police brutality in the death of a non-violent man experiencing mental illness. His latest film, “Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill” captures the never-before-told story of folk-rock icon Judee Sill, who in just two years went from living in a car to appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone. The documentary charts her troubled adolescence through her meteoric rise in the music world and early tragic death, featuring interviews with Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, David Crosby, Graham Nash, and more. Variety calls the film “the definitive documentary of an unsung singer-songwriter and one of rock’s saddest stories” and Fim Threat warns that it’s “the kind of film that buries itself in your ribcage and keeps glowing for days afterward.”

LIVE WIRE MEMBERS RECEIVE 15% OFF
COVID-19 and General Ticket Information is available HERE.

HANIF ABDURRAQIB

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio, and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grant. His book, A Little Devil in America, was the winner of the Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burns Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award. His first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was named one of the books of the year by NPR, Esquire, BuzzFeed, O: The Oprah Magazine, Pitchfork, and Chicago Tribune, among others. Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest was a New York Times bestseller and a National Book Critics Circle Award and Kirkus Prize finalist and was longlisted for the National Book Award. Publishers Weekly writes his latest book, "There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension," is "a triumphant meditation on basketball and belonging... the narrative works as if by alchemy, forging personal anecdotes, sports history, and cultural analysis into a bracing contemplation of the relationship between sports teams and their communities. This is another slam dunk for Abdurraqib.”

NAOMI FITTER & JON THE ROBOT

Naomi Fitter escaped from Ohio at the age of 22. She has opened for Bil Dwyer, Laurie Kilmartin, and Whitney Cummings and performed in the All Jane Comedy Festival. Nerds take note - her Singu-hilarity and Naughty but Nerdy shows run regularly at the Corvallis Majestic Theater, as well as on tour all around the country. When she's not telling jokes, she spends her time studying robots as an assistant professor of robotics at Oregon State University.

Jon the Robot is Naomi's autonomous joke-telling machine. He has not learned to pass captcha challenges, but he hopes to captcha your heart.

BRITTANY DAVIS

For Brittany Davis, "Sound is the way I've always seen my world.” A Seattle native and born blind, this soulful, genre-breaking musician and producer began recording music at age thirteen while homeless. Davis was signed to Loosegroove Records in 2022, the Seattle label co-founded by Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard, and received rave reviews on their debut EP I Choose To Live. Now with their new March 2024 full length release, Image Issues, Davis harnesses the energy of something quite divine and delivers it thoughtfully.

Y LA BAMBA

Y La Bamba is an indie alternative/experimental band lead by Luz Elena Mendoza Ramos. Their music has been called "an unsparing work of sonic catharsis” by Rolling Stone Magazine and have appeared on NPR’s Top 50 Albums. On the map since 2008, they’ve released seven albums, their latest being, “Lucha.” The album reflects on their Mexican heritage and subjects of love, queerness, intimacy, personal struggles, and the growth that ensued. For this album to be completed as a singular piece of art, multiple stories had to be layered and pieced together. Mendoza Ramos states, “I’ve been wanting to let whatever feels natural—with rhythm and musical instruments like congas and singing—to just let it be, in the way that I'm trying to invoke in myself.”

Show starts at 7:30pm • Doors Open at 6:30pm
LIVE WIRE MEMBERS RECEIVE 15% OFF
COVID-19 and General Ticket Information is available HERE.

IJEOMA OLUO

Ijeoma Oluo (ee-joh-mah oh-loo-oh) is a Seattle-based Writer, Speaker and Internet Yeller. Her work on social issues such as race and gender has been published in The Guardian, Esquire, Washington Post, ELLE Magazine, New York Times, NBC News and more. She has been featured on The Daily Show, All Things Considered, BBC News, and more. Her #1 NYT bestselling first book, So You Want To Talk About Race, was released January 2018 with Seal Press. Her Second book, MEDIOCRE: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, was published December 2020 with Seal Press and her upcoming book, Be A Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World - and How You Can Too, will be released January 2024 with Harper One. Ijeoma was named one of the Most Influential People in Seattle by Seattle Magazine, one of the 50 Most Influential Women in Seattle by Seattle Met, one of The Root's 100 Most Influential African Americans in 2017 & 2018, and is the recipient of the Feminist Humanist Award 2018 by the American Humanist Association, the Harvard Humanist of the year 2020, the Media Justice Award by the Gender Justice League, and the 2018 Aubrey Davis Visionary Leadership Award by the Equal Opportunity Institute.

JOHN CRAIGIE

Much like community, music nourishes us mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. It also invites us to come together under the same roof and in a shared moment. In similar fashion, John Craigie rallies a closeness around music anchored by his expressive and stirring songcraft, emotionally charged vocals, lively soundscapes, and uncontainable spirit. The Portland, OR-based singer, songwriter, and producer invites everyone into this space on his 2024 full-length album, Pagan Church. Following tens of millions of streams, sold out shows everywhere, and praise from Rolling Stone and more, he continues to captivate.

“The music is always evolving and devolving with each new record,” he observes. “With my last album Mermaid Salt, I really wanted to explore the sound of isolation and solitude as everyone was heading inside. With this record, I wanted to record the sound of everyone coming back out.”

In order to capture that, he didn’t go about it alone…

Instead, he joined forces with some local friends. At the time, TK & The Holy Know-Nothings booked a slew of outdoor gigs in Portland and they invited Craigie to sit in for a handful of shows. The musicians instinctively identified an unspoken, yet seamless chemistry with each other. Joined by three of the five members, Craigie cut “Laurie Rolled Me a J” and kickstarted the process. With the full band in tow, they hunkered down in an old schoolhouse TK & The Holy Know-Nothings had converted into a de facto headquarters and studio, and recorded the eleven tracks on Pagan Church.

JANE MARIE

Jane Marie is a Peabody and Emmy Award–winning journalist, a former producer of This American Life, and the host of podcasts The Dream and DTR. Her writing has appeared in Jezebel, Cosmopolitan, The Toast, and more. Her book “Selling the Dream: The Billion-Dollar Industry Bankrupting Americans” exposes the scourge of multilevel marketing schemes and how they have profited off the evisceration of the American working class.

