Events

The Jack London is proud to unite the sound of classic jazz with the Rose City burlesque tradition. The Ne Plus Ultra Distilled Jass Orchestra, the Pacific Northwest’s top vintage jazz ensemble, will be providing bump for the grind of the Burly-Q Revue, Downtown’s hottest burlesque, now in its third year at the Jack London. Don’t miss this red-hot tribute to American music, dance, and the art of the twirling-tassel! 

Tickets for this show grant free admission to the late night set - featuring the original recipe Burly-Q Revue! 

SAMMUEL MURRY-HAWKINS & the NE PLUS ULTRA JASS ORCHESTRA
A perfect reflection of the look and sound of the Jazz Era, the orchestra is the only one of its kind in the Portland Metropolitan area. Their male vocalists, The Tritone Trio, complete the illusion of an era of elegance past.

The Ne Plus Ultra Jass Orchestra was formed in January of 2016, and since September of that year has operated under the leadership of Sammuel Murry-Hawkins. The founding members of the group recognized the lack of fully orchestrated traditional dance bands in the Pacific Northwest focusing on the sweet and hot music of the 20s and 30s.

JACK LONDON BURLY-Q REVUE
Now approaching it's third year of weekly residency, Burly-Q has established itself as one of the hottest burlesque shows in a city replete with them. Featured artists are among the finest and most notable in the Pacific Northwest and the nation at large. 

When you hear your first Garaj Mahal note, leading into an innovative fusion of funky jazz with a tasty world music flare, all other thoughts leave your mind as the music takes you on an unforgettable voyage. Fans return to experience the band again and again because they know they will always hear something new and progressive from four first-class musicians. Featuring guitar and sitar virtuoso Fareed Haque, world-renowned bass master and educator Kai Eckhardt, Garaj Mahal combines a century of musical experience to create a sound that's always new, freshly infused with a wide spectrum of musical expression, and always smoking hot. Touring extensively since their formation in 2000, Garaj Mahal continues to earn critical acclaim and a growing fanbase thanks to their ability to deliver serious "shut-up-and-listen" grooves while simultaneously bringing the dance floor alive. Their collective musical experience allows them to constantly push the envelope of composition and improvisation. Garaj Mahal's sound – a convergence of jazz-style improvisation, mystical Middle-Eastern atmospheres, and danceable American funk - attracts music lovers from all parts of the spectrum and creates a profoundly unique experience. Each band member dedicates every drop of his education, history, and life-long passion for music to their audience every time they step on stage. The band member's virtuosity is no surprise when you look at even a few of the amazing artists they've performed and/or recorded with over the years, including Dizzy Gillespie, John McLaughlin, Sting, Cassandra Wilson, Dave Holland, Bela Fleck, Chick Corea, Steve Smith, Zakir Hussain, Edgar Meyer, Les Claypool, Trey Anastasio, Umphrey's McGee, MMW, Steve Kimock, and Michael Manring. Garaj Mahal's output is the result of years spent honing their musical relationship on the road and following the band’s return from an extended hiatus, Garaj is already accumulating rave reviews around the country.

Heart Bones is a rare thing—a new band with a long history—which heightens both expectations and standards. See, I think that when a new thing, a creative thing, clicks into place just right and does so immediately on a level that you just know and feel is true all at once, often it’s all the little ways it dares to be just a little bit off that actually makes it work. And striking this ideal ratio of The Familiar and The New is the specialist’s true skill. This is exactly how Heart Bones excels.

It’s not hard to imagine that they shouldn’t exist at all: Sabrina Ellis and Sean Tillmann are obviously both tirelessly bustling and juggling and geographically separated by the entire height of the middle of the country. But put on their debut album Hot Dish and as soon as Sabrina’s first line enters, completing the inversion of Sean’s first line which has just spun your head around, the collaboration feels inevitable. Inevitable like, “Damn, right. Heart Bones. Guarding the center of vulnerabilities. Why do we have things called chest cavities instead of heart bones?”  The anatomical warping of their name makes more sense given how fragile our meaty bodies actually are. 

