Something Rather Than Nothing

"I am motivated by the Salish history and Indigenous place-based knowledge. I have learned that place gives a sense of self and allows a person to grow intellectually and continue to explore their possibilities in life. I feel that cultural preservation is a strong influence in my life, and I enjoy combining imagery that reflects cultural values. I use beadwork as an expression of the nature that reflects my tribal heritage. My craftsmanship cannot be possible without the upbringing and teaching of my grandmother, Rachel Arlee Bowers.

I adore beadworking but, also enjoy integrating other genres such as photography, painting, and hint of digital art.

Artistry has been something of a culmination of my academic studies over the years combined with my love for my Bitterroot Salish cultural values and practices. In my time in higher education one of the best moments was learning about place-based education and its interesting relevance to Indigenous ways of knowing.

The basic idea of place-based education and its connection to traditional ecological knowledge is uncanny. Many Indigenous people once depended solely on their environment in reciprocal manner and this was how people were educated. Each person acquired a strength and skill set and most people had an educated connection to the land. This land is what gives a person a strong sense of self-identity. Being grounded allows a person to go forward in life and continue to grow intellectually and explore beyond their basic needs. By evoking this motivation to solidify personal, tribal self-identity, I feel that artistry can empower individuals and empower and motivate them to seek more land knowledge—traditional ecological knowledge.

My overall vision is to create contemporary art, combining traditional, flat-stitch, two-needle, beadwork, with current photography and photo editing techniques. I want to capture the past, the present, and the significance of places that hold deep-seeded history for the Bitterroot Salish. I think by capturing past images and present images with traditional beadwork I can evoke this emotional response and help people to think of their roots and how they can continue to learn the historical context of our land and its ties to our existence. I hope to motivate people to recapture knowledge that is almost gone and revive it by passing it onto younger generations."

Salisha Old Bull website

Welcome back Suziey!

Recorded in a Russian cemetery in Portland, Oregon.

Suziey Block kills it in the found footage insta-classic Horror in the High Desert

Her performance in ‘Entrance’ is a haunting tour-de-force

Suziey was last featured on SRTN Episode 194!

And you heard it here - Suziey Block is the official SRTN podcast SCREAM QUEEN (statue in development) . . . 

And we had some good ol' fashioned horror talk and we mutually developed a LABOR screed.

Pete Dryden is a portrait photographer based in Oregon. 

When he’s not deconstructing the world of photography he’s plotting ways to enter into it.

Let's go Hollywood!

Something (rather than nothing) Podcast is pleased to present Lori Fetrick who is also known as ICE from American Gladiators!

She stars in the Netflix Documentary 'Muscles & Mayhem: An Unauthorized Story of American Gladiators.'

Lori does a great podcast called  "Chillin' with Ice" so you can go on a Gladiator nostalgia stroll but also learn so much from Lori in ways of living, eating, being yourself, entertaining, loving art and dealing with your shit.

Fan-boy-host-Ken was in his glory. Sparkles of ICE.

You rock Lori!

Could write forever. 

But 

just 

listen

to

ICE

ICE

Baby

The daughter of two preacher’s kids, Pieta Brown’s early upbringing in Iowa was in a rural outpost with no furnace, running water, or TV.  There, she was exposed to traditional and rural folk music through her father, Greg Brown, the now beloved Midwestern folk singer.  Later, while living with her mother in Birmingham, Alabama during her formative years, Pieta drew on and expanded these influences and began writing poems and composing instrumental songs on piano.  By the time she left home at 18 she had lived in at least 19 different houses and apartments between Iowa and Alabama.

In her early 20's, after experiencing what she describes as "the songs calling,” Pieta started experimenting with the banjo and eventually picked up a 1930's Maybell arch-top guitar during a visit to her father's place and never looked back.  Emerging from a disjointed and distinctly 'bohemian' upbringing, Pieta began performing live and making independent recordings soon after teaching herself how to play guitar. "I grew up around a lot of musicians and artists living on the fringe, and have always felt most at home among them," Pieta says.