W. KAMAU BELL

W. Kamau Bell is a stand-up comedian, director, producer, husband, and dad. For seven seasons, he was the host and executive producer of the five-time Emmy Award-winning CNN docu-series United Shades of America. In 2023 he won an Emmy for his HBO documentary 1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed. He also won a Peabody Award for his 2022 Showtime docu-series We Need to Talk About Cosby. He is the co-author of the New York Times bestselling book Do the Work: An Antiracist Activity Book and the author of The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6' 4", African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama’s Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian. His newest writing project is the substack newsletter, Who's With Me? His comedy special, Private School Negro, is available on Netflix.

The James Theater • Iowa City, Iowa

Show starts at 7:00pm. Admission: Included with festival pass, individual tickets also available

* This show is not included in our Portland Season pass.

SG GOODMAN

Heralded as an “untamed rock 'n' roll truth-teller” by Rolling Stone, S. G. Goodman gracefully pushes out a sound that is folky yet “gritty” and layered with ethereal vocals. Goodman’s 2020 debut album Old Time Feeling, which tells a story of life in the South, was co-produced by My Morning Jacket’s frontman Jim James. Her second full length album Teeth Marks was released in 2022 which Pitchfork describes as “synthesized decades of Southern music into a singular vision.”

MORGAN PARKER

Morgan Parker is the author of young adult novel Who Put This Song On?; and the poetry collections Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, and Magical Negro, which won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award. Parker is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, winner of a Pushcart Prize, and a Cave Canem graduate fellow. Her debut book of essays, You Get What You Pay For, traces the difficulty and beauty of existing as a Black woman through American history, from the foundational trauma of the slave trade all the way up to Serena Williams and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the best-selling memoir In the Dream House and the award-winning-short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She is also the co-editor of "Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games," a collection of essays in which the writer-gamers find solace from illness and grief, test ideas about language, bodies, power, race, and technology, and see their experiences and identities reflected in―or complicated by―the interactive virtual worlds they inhabit.

SIMON SHIEH

Simon Shieh is a Taiwanese American poet and essayist. He is the co-founder Spittoon Literary Magazine, which translates the best new Chinese writing into English. From 2008-2014 he competed as an amateur and professional Muay Thai fighter in China, Brazil, Argentina, Thailand, and the U.S. "Master: Poems", his first collection of poetry, follows the speaker’s struggle with masculinity from a martial arts school in upstate New York to a boxing academy in Beijing. The collection was the winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize and is a finalist for the 2023 Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Town Hall Seattle - Great Hall • Seattle Washington

Show starts at 7:30pm • Doors Open at 6:30pm
$35 General Admission • $45 Preferred Seating
LIVE WIRE MEMBERS RECEIVE 15% OFF

Town Hall Seattle Health and Building Policies are available here.

* This show is not included in our Portland Season pass.

DULCÉ SLOAN

DULCÉ SLOAN is one of the sharpest, fastest-rising voices in comedy. Bust magazine calls her “comedy gold,” while Indiewire describes her as “a fresh and unique voice in the world of stand-up comedy.” She was included in Variety’s prestigious Top Ten Comedians to Watch list, and Slink magazine just crowned her “The New Queen of Comedy.” Rolling Stone recently hailed her as one of the Ten Comedians You Need to Know. As a correspondent on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Trevor Noah since 2017, her segments have garnered millions of views. Dulcé stars as one of the voices on the animated FOX series The Great North, joining an ensemble of comedy heavyweights, including Will Forte, Jenny Slate, Nick Offerman, and Megan Mullally. When Dulcé’s Comedy Central Presents stand-up special premiered on Comedy Central, the New York Times included the half hour in their “Best Comedy of 2019” roundup.

DESSA

Singer, rapper, and writer Dessa has made a career of bucking genres and defying expectations—her résumé as a musician includes performances at Lollapalooza and Glastonbury, co-compositions for 100-voice choir, performances with the Minnesota Orchestra, and top-200 entries on the Billboard charts. She contributed to the #1 album The Hamilton Mixtape and the RBG documentary; her track, “Congratulations,” has notched over 20 million streams. As a writer, she’s been published by The New York Times and National Geographic Traveler, broadcast by Minnesota Public Radio, and published a memoir-in-essays (My Own Devices, 2018) in addition to two literary collections. As a speaker, Dessa has delivered keynote speeches and presentations on art, science, and entrepreneurship; guest lectures at universities and colleges across the US; and a TED Talk about her science experiment on how to fall out of love. She’s also the host of Deeply Human, a podcast created by the BBC and American Public Media. Dessa has been covered by Pitchfork, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal amongst others. The LA Times says she “sounds like no one else.” NPR’s All Songs Considered calls her “a national treasure.” On the stage and on the page, Dessa’s style is defined by ferocity, wit, tenderness, and candor.

JAY JURDEN

Jay is a comedian, actor and an Emmy and WGA nominated writer based in New York City. He was recently a staff writer and panelist for The Problem With Jon Stewart on Apple TV + and his standup has been featured everywhere from Comedy Central to NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon three times, CBS’ The Late Late Show with James Corden and The Drew Barrymore Show. In 2019, Jay was selected to be a New Face as part of the prestigious Just For Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal and in 2022, Jay was selected as one of Variety’s 10 Comics To Watch.

ANNIE RAUWERDA

Annie Rauwerda is a writer, comedian, and Wikipedia enthusiast who lives in New York City. She maintains the "Depths of Wikipedia" social media accounts and she is writing a book about Wikipedia set to be published by Little, Brown in 2025.

Come celebrate Live Wire THEN, NOW, and EVERYTHING in-between with a packed
line-up of immense talent! It all takes place Saturday, March 16 at Revolution Hall!

Our Roots: Show Bar at Revolution Hall

3-4:30 pm: Luke Burbank interviews early host and head writer Courtenay Hameister alongside founders Kate Sokoloff and Robyn Tenenbaum! Expect great storytelling and great dish from the early days of Live Wire!

5-6:30 pm: We are thrilled to bring back some of the original members of FACES FOR RADIO! This ‘best of’ sketch comedy extravaganza is directed and hosted by Courtenay Hameister.

Main Stage Show: Revolution Hall

8-10 pm, doors open at 7 pm: We'll be joined by long time Live Wire friends, esteemed writer Cheryl Strayed, comedian Mohaned Elsheiky, and soul-band Ural Thomas & The Pain, and MORE!

TICKETING:

• $125: VIP All-Access Pass grants you all-access to both events + our post-show reception

• $45-75: General Admission and Preferred Tickets (8pm show only)

• $25: Afternoon Programming/3-7 pm in Show Bar - passes are available as an add on!

