Jeffrey Martin • Lou Hazel
Thu 04/03/25
7:00PM
18+
music
$18 ADV // $23 DOS
Show Lineup
Jeffrey Martin
(Portland, Oregon)
Genre: Folk
As a babe Jeffrey Martin sought out solitude as often as he could find it. He’s always been that way, and he has never understood the whole phenomenon of smiling in pictures, although he is a very happy guy. One night in middle school he stayed up under the covers with a flashlight and a DiscMan, listening to Reba McEntire’s ‘That’s the Night that the Lights Went Out in Georgia’ on repeat until the DiscMan ran out of batteries. That night he became a songwriter, although he didn’t actually write a song until years later. After high school he spent a few years distracting himself from having to gather up the courage to do what he knew he had to do.
Eventually he found his way to a writing degree, and then a teaching degree. He wrote most days like his life depended on it, all sorts of things, not just songs, but songs too. He fell in love with teaching high school English, which was fantastic because he never thought he’d actually come to truly love it. His students were fierce and unstoppable forces of noise and curiosity, and for all that they took from him in sleep and sense, they gave him a hundred times back in sparks and humility.
All the while he was also playing truckloads of music. There was one weekend where he flew to LA while grading essays on the plane, played two shows, and then flew back home, still grading essays, and woke up to teach at 5 am on Monday morning. It was around this time he started wondering if such a life was sustainable.
Alas, music, the tour life, was a constant raccoon scratching at the back door. Jeffrey spent nights on end sitting up in bed, and then sitting on the front porch, staring off into the dark, wondering if he could bear to leave teaching to go on tour full time. Eventually his brain caught up with what his guts had known for months. With tears in his eyes he announced to his students that he wouldn’t be back the following year, and that he didn’t feel right hollering at them to chase their dreams at all cost if he wasn’t going to do the same.
Jeffrey Martin tours full time now. He is always making music, and he is always coming through your town. He misses teaching like you might miss a good old friend who you know you’ll meet again.
Lou Hazel
(Olean, New York)
Genre: Indie
Lou Hazel (Chris Frisina) was born in the rustic town of Olean, New York to a family of northeastern wiseacres and intelligent hillbillies who remain hell bent on living full, rich lives despite brutal winters in a persistent economic downturn. Runt of the litter, according to his only sister.
Not one to commit easily, he skirted the compulsive hunting and fishing tradition held close to his father’s heart – instead cultivating a sensitivity more suited to artists and vagabonds. In illustrations, his pen swirl meanders towards an eventual finish only understood upon completion – just as in his music.
In songwriting, Chris uses what can only be explained as a genetic link to ancestral angst and talent to search for his place in a world out of sync. Part unquiet soul. Part young fool. Chris hopes to share his observations on our shared journey through life in mutual search of something pure.
Chris continues to pull from a constant and pervasive sense of disquiet–gleaned from his childhood, solo travels, work experiences, sullen periods of insomnia and close friendships–to create mournful tones, pulsing with lost opportunity, longing and regret. Except for those few magical times, when it goes the other way.