Both in concept and approach, Sean and Sabrina share many commonalities: long histories of genre warping and adopting evolving personas to embody these progressions, celebrating wildness and theatricality night after night throughout grueling tour schedules. And all this expressed in the persistent tension of dark themes made melodious, a move that the true specialist knows will always make the struggle for balance feel deep and real. 

In hindsight, Sean’s evolution seems so linear: his earliest band Calvin Krime dared to be fun in a subculture steeped in angst. And after it disbanded, he sanded down the angular edges and stepped more clearly into a front-man role in Sean Na Na. But it was only the emergence of his alter ego Har Mar Superstar—at first pretending to be his own brother—that gave him the cover to risk fully expressing himself freely. The depths of his impulses came to play on the surface; the constant tensions of silliness and sincerity struck as immediate and true and deeply felt and always fun; stripping down to one’s skivvies isn’t only sexy, it’s sexy because of the openness and vulnerability it represents. Over the course of 20 years, it evolved from beats on a MiniDisc player to a seven-piece soul revue without the continuity of his character ever coming across as inconsistent, a testimony to the acumen of his voice and his knack for hooks.

And down in Austin, Sabrina was carving her own unique path and persona. She perfected her glam snarl for a decade with the anthemic and brassy A Giant Dog, her performances cocky, provocative, and raw. Then tempered and expanded that range by fronting the epic collective Sweet Spirit, who blend party-strut disco and earnest classic rock like if you could extract whatever is London out of Queen and replace it with Texas. 

Clinton Fearon is a composer, songwriter, singer and player of instruments since his early teens.

Born in Jamaica, Clinton became the bassist, vocalist and lyricist of the mythic Gladiators at the age of 19. He was also a session musician for Coxsone Dodd at Studio One and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s at Black Ark in the 70s, two of the main producers on the island at this time. There Clinton composed some everlasting bass lines for well-known artists like Yabby You, Jimmy Riley, Max Romeo, Junior Byles and many others.

After leaving Jamaica in 1987, Clinton Fearon started a new career in Seattle. Him and some of the musicians of The Gladiators took advantage of the extra time remaining on their visa, at the end of the US tour, to started a band in the Northwest: The Defenders. The band built a nice following in the area but split after five years. Clinton Fearon finally formed his own band in the mid 90s in Seattle with local musicians: Boogie Brown Band. Clinton Fearon recorded eight albums with Boogie Brown Band and tour with them in the Pacific Northwest and Europe intensively, but also other places in the US and South America.

Since 2005 and the release of Mi An Mi Guitar, Clinton is also giving magical performances in solo acoustic. In 2012, he released his second acoustic opus: Heart And Soul, which gathers 16 songs wrote between 1969-1984, while he was a strong member of the mythic Gladiators in Jamaica. With just vocal and guitar, Clinton is playing his music all over the world, in clubs, theaters, festivals and other cultural centers.

Each song of Clinton Fearon is a strong message coming from the heart of a man who is dedicating his life to help a better world to come. With chiselled music and poetic lyrics, he opens reggae to a wider audience who simply loves his beautiful songs.

Portland, Oregon based Jumptown Big Band is a professional 17-piece swing band consisting of highly talented and experienced musicians from the greater metropolitan area. Our vision is to keep traditional big band music relevant to people of all ages with a focus on providing high quality performances in terms of both musical technique and entertaining showmanship.

Our repertoire of musical arrangements includes up-tempo swing, foxtrots, ballads, rock ‘n roll, and Latin.  Our music can be tailored to suit any event. We perform danceable Count Basie, Ted Heath, and Les Brown style swing music as well as more modern jazz concert pieces in the styles of Buddy Rich, Stan Kenton, Rob McConnell, and Gordon Goodwin. We have also been known to mix in some contemporary pop hits from artists such as Amy Winehouse and Pharrell Williams. 

Whether it be a well-known big band standard, contemporary jazz showcase, sentimental vocal ballad, or a hard swinging brass  feature, Jumptown Big Band provides a unique and complete package of musical entertainment.