Fine print: Live Wire Members receive discounts with Member Code. Season Passholders: the Anniversary Main Stage Show (8pm) is included in your season pass. Food and drinks will be available all day and night for purchase at Show Bar!

CHERYL STRAYED

Cheryl Strayed is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, which was made into an Oscar-nominated film; Tiny Beautiful Things, which was adapted into a Hulu television series and as a play; Brave Enough; and the novel Torch. Her books have sold more than five million copies worldwide and have been translated into more than forty languages. Her award-winning essays and short stories have been published in The Best American Essays, the New York Times, the Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, and elsewhere. Strayed writes the popular Substack newsletter “Dear Sugar” and has hosted two hit podcasts, Dear Sugars and Sugar Calling.

MOHANAD ELSHIEKY

Mohanad Elshieky is a New York based, Libyan born comedian who made his national TV debut on Conan and has been featured on Comedy Central. A writer on the hit podcast "Lovett or Leave It", he was also one of the hosts of Lemonada’s webby nominated podcast "I’m Sorry." In 2018, he appeared in an episode of Epix’s "Unprotected Sets" and has been featured in Kumail Nanjiani's Little America book.

URAL THOMAS & THE PAIN

Born in Meraux, Louisiana, in 1939, and moving with his family to Portland, Oregon during World War II, Ural Thomas grew up to become Rose City’s Soul Brother Number One. Already an established singer in his teens, he became the leader of the wild twistin’ rhythm and blues vocal group The Monterays – who achieved regional fame and recorded the canonical single “Push-Em Up” for the local Sure Star Records. His success brought him to Los Angeles where he caught the ear of industry bigwig Jerry Goldstein of The Strangeloves, best remembered for managing Sly and The Family Stone and producing dozens of iconic records by the likes of War, The McCoys, and The Angels. Goldstein saw star quality in the young singer and brought him into the studio with arranger Gene Page (known for thousands of recordings with everyone from Aretha Franklin to Elton John to a veritable who’s who of Motown stars) to record two landmark 1967 singles “Pain Is The Name of Your Game” and “Can You Dig It” for the MCA pop subsidiary UNI. Around this point Ural also recorded a 1968 live LP for MCA’s soul imprint Revue and the 1967 James Brown-informed proto-funk dancefloor dynamite that is “Deep Soul” for Seattle’s Camelot label. All are widely admired and continue to be heard at DJ sets and dance parties worldwide. ​

Ural Thomas & The Pain's new album Dancing Dimensions will be released 3rd June via Bella Union and available to preorder here. To mark the occasion the celebrated soul star has shared an entertaining part-animated video for the album’s irresistible title track and announced a London Jazz Cafe show on Friday 17th June as well as performing at the End Of The Road festival in September.

Patricia Reser Center for the Arts • Beaverton Oregon

Show starts at 7:30pm. $35 General Admission (after fees), $25 Student & Under 35 (after fees)

Patricia Reser Center for the Arts Health and Building Policies are available here.

* This show is not included in our Portland Season pass.

BIANCA BOSKER

Bianca Bosker is the New York Times bestselling author of Cork Dork and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Best American Travel Writing, and been recognized with awards from the New York Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, and more. Her new book Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See is out February 6, 2024.

TESSA HULLS

Tessa Hulls is an artist, writer, and adventurer who is equally likely to disappear into a research library or the wilderness. Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Atlas Obscura, and Adventure Journal, and her comics have been published in The Rumpus, City Arts, and The Margins. She has been awarded grants from the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, 4Culture, and the Robert B McMillen Foundation, and received the 2021 Washington Artist Trust Arts Innovator Award. For the last almost-decade, she has focused on making Feeding Ghosts (MCD, 2024), a graphic memoir that traces three generations of women in her family across a backdrop of Chinese history to explore the complicated ways that mothers and daughters both damage and save one another.

SARAH MARSHALL

Sarah Marshall is a writer, podcaster, and media critic who wonders why we keep falling for the same old myths. Why is the maligned woman a staple of our news media? Why do we believe that serial killers are brilliant? How do we keep stumbling into all these moral panics? These are some of the questions that propel Sarah’s work as co-host of the popular modern history podcast You’re Wrong About, which has been highlighted in the New Yorker, the Guardian and Time Magazine. She loves Portland, Oregon, Philly and Las Vegas in that order, and rumor has it she is writing a book about the Satanic Panic.

PURE BATHING CULTURE

Pure Bathing Culture is a Portland based indie pop band consisting of members Sarah Versprille and Daniel Hindman. Their debut album Moon Tides was released in 2013 following the release of three additional full length albums of dreamy shoe gaze melodies with a touch of sparkle. They’ve toured with Father John Misty, La Luz, Widowspeak, and Tennis. Their latest album Chalice was released in 2023 which embodies a collection of songs about the ritual of creativity, progress and transformation, and the search for transcendence and joy.

Show starts at 7:30pm • Doors Open at 6:30pm
LIVE WIRE MEMBERS RECEIVE 15% OFF
COVID-19 and General Ticket Information is available HERE.

MOSHE KASHER

Moshe Kasher is a stand-up comedian, writer, and actor. He is the author of Kasher in the Rye. He has written for various TV shows and movies, including HBO’s Betty, Comedy Central’s roasts and Another Period, Zoolander 2, Wet Hot American Summer, and many more. His Netflix specials include Moshe Kasher: Live in Oakland and The Honeymoon Stand Up Special. He’s appeared in Curb Your Enthusiasm, Shameless, The Good Place, and other fun things. He co-hosts The Endless Honeymoon podcast with his wife, Natasha Leggero. Publisher's Weekly calls his latest book, Culture Vulture: A Memoir in Six Scenes, “[a] winning blend of humor and pathos . . . This will resonate with readers who’ve felt alone in an overwhelming world.”

SLOANE CROSLEY

Sloane Crosley is the author of the novels Cult Classic and The Clasp and three essay collections: Look Alive Out There and the New York Times-bestsellers I Was Told There’d Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number. Grief Is for People is her sixth book.

GLITTERFOX

Glitterfox is a Portland, OR-based indie folk band lead by married couple Solange Igoa and Andrea Walker with Eric Stalker and Blaine Heinonen on bass and drums. Since being named one of Portland's "Best New Bands" by the Willamette Week in 2022, coming away from Oregon Country Fair 2022 one of the most buzzed-about breakout acts, and being named winners of the High Sierra Music Festival Band Competition in 2023, Glitterfox has worked relentlessly to electrify their live show while honing in on the inimitable "west coast indie meets Southern Americana songwriting" style that defines Glitterfox song craft.

