Rock Creek Tavern

Lively Irish music for the whole family from the best and brightest musicians in the tradition!

Join the jam! Bring your guitar, fiddle, mandolin or banjo to our weekly bluegrass jam circle. Players with intermediate skills and above are invited to this Tuesday tradition. New faces welcome!

Formed by musicians with a passion for the Northwest outdoors, Jawbone Flats takes its name from the ghost town of the same name nestled deep in the Opal Creek Wilderness of Oregon. Since 2008 JBF has traveled throughout Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Northern California playing an eclectic blend of original and cover songs drawing from the influences of bluegrass, country, alternative country, blues, and rock music led by five alternating lead singers backed by lush harmonies. Interlocking melodies from B-bender Telecaster and acoustic guitars, mandolin, harmonica, and pedal steel guitar are woven into the solid rhythmic fabric of fretless bass and drums to produce a wonderfully entertaining, irresistibly danceable, and downright “flatifying” sound.

Lively Irish music for the whole family from the best and brightest musicians in the tradition!

Join the jam! Bring your guitar, fiddle, mandolin or banjo to our weekly bluegrass jam circle. Players with intermediate skills and above are invited to this Tuesday tradition. New faces welcome!

Through the decades... Mike Soto and Gayle Ritt have been performing for audiences with a special magic in the air and a love of everyone's favorite tunes! With freestyles, original music, and an endless list of favorites from all genres and eras - the two perform as a duo or with the full band throughout the Oregon Countryside and beyond.

Between the two - they have over 50 years of shows behind them and with the full band the singing along - dancing and revelry is inspired at every moment. Local guitar legend Dany Oaks and Evin McHill make the full band complete - and you'll leave looking forward to the next show. Gayle Ritt's 5 albums are streaming everywhere.

"Ritt's gutsy voice is an impressive instrument," - Chicago Sun-Times

"Raw beauty." - Chicago Magazine

"Undeniably talented." - Creative Loafing Atlanta

Lively Irish music for the whole family from the best and brightest musicians in the tradition!

Join the jam! Bring your guitar, fiddle, mandolin or banjo to our weekly bluegrass jam circle. Players with intermediate skills and above are invited to this Tuesday tradition. New faces welcome!

A recent "Best New Act" winner, Billy Desmond (Billy D) melds blues, rock, and at times nuances of country to create an "Original Backbeat Roots" style of music that has fueled timeless rock icons like ZZ Top and The Rolling Stones. Billy was born on the south side of Chicago where he grew up surrounded by the Blues, and being a child of the early Rock 'n' Roll era, the two influences blended into a powerful potion. He started playing professionally at teen dances and parties at the age of fourteen. By the age of eighteen, he was sneaking into the blues clubs of Chicago to hear such greats as Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, and James Cotton. Over the next ten years, he would work as a guitarist for Junior Wells, Big Time Sarah, and Detroit Junior.

In the mid '70s, he formed his first band, Skid City Blues Band, which featured Billy as singer, guitarist, and songwriter. After fifteen years of touring the midwest, Billy moved to Los Angeles in 1988. He spent that year studying with Blues great Tony Matthews, guitarist for Little Richard and Ray Charles and spent half of the next year playing behind, Don "Sugar Cane" Harris, perhaps the world's greatest blues violinist. Los Angeles is where he truly started focusing on writing his own material.

In the mid '90s, Billy moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico and began playing his original songs at local clubs and concerts to great acclaim. Within the next year, Billy D and the Hoodoos had formed. In August of 2002, with the help of some of the best musicians in New Mexico, he released his first CD, Tales From Hollywood (Real and Imagined). In 2003, She's The One from his first release was voted the number one song by a regional artist, at KTAO,the world's largest solar powered radio station. KTAO hosted the Annual Solar Fest in New Mexico where Billy D and the HooDoos appeared that year, opening for Los Lonely Boys and Robert Cray.

After his second CD, Rokdablu!, and several more successful years in New Mexico, Billy left the Southwest for the Northwest, arriving in Oregon around Christmas 2009. He released his newest CD "Somethin's Wrong," which was embraced by the Portland music community and received outstanding reviews.

So long as this life keeps lifin'...I'll keep rockin' --Billy D.