Continually revealing new layers as both a songwriter and performer, Pieta is being recognized as one of modern Americana's true gems.  In recent years Pieta has released multiple highly critically acclaimed albums, with much attention being paid not only to her distinct sound and style, but also the power of her singing and songwriting, including fan favorite Paradise Outlaw (2014 Red House, which Bon Iver master mind, Justin Vernon, called his “favorite recording made at our studio.”) Pieta has toured North America with Mark Knopfler, and toured various regions of the U.S., Australia and Canada with John Prine, Amos Lee, Brandi Carlisle, JJ Cale, Ani Difranco, Mavis Staples, and Calexico among others.  She has co-written songs with and made recent guest appearances on albums by Calexico, Amos Lee, and Iris Dement, whose latest masterpiece Workin’ On A World (2023) Pieta co-produced.  Pieta’s songs and music have been heard in various TV Shows and indie films including Everything Will Be Fine (Wim Wenders).  With the release of her most recent album Freeway (September 2019, Righteous Babe) co-produced by Bon Iver drummer, S. Carey, followed by multiple experimental collaborations since with various artists including JT Bates, S.Carey, and Howe Gelb & The Colorist Orchestra, as well as a new instrumental based side-project she calls Sylvee & The Sea, Pieta’s music and artistry continue to rise.

~ "...a style and a sensuality that’s all her own...."- Pop Matters

~ "Among the top tier of songwriters today..." - FAME (Folk and Acoustic Music Exchange)

~ "...a gifted singer-songwriter whose lyrics are pieces of polished poetry"  - Huffington Post

Pieta's Website

Cristina Lumague is a freelance podcast producer, editor and the host of Espooky Tales, Historias Unknown and Novelas Con Cafecito.

Enjoy this SRTN Halloween Special! Cristina and Ken talk about spooky tales, horror movies, telenovelas, podcasting, art y mas . . . 

espooky Patreon 

Charles Mulford is a sculptor based in New Jersey. He holds an MFA from the School of Visual Arts and a BFA from Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts. His sculptures have been exhibited in the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ, the Attleboro Arts Museum, Attleboro, MA, the Bruton Museum, Somerset, UK, and The Center for Contemporary Art, Bedminster, NJ. Mulford apprenticed at the Seward Johnston Atelier, specializing in metal chasing and fabrication. His work is part of the special collection of the Vanderbilt University Library and Temple University Library.

Charles Mulford’s sculptures explore the complex emotions surrounding anxiety through the lens of humor. Cartoon figures, 3D-modeled objects, and scans of human heads act as vehicles for theatrical narratives. Mired in tragic circumstances, the characters express their feelings about illness and death. Exaggerate scenes capture a sense of unease, reflecting the stress and vulnerability of anxiety. The result is a visual representation of a tortuous and sometimes humorous world.

Mulford website

Host Ken Volante was watching some 'Dark Souls' gameplay and heard some rocking music down at the Albany, Oregon skatepark. He got to meet Nick of Skeleton Boy and here we bring you some of the sounds from the Willamette Valley. Thanks Nick for the great chat!

💀Welcome to The Bone Zone💀
💀Punk-ish band from Albany, Oregon💀
💀Keepin' it spooky 24/7/365💀

Skeleton Boy

Carol Butler is a ballpoint illustrator based in Boise Idaho, where she works seasonally as an organic farmer.

An avid cyclist, and Norm Macdonald fan. She spends her time being a day dreaming degenerate while getting lost in the throws of a good science fiction novel.

Featuring special guest host Sarah Romano-Diehl

Carol in Insta!

Producer / composer / multi-instrumentalist Angel Marcloid records music under the moniker Fire-Toolz. Though Marcloid’s output emerges in a litany of distinct aliases and projects — from the jazz fusion / new age of Nonlocal Forecast to the vaporous nostalgia of MindSpring Memories — the Fire-Toolz catalog remains the central focus of the prolific artist’s musical universe and a home for Marcloid’s most ambitious and combinatory work. 'I am upset because I see something that is not there.', the fifth Fire-Toolz album to join the Hausu Mountain catalog since 2017, follows 2021’s sprawling double-album Eternal Home (HAUSMO111) and 2022’s self-released EP I will not use the body’s eyes today. I am upset […] offers listeners a prismatic cross-section of juxtaposed genres and compositional contortions to explore, maintaining Fire-Toolz’s signature density and complexity while tightening the scope of Marcloid’s experimentation into the project’s most focused song cycle to date. Perhaps more than any previous Fire-Toolz album, I am upset […] presents some form of pop music, carried in Marcloid’s passages of clean vocals, in the bright synth and keyboard tones that animate its tracks, in the yearning saxophone lines that pour into view and whisk the narrative onto a new path. The format of a one-person “band” carries a different weight in a landscape of solo artists crafting abstract modernist productions that don’t allude in the slightest to various twentieth-century rock-related traditions. Fire-Toolz exists on both sides of this divide.

Fire-Toolz