MX. DAHLIA BELL

Hilarious, ignant, and the best sort of mess, Portland-based comedian Mx. Dahlia Belle has been compared to a Swiss Army knife - different tools to extract sharpness, softness, vulnerability, hope, and wicked wit. She's been declared one of "11 Trans Comedians... Funnier Than Dave Chappelle" by Out Magazine and the funniest of Willamette Week's Funniest Five. In addition to having written for Cosmopolitan Magazine, The Guardian, The Stranger, and Portland Mercury, she has been a repeat guest on NPR, CBC, XRAY FM, and Portland Radio Project (PRP). Live performances have included NW Black Comedy Festival, Upper Left Comedy Festival, Mutiny Radio, and an awkward conversation with John Waters and Piers Morgan.

Show starts at 7:30pm • Doors Open at 6:30pm
$30 General Admission • $45 Preferred Seating
LIVE WIRE MEMBERS RECEIVE $5 OFF

DAVE HILL

Dave Hill is a comedian, writer, actor, and musician who has appeared on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Girls5eva, Joe Pera Talks with You, Inside Amy Schumer, @midnight, and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, among other programs. He is the author of four books, including The Awesome Game: One Man’s Incredible, Globe-Crushing Hockey Odyssey in which Dave searches to answer the ultimate question in sports: Why is hockey so incredibly awesome? He is a regular contributor to public radio’s This American Life, hosts the podcast The Dave Hill Goodtime Hour, and is the resident heavy metal expert on Malcolm Gladwell and Rick Rubin’s Broken Record podcast. Dave also plays guitar and sings in his own rock band, Valley Lodge, whose song “Go” is the theme song for HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

HARI KONDABOLU

As one of Live Wire's very favorite guests, comedian Hari Kondabolu might be the smartest person you laugh at this year. Before becoming a regular on public radio and appearing on NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me and Midday on WNYC, Hari earned a Masters in Human Rights from the London School of Economics and worked as an immigrant rights organizer in Seattle. Because of his educational background, his comedy is a complex blend of social commentary, honest personal experience, and trenchant political wit. He has released two comedy albums and has performed on Conan, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and The Late Show with David Letterman among others.. His 2018 Netflix special, Warn Your Relatives, made many "Best of" lists, and his critically-acclaimed documentary, The Problem with Apu, has been making waves since 2017. He also co-hosts the podcast The Untitled Kondabolu Brothers Podcast with his younger brother. Website

QUASI

Portland indie legends Quasi was formed in 1993 by Janet Weiss and Sam Coomes and has spent the last thirty years touring the world and releasing ten albums, including this year's Breaking the Balls of History. Concurrently, Janet (who Rolling Stone called "a drum goddess") was a longtime member of Sleater-Kinney, while she also recorded and/or toured with Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Bright Eyes, the Shins, Elliott Smith, the Go-Betweens, and others. Sam has worked with Elliott Smith, Built to Spill, Jandek, the Go-Betweens, and others, and has toured and recorded as a solo artist. The band was inducted into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame in 2017.

Patricia Reser Center for the Arts • Beaverton Oregon

Show starts at 7:30pm. $35 General Admission (after fees), $25 Student & Under 35 (after fees)

Patricia Reser Center for the Arts Health and Building Policies are available here.

* This show is not included in our Portland Season pass.

LINDY WEST

Lindy West is a former contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and the author of “Shit, Actually: The The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema”, as well as the New York Times bestselling memoir “Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman” and the essay collection “The Witches Are Coming”. Her work has also appeared in This American Life, The Guardian, Cosmopolitan, GQ, Vulture, Jezebel, and others. She is the co-founder of the reproductive rights destigmatization campaign #ShoutYourAbortion. Her latest project, a one woman show titled Every Castle, Ranked, takes her audience on a hilarious, bittersweet, razzle-dazzle journey through her fears, aspirations, disappointments, the history of toilets, and what it means to be a star.

CAMILLE DUNGY

Camille T. Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry and two collections of essays. Her most recent collection, "Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden," recounts her seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominately white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. BOOKLIST calls it "a significant, beautiful, meditative, and wholly down-to-earth memoir." She has been the finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellow, an NAACP Image Award nominee, and the winner of an American Book Award. Her poems have been published in Best American Poetry, The 100 Best African American Poems, the Pushcart Anthology, Best American Travel Writing, and over thirty other anthologies.

MARGO CILKER

Margo Cilker has spent the last seven years touring internationally as a critically acclaimed singer-songwriter. Her debut record, “Pohorylle”, was nominated for UK Americana Album of The Year alongside Brandi Carlile and Robert Plant which earned her a slew of festival performances and tours supporting American Aquarium, Hayes Carll, and Drive-By Truckers. Her sophomore album, “Valley of Heart's Delight”, refers to a place she can't return: California’s Santa Clara Valley, as it was known before the orchards were paved over and became more famous for Silicon than apricots. Margo is the fifth generation of Cilker’s born there, and in this 11-song collection, family and nature intertwine as guiding motifs, at once precious and endangered, beautiful and exhausting. Her music, which has been compared to that of Lucinda Williams, Townes Van Zandt, and Gillian Welch, deftly explores the complex, often-shifting terrain where love and loss meet.

Town Hall Seattle - Great Hall • Seattle Washington

Show starts at 7:30pm • Doors Open at 6:30pm
$35 General Admission • $45 Preferred Seating
LIVE WIRE MEMBERS RECEIVE 15% OFF

Town Hall Seattle Health and Building Policies are available here.

* This show is not included in our Portland Season pass.

SAM SANDERS

Sam Sanders is a podcast host, radio personality, and pop culture connoisseur. He was the host of NPR’s It’s Been a Minute. Sanders joined NPR in 2009 as a Kroc Fellow, and in his 12 years there assumed a number of roles. Prior to hosting It’s Been a Minute, Sanders was a key member of NPR’s election unit, where he covered the intersection of culture, pop culture, and politics in the 2016 election, and embedded with the Bernie Sanders campaign for several months. Sam also hosted the weekly pop culture podcast Into It from Vulture and New York Magazine. He is currently the co-host of Vibe Check with Saeed Jones and Zack Stafford.