"Ain't nothin' wrong with Somethin's Wrong...this fine collection alternates between soulful blues ballads ("Somethin's Wrong," "Blue," and "Love Makes You Cry") and gritty slide guitar rave-ups such as the Thorogoodesque "50," and the stomper, "Crazy Little Dancin' Queen." --P. Vaughn Shaver, The Oregon Music News

"Many of the songs draw upon that gut-bucket punch that makes your body want to groove ("Crazy Little Dancin' Queen," "Charlene"), ballads that can make you tear up, ("Blue," "Love Makes You Cry"), swampy-sounding slide ("50"), or numbers that could easily cross over and find favor between blues and rock genres ("Miss The Love," "Save My Life"). --Greg Johnson, president of the Cascade Blues Association in Blues Notes

"The blues are steeped in tradition and, in many cases, arbitrary song structure. Rarely do blues-types successfully deviate from the formula with original material. But Billy D (Billy Desmond) not only pulls it off, but may have unknowingly created his own genre." --Archer, Production DIrector, KINK.FM

Lively Irish music for the whole family from the best and brightest musicians in the tradition!

Join the jam! Bring your guitar, fiddle, mandolin or banjo to our weekly bluegrass jam circle. Players with intermediate skills and above are invited to this Tuesday tradition. New faces welcome!

Lively Irish music for the whole family from the best and brightest musicians in the tradition!

Join the jam! Bring your guitar, fiddle, mandolin or banjo to our weekly bluegrass jam circle. Players with intermediate skills and above are invited to this Tuesday tradition. New faces welcome!

Formed by musicians with a passion for the Northwest outdoors, Jawbone Flats takes its name from the ghost town of the same name nestled deep in the Opal Creek Wilderness of Oregon. Since 2008 JBF has traveled throughout Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Northern California playing an eclectic blend of original and cover songs drawing from the influences of bluegrass, country, alternative country, blues, and rock music led by five alternating lead singers backed by lush harmonies. Interlocking melodies from B-bender Telecaster and acoustic guitars, mandolin, harmonica, and pedal steel guitar are woven into the solid rhythmic fabric of fretless bass and drums to produce a wonderfully entertaining, irresistibly danceable, and downright “flatifying” sound.

Lively Irish music for the whole family from the best and brightest musicians in the tradition!

Cary Novotny was raised in Stevenson WA., and has been playing guitar and singing professionally in the Portland area for two decades. Novotny possesses a powerful musical style, with strong rhythm and a sure sense of harmony and tone. He has recorded and performed with many great bands in the world of Irish music, including Cul An Ti, Kevin Burke, The Bridies, and An Tua.

Join the jam! Bring your guitar, fiddle, mandolin or banjo to our weekly bluegrass jam circle. Players with intermediate skills and above are invited to this Tuesday tradition. New faces welcome!

Since 2000 Tony Smiley has captivated audiences around the world with his raw rhythms of all live looping. This musical savant loops his way through a unique genre of music that you wont find anywhere else.

He is a passionate performer with a witty, engaging and energetic stage presence, a unique artistic twist that creates a one of a kind show...that is the Tony Smiley experience.

His style of melodies range from rock, hip hop, reggae, world tribal fusion, 80's, a dash of Mongolian throat singing, beat boxing and everything in between, all of which have earned Tony Smiley a cult like following around the globe.

Whether packing local venues, performing at Britt Fest, Les Schwab Amphitheater, sharing the stage with Michael Franti, Boy George & Culture Club, War, or joining festivals around the states...Tony Smiley is a must see performer!

Lively Irish music for the whole family from the best and brightest musicians in the tradition!

Join the jam! Bring your guitar, fiddle, mandolin or banjo to our weekly bluegrass jam circle. Players with intermediate skills and above are invited to this Tuesday tradition. New faces welcome!

Joe and The Wheel Monkeys is an ever evolving group of very talented musicians that bring a wide range of music with their experience. Most of us have been in orchestras. All of us were members of rock bands. All of us participate in a variety of musical opportunities, even outside of this group. Vocals are provided and featured by all members of the group.

The band evolved from a bluegrass background, but most of our current repertoire is far from it. The full band in dance and rock mode feature music from The Grateful Dead, Credence Clearwater Revival, Bruce Springsteen, John Fogarty, The Allman Brothers and more. With smaller configurations, we provide music for dinner accompaniment include ballads by the likes of Willie Nelson, Elvis Presley, John Prine, Lacy J Dalton and Alison Kraus as well as a variety of instrumentals appropriate for background music in a quieter setting. The retirement villages seem to especially enjoy John Denver, Jimmy Buffet, Johnny Cash and older Country Music by the likes of Loretta Lynn and Patti Page.

Lively Irish music for the whole family from the best and brightest musicians in the tradition!

Join the jam! Bring your guitar, fiddle, mandolin or banjo to our weekly bluegrass jam circle. Players with intermediate skills and above are invited to this Tuesday tradition. New faces welcome!

Join the jam! Bring your guitar, fiddle, mandolin or banjo to our weekly bluegrass jam circle. Players with intermediate skills and above are invited to this Tuesday tradition. New faces welcome!