KRISTI COULTER

Kristi Coulter is the author of Nothing Good Can Come from This, which was a finalist for the 2019 Washington State Book Award. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan. She is a former Ragdale Foundation resident and the recipient of a grant from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. Her work has appeared in The Awl, Marie Claire, Vox, Quartz, and elsewhere. Her second book, Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career, was published in September 2023. She lives in Seattle, Washington.

EMILY FLAKE

Emily Flake is a staff cartoonist for the New Yorker, a writer, an illustrator, and a performer. She is active in the New York comedy scene, performing a mix of stand-up and cartooning at venues all over the city and beyond. She is also the founder of St. Nell’s, a humor writing residency and teaching institution.

SWAY WILD

San Juan Island, WA-based indie folk-rock duo Mandy Fer and Dave McGraw are back at it with a new sound, and a new name: Sway Wild! Their exceptional vocal harmonies, coupled with Fer’s pioneering electric guitar work, have become a vehicle to carry them around the world, sharing stages with the likes of Iron & Wine, Lake Street Dive, and Watchhouse. Sway Wild’s infectious sound explores the corners of rock, pop, funk, worldbeat, and folk, but at its nucleus it is undeniably a music full of joy. It can squeeze the heart in your chest, it can draw tears from your eyes, and it can force you to get up and move your body; over and over, it somehow manages to do all three at once. Mandy Fer also tours as the lead guitarist for Grammy nominated Allison Russell and recently performed with Brandi Carlile and Jason Isbell.

Get ready for the most delectable, delightful, and outrageously pants-focused night of the year! 

Our very special guest for the night is powerhouse standup comedian and The Late Late Show head writer IAN KARMEL. 

Plus Live Wire's House Band will be jamming, featuring live karaoke from Luke & Elena! 

You'll be treated to special cocktails, amazing appetizers and desserts,, and the hottest pants competition in town.

Join us for an unforgettable night celebrating and supporting the independent public radio show that brings Portland to the world… and the world to Portland! 

Tickets are $100 and include 2 drink tickets & 2 raffle tickets!

Tickets are limited. Reserve yours now!

Live Wire Radio is a non-profit organization and all donations are tax-deductible.

Show starts at 7:30pm • Doors Open at 6:30pm
$30 General Admission • $45 Preferred Seating
LIVE WIRE MEMBERS RECEIVE 15% OFF

SAFIYA SINCLAIR

Safiya Sinclair was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She is the author of the memoir How to Say Babylon, the stunning story of her struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet. Publisher’s Weekly calls it “a tour de force” and Kirkus Review writes that the book is “more than catharsis; this is a memoir as liberation.” She is also the author of the poetry collection Cannibal, winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Metcalf Award, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poetry, the Phillis Wheatley Book Award, and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Website

R. ERIC THOMAS

R. Eric Thomas is the bestselling author of Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America, a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and the YA novel Kings of B’more, a Stonewall Honor book. Both books were also featured as Read with Jenna book-club picks on Today. He is also a television writer (Apple TV+’s Dickinson, FX’s Better Things), a Lambda Literary Award-winning playwright, and the long-running host of The Moth in Philadelphia. For four years, he was a senior staff writer at ELLE online, where he wrote the popular “Eric Reads the News” column. His latest book, “Congratulations, The Best Is Over,” is a collection of heartening, deeply relatable, and laugh-out-loud essays about what happens after happily ever after. Website

J. WORTHAM

J Wortham is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and co-host of the podcast ‘Still Processing.’ They occasionally publish thoughts on culture, technology and wellness in a newsletter. J is the proud editor of the visual anthology “Black Futures,” a 2020 Editor's choice by The New York Times Book Review, along with Kimberly Drew, from One World. J is also currently working on a book about the body and dissociation for Penguin Press. J Wortham is also a sound healer, reiki practitioner, herbalist, and community care worker oriented towards healing justice and liberation.

NO-NO BOY

No-No Boy tells stories rooted in years of research and relationship-building, made vibrant and profound through a rich congregation of instrumental, environmental, and electronically manipulated sounds from Asia and America. The project developed as the central component of Julian Saporiti’s PhD at Brown University, drawing on years of fieldwork and research on Asian American history to write folk songs with uncommon empathy and remarkable protagonists: prisoners at Japanese American internment camps who started a jazz band, Vietnamese musicians turned on to rock ‘n’ roll by American troops, a Cambodian American painter who painted only the most beautiful landscapes of his war-torn home. Along the way he started to draw on his own family’s history, including his mother’s escape from Vietnam during the war. His 2021 album 1975 was called "a remarkably powerful and moving album,” by Folk Alley and “gentle, catchy and accessible folk songs that feel instantly familiar," by NPR. His third album, "Empire Electric", further examines narratives of imperialism, identity, and spirituality, and is being released by Smithsonian Folkways this fall.

Hult Center for the Performing Arts • Eugene Oregon

Show starts at 8:00pm. $45 Preferred Seating and $34 General Admission

Hult Center for the Performing Arts Health and Building Policies are available here.

* This show is not included in our Portland Season pass.

APARNA NANCHERLA

Aparna Nancherla is an established comedian, actor, and writer who performs all over the place. Her book of personal essays, Unreliable Narrator, will be out on September 19, 2023, from Viking Press. Aparna's had half-hour comedy specials on both Netflix and Comedy Central, as well as making multiple appearances on late night. She can currently be seen on The Drop, Lopez Vs. Lopez, Search Party, and Space Force, among a myriad of other guest appearances. Aparna’s voice can be heard in many animated series including The Great North, Bob's Burgers, and Bojack Horseman. She was a series regular on Comedy Central’s Corporate and she made her feature debut in the Paul Feig movie, A Simple Favor. Aparna's also written for Mythic Quest, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell. Most importantly, she is available for couch sitting.

NOTE: Aparna will be signing books after the show for anyone who purchases a copy via Tsunami books. Books will also be available for sale on-site.

AVERY TRUFELMAN

Avery Trufelman is the host and creator of Articles Of Interest, a podcast about fashion for people who think they don't care about fashion. Previously she hosted the podcast for The Cut from New York Magazine, and was a longtime staff producer on 99% Invisible.

ANIS MOJGANI

Anis Mojgani is the 10th Poet Laureate of Oregon. A two-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam and winner of the international World Cup Poetry Slam, his work has appeared on HBO, NPR, and in the pages of The New York Times. The author of six books of poetry, an opera libretto, and a forthcoming children’s picture book, his latest is titled The Tigers, They Let Me. Originally from New Orleans, Anis lives in Portland, Oregon where he serves on the board of the organization, Literary Arts, and can be found making art in his studio and occasionally reading poems from out its window at sunset to others.

OLIVE KLUG

A key player in the new wave of contemporary folk singers, Olive Klug makes earnest, queer acoustic folk music with the central goal of allowing listeners to tap into their feelings. Self-styled after genre icons like Joni Mitchell and Brandi Carlile, Olive is known for their beautiful tone and vividly honest storytelling. Their sound is reminiscent of the ‘Golden Age of American Folk Music’, but with a uniquely modern lyrical sensibility.

Show starts at 7:30pm • Doors Open at 6:30pm
$30 General Admission • $45 Preferred Seating
LIVE WIRE MEMBERS RECEIVE 15% OFF
COVID-19 and General Ticket Information is available HERE.

PAUL F. TOMPKINS

Comedian, actor, and writer Paul F. Tompkins is nothing short of a comedic gem and podcast royalty. Alongside being an absolute Live Wire fan-favorite, PFT has appeared on over two hundred episodes of Comedy Bang! Bang!, and hosts the wildly popular shows The Neighborhood Listen and Spontaneanation, among others. He and his wife, the actor Janie Haddad Tompkins, co-created the podcast Stay F. Homekins. Full of good ideas and gut-busting jokes, Tompkins is also a bit of a TV star! His TV credits include more than two dozen appearances on HBO’s Mr. Show, and he is the voice of Mr. Peanutbutter on the hit Netflix animated series Bojack Horseman. Website

SARAFINA EL-BADRY NANCE

Sarafina El-Badry Nance is an Egyptian-American astrophysicist, analog astronaut, and women’s health advocate. She has been awarded fellowships by the National Science Foundation and her work has been featured by the BBC, NPR, National Geographic, and more. Sarafina is one of Forbes’ “30 Inspirational Women” and was on Forbes’ list of “30 Under 30” and the Arab American Foundation’s “40 Under 40.” She lives in Berkeley, California, with her partner and their dog, Comet. Sarafina’s latest book is Starstruck: A Memoir of Astrophysics and Finding Light in the Dark. Website

GARY GULMAN

Gary Gulman is one of the most popular touring comics, selling out theaters nationwide including Carnegie Hall. He has been a guest on every major late-night comedy program. Gulman’s four comedy specials include HBO's The Great Depresh, a highly acclaimed look at mental illness. In 2019 he appeared in the international blockbuster Joker. He has a recurring role on the Hulu comedy series Life & Beth. A product of Boston, Gulman was previously a scholarship college football player, an accountant, and a high-school teacher. Misfit is his first book. Website

FAMILY WORSHIP CENTER

Family Worship Center specializes in a strain of redemptive, 1970s-styled rock n’ roll that recalls the Rolling Stones, Leon Russell, The Band, and Delaney & Bonnie. The band formed in 2017 in Nashville, Tennessee founded by prophetic visionary, singer-songwriter and keyboardist Krissberg, but it has since relocated to Portland, Oregon. The Family’s latest offering—it’s first long player—Kicked Out Of The Garden, features a core band of devoted musicians, and was produced by Portland go-to producer Cameron Spies (Spoon Benders, Shivas) who specializes in what he calls “mid-fi.” Kicked Out Of The Garden was tracked in Portland with additional recording done in Philadelphia and Ukraine. Website

Show starts at 7:30pm • Doors Open at 6:30pm
$30 General Admission • $45 Preferred Seating
LIVE WIRE MEMBERS RECEIVE 15% OFF
COVID-19 and General Ticket Information is available HERE.

KEN JENNINGS

Ken Jennings used to be an anonymous Salt Lake City software engineer, but almost overnight he became a nerd folk icon via his record-breaking six-month streak on the TV quiz show Jeopardy! In his 75 appearances on the show, Ken won 74 games and $2.52 million, both American game show records. Barbara Walters named him one of the ten most fascinating people of the year, and Slate magazine dubbed him "the Michael Jordan of trivia, the Seabiscuit of geekdom." Since his Jeopardy! streak ended, Ken has become a best-selling author. His books include Brainiac, about the phenomenon of trivia in American culture, Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac, the biggest American trivia book ever assembled, Maphead, about his lifelong love of geography, and Because I Said So!: The Truth Behind the Myths, Tales, and Warnings Every Generation Passes Down Its Kids. His latestet book, 100 Places to See After You Die, is a "bucket list" travel book filled with destinations that can only be reached after death! Website • Twitter

JAMIE LOFTUS

Emmy award-nominated writer and comedian Jamie Loftus may still have three of her baby teeth, but now she also has Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs, her debut book that is part travelogue, part culinary history, all capitalist critique AND all good! Before her deep-dive into the history of American meats, she wrote and starred in her own web series for Comedy Central, and regularly works on viral videos for Super Deluxe. As for her comedy, it often borders on performance art: she has dated an American Girl doll, sold “Shrek nudes” on Etsy to raise money for Planned Parenthood, and attempted to eat a copy of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Furthermore, she is the host and creator of three critically-acclaimed iHeartRadio podcasts: My Year in Mensa, Lolita Podcast, and Aack Cast. Along with fellow comedian Caitlin Durante, she co-hosts The Bechdel Cast, a weekly podcast about the representation of women in film. Website • Instagram

DEMI ADEJUYIGBE

Demi Adejuyigbe is a writer, filmmaker, comedian, performer, and a Live Wire favorite. While most know him as a co-host of the comedy podcasts Gilmore Guys and Punch Up the Jam, or as the creator behind the 21st of September video series, he also was a digital producer on Comedy Central's @midnight, and has written for The New Yorker, The Guardian, Pitchfork, Marvel, Cartoon Network, MTV, The Late Late Show with James Corden, and The Amber Ruffin Show, as well as episodes of the Marvel TV series New Warriors. He is a writer/supervising producer on the animated Apple+ series Strange Planet. He co-hosts the monthly comedy show Everything’s Great at Dynasty Typewriter. Website • Twitter

HÉCTOR TOBAR

Self-described writer about town and opinionator, Héctor Tobar, is the author of six books published in fifteen languages, including the critically acclaimed, New York Times bestseller: Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine and the Miracle That Set Them Free. His newest book, Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of Latino decodes the meaning of "Latino" as a racial and ethnic identity in the modern United States using Tobar's personal experiences as the son of Guatemalan immigrants and the stories told to him by his Latinx students. Deep Down Dark was also adapted into the film The 33, starring Antonio Banderas, and his short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, Noir, Zyzzyva, and Slate. He is also a professor and has written for or been a contributing editor at multiple award-winning magazines. Website • Twitter

ISABEAU WAIA’U WALKER

The vision for her music is clear and thought provoking, and Isabeau Waia'u Walker often expresses her vision through her master storytelling. The authenticity of her musical presentation as a performer and storyteller taps into human emotions and bonds her with the listeners and audiences in front of her. Isabeau worked as a high school teacher for over a decade while she made music, slowly amassing an impressive YouTube subscribership. She then orchestrated an early retirement from education to redirect attention to music, allowing her to tour as a member of Y La Bamba and to record her EP, Better Metric. Her full length album Body, recorded at The Center for Sound, Light and Color Therapy with bandmate and producer Ryan Oxford continues to highlight the tensions of the stretches and contractions nested in Isabeau's core which then reverberate through the layers of her product: storytelling, collaboration, presentation, music. Website • Twitter

Show starts at 7:30pm • Doors Open at 6:30pm
$30 General Admission • $45 Preferred Seating
LIVE WIRE MEMBERS RECEIVE 15% OFF
COVID-19 and General Ticket Information is available HERE.

ARI SHAPIRO

Ari Shapiro is a beloved American radio journalist. He became one of four rotating hosts on NPR's flagship drive-time program All Things Considered, and served as the White House correspondent and international correspondent based in London for NPR. The Advocate magazine has named Ari Shapiro one of its "40 under 40" LGBT leaders, and Out magazine included him in its "Out 100" list of the most influential LGBT people in America. He has written a stirring memoir-in-essays that is also a lover letter to journalism. In his first book, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories From a Life Spent Listening, Shapiro takes us around the globe to reveal the stories behind narratives that are sometimes heartwarming, sometimes heartbreaking, but always poignant. He details his time traveling on Air Force One with President Obama, or following the path of Syrian refugees fleeing war, or learning from those fighting for social justice both at home and abroad. He has also been known to burst into song and has performed with the musical group Pink Martini. Website • Twitter

JENA FRIEDMAN

Jena Friedman is the funniest "not funny" comedian, filmmaker, and creative cracking jokes this decade. She is the creator of AMC’s Indefensible, a true crime inspired TV series, Adult Swim's Soft Focus with Jena Friedman, and has also worked on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Late Show with David Letterman. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, ARTNET, and The Guardian while her witty and bold debut essay collection, Not Funny: Essays on Life, Comedy, Culture, Et Cetera highlights her ability to work the line between humor and discomfort in spellbinding style. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and won a Writer’s Guild of America award for her work on Borat 2: Subsequent Movie Film. Website • Twitter

BLACK BELT EAGLE SCOUT

This land runs through Katherine Paul’s blood, the singer-songwriter behind the musical project Black Belt Eagle Scout. For Paul, when the land calls, you listen. Paul grew up in a small Indian reservation, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, surrounded by family focused on native drumming, singing, and arts. With the support of her relatives and a handful of bootleg Hole and Nirvana VHS tapes, Paul taught herself how to play guitar and drums as a teenager before moving to Portland at the age of seventeen, but to make her latest full length album, The Land, The Water, The Sky, she made the journey from Portland back to the Skagit River, back to the cedar trees that stand tall and shrouded in fog, back to Swinomish. Her music is now a love letter to indigenous strength and healing, and a story of hope, as it details the joy of returning. There is a throughline of story in every song, a remembrance of knowledge and teachings, a gratitude of wisdom passed down and carried. In her songs, Katherine Paul has channeled that feeling of being held. Website • Twitter

SCOTT AUKERMAN

The man, the myth, and the very funny legend Scott Aukerman is the host of Comedy Bang! Bang!, a podcast featuring today's funniest comedians, and now he is also the author of a book of the same title that brings the beloved and hilarious podcast characters onto the page. Alongside his renown hosting, he is the co-creator and director of the web series Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis, which was expanded into a feature film for Netflix. Aukerman also created, hosted, wrote, and produced the parody talk show Comedy! Bang! Bang!, which aired on IFC for five seasons and is, in fact, not the same as the podcast (we promise). He began his career as a writer and performer on the HBO sketch comedy show Mr. Show with Bob and David. Website • Twitter

Patricia Reser Center for the Arts • Beaverton Oregon

Show starts at 7:30pm. $35 General Admission (after fees), $25 Student & Under 35 (after fees)

Patricia Reser Center for the Arts Health and Building Policies are available here.

Guest lineup will be announced soon!

* This show is not included in our Portland Season pass.

MOHANAD ELSHIEKY

Mohanad Elshieky is a New York-based comedian who is a complete joy to listen to. He also know how to get down to business! He has made his national tv debut on Conan, has been featured on Comedy Central, and toured with the beloved POP UP Magazine. He has appeared in an episode of Epix’s “Unprotected Sets” and was listed as one of Thrillist’s "50 Best Undiscovered Comics." Mohanad, who most recently worked as a digital producer on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, has a special skill for making you laugh at the seemingly unlaughable. The Libyan-born comedian combines a deceptively laid-back demeanor with his whip-smart perspective on politics and culture. The Portland Mercury called him “an undisputed genius of comedy,” and he's been featured on podcasts such as Lovett or Leave It, Pod Save The People and Harmontown. Elshieky zeroes in on topics that seem off limits - then surprises you with how hard you’re laughing. Website • Instagram

JOSÉ OLIVAREZ

José Olivarez is a literary star on the rise and the son of Mexican immigrants. His debut book of poems, Citizen Illegal, was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Award and a winner of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize. It was named a top book of 2018 by the Adroit Journal, NPR, and the New York Public Library. Along with Felicia Chavez and Willie Perdomo, he co-edited the poetry anthology The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, and his latest collection of poetry Promises of Gold, translated into Spanish by poet David Ruano, has already been described as "visceral and moving." When he's not writing, he cohosts the poetry podcast The Poetry Gods. Website • Instagram

TIMOTHY EGAN

Timothy Egan is a literary superstar. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and the author of eight books, most recently The Immortal Irishman, a New York Times bestseller. Furthermore, his acclaimed book on the Dust Bowl, The Worst Hard Time, won a National Book Award for nonfiction and was named a New York Times Editors' Choice, a New York Times Notable Book, a Washington State Book Award winner, and a Book Sense Book of the Year Honor Book. Egan returns to the literary scene with his latest book, A Fever in the Heartland, which is a historical thriller that investigates and unravels the Ku Klux Klan's rise to power and the woman who stopped them. In his free time, he writes a weekly opinion column for The New York Times. Website • Twitter

JENNY CONLEE

Jenny Conlee, the multi-instrumentalist best known for her 23-year tenure as a member of indie icons The Decemberists, is stepping once more to center stage with the release of Tides: Pieces for Accordion and Piano. The humble yet deeply emotional album of instrumentals finds Conlee pulling from her vast well of influences and knowledge to work in a more neo-classical mode. Written during a week-long artist’s retreat on the coast of Washington State, Conlee found inspiration within the natural environment she was surrounded by: the ocean, sand, dune grass, wind, and a hawk she spotted hunting along the beach. The finished compositions are like an oil portrait of a seaside scene — multi-colored, richly textured, and able to draw on sense memories buried deep within the mind and body. Website • Twitter

Show starts at 7:30pm • Doors Open at 6:30pm
$30 General Admission • $45 Preferred Seating
LIVE WIRE MEMBERS RECEIVE 15% OFF
COVID-19 and General Ticket Information is available HERE.

LAURA CHINN

Laura Chinn is a writer, comedian, actress, and director who has established herself as a creative mind to watch through her extensive catalog of work across multiple different mediums. Her debut memoir, Acne, follows Chinn as she hilariously remembers her struggle of growing up on the west coast of Florida as a mixed-race girl whose appearance doesn’t necessarily match her identity. Chinn recounts her life with a combination of laugh-out-loud recollections and heart-wrenching moments of introspection and self-love that expand beyond the typical memoir. Other themes in her work include humor, beauty, insecurities, and abandonment. Chinn also created and starred in Pop TV's beloved comedy Florida Girls. She was previously a producer and writer on the popular Fox series The Mick, a writer on Grandfathered, and made her directorial debut with Suncoast, a movie drama based on her adolescence. Website • Instagram

JENNY ODELL

Jenny Odell is a multi-disciplinary artist and author whose work utilizes close observation as a driving force. Her first book was the New York Times bestseller, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy which reads like a self-help manual turned political manifesto and was named one the best books of the year by TIME, NPR, and others. Odell returns with another attention-grabbing book titled Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock. In dazzling, subversive, and deeply hopeful ways, Odell shows the reader in her latest book how to think past the ticking time bomb of capitalism. Alongside her booklength projects, she taught digital art at Stanford Unviersity and her visual art has been exhibited around the world. Her writing has also appeared in The Atlantic, New York Times, Sierra Magazine, and more. Website • Twitter

RECKLESS SON

Reckless Son is the musical project of New York-based musician Matt Butler, who has travelled across the country performing in prisons. He took his experiences on the road and penned a one man show organized into nine chapters, featuring a collection of music and monologues painting vivid pictures of the people he met and stories he heard inside these facilities. “People who have lost everything or have had everything taken from them are often truly in touch with what matters most,” Butler said during the show’s final stretch, delivering the line as songwriter who visits prisons not only to sing, but to listen, too. Filled with Americana songs inspired by Woody Guthrie, Townes Van Zandt, and other troubadours, Reckless Son is more than a show. It’s a calling. A service. A pledge to, as Butler puts it, “bring healing through the arts.” Website • Instagram

Town Hall Seattle - Great Hall • Seattle Washington

Show starts at 7:30pm • Doors Open at 6:30pm
$35 General Admission • $45 Preferred Seating
LIVE WIRE MEMBERS RECEIVE 15% OFF

Town Hall Seattle Health and Building Policies are available here.

* This show is not included in our Portland Season pass.

ADAM GOPNIK

New York Times best-selling author Adam Gopnik is a writer that can do anything — and do it well. He has published over nine books including the #1 national bestseller Paris to the Moon. His latest book, The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery explores the fundamental question of "how do we learn—and master—a new skill?" with exquisite, probing prose. Gopnik has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1986 while remaining an active lecturer, lyricist, and libretto writer for many musical projects. He has won the National Magazine Award for Essays and for Criticism three times, as well as the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting, and the Canadian National Magazine Award Gold Medal for arts writing. His work has been anthologized in “Best American Essays", “Best American Travel Writing,” “Best American Sports Writing,” “Best American Food Writing,” and “Best American Spiritual Writing.” Website • Twitter

KELSEY MCKINNEY

Kelsey McKinney is a dynamo staff writer and co-owner of Defector media, an employee-owned sports and culture website. She hosts the popular podcast Normal Gossip, which "delivers juicy, strange, funny, and utterly banal gossip about people you'll never know and never meet" while her first book, God Spare the Girls, a novel packed with religious family secrets and sisterhood, was published to rave reviews. More of her creative work and reporting has been widely published and appears in The New York Times, GQ, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Cosmopolitan, among many others. Website • Twitter

BRENDA SHAUGHNESSY

Brenda Shaughnessy is an Okinawa-Irish American poet whose poetic sensibilities are lauded for both their technical and emotional potency. She's the author of seven poetry collections, including The Octopus Museum, which was a New York Times 2019 Notable Book, and Liquid Flesh: New and Selected Poems. Her most recent collection,Tanya, pays tribute to Shaughnessy's literary heritgae of women writers and mentors while grappling with the ongoing mysteries of love, art, and loss among other themes. Recipient of a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and the James Laughlin Award, her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, The Nation, The New Yorker, Paris Review, and elsewhere. She is also a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Newark. Website • Twitter

WHO IS SHE?

Known for writing songs that are both "spunky and violently catchy" (Vice), Who Is She? is a Seattle-based indie supergroup featuring members of Tacocat, Chastity Belt, and Lisa Prank. The talented trio was first started as a song-writing and friendship project based on the missed connection ads when Robin Edwards (Lisa Prank) and Bree McKenna (Tacocat) were living in bedrooms next door to each other at legendary Spruce House. The two Seattle music celebs then enlisted their friend, Julia Shapiro (Chastity Belt), to play the drums. They released their debut record, Seattle Gossip, on Father/Daughter Records and have a new album on the horizon. Twitter