If there’s one artist who truly embodies the spirit and feeling of the American West and perhaps more specifically, the Pacific Northwest, it’s Margo Cilker. Starting with her masterful 2021 debut LP Pohorylle and continuing with 2023’s Valley of Heart’s Delight, Cilker has emerged as a refreshing voice in the folk and Americana scene. Her songs wander a different path from the trite blandness that often plagues these genres now, spinning vivid tales of sparsely beautiful landscapes and the characters who inhabit them, in a way that feels wisened and natural. These days, Cilker has been on the road but doesn’t have a new album to promote, though she has hinted at something in her newsletter. Cilker has also made it something of a tradition to play a headlining show in Portland, Oregon – about ninety minutes west of the town of Goldendale, Washington she calls home – every couple of years or so. Such was the case when she brought her band to the Aladdin Theater on Saturday, October 26th for her largest headlining show in the city to date.
Following a set of intimate solo acoustic tunes from Cilker’s bandmate Jeremy Ferrara, she took the stage and launched into the gorgeous harmonies and fireside cowboy sound of “Lowland Trail.” With a lineup that included Ferrara on guitar, The Decemberists’ Jenny Conlee sitting in on keyboard, Clara Baker on fiddle, Rose Cangelosi on drums, and her husband and collaborator Forrest VanTuyl on bass, Cilker radiated gratitude towards the enthusiastic crowd as she worked her way through songs like “Barbed Wire (Belly Crawl)” layered with fiddle and piano, and a mournful, accordion-laced “Chester’s.”
Throughout the set, Cilker mixed in well-chosen covers, including from VanTuyl (a talented songwriter and cowboy poet in his own right), as well as some new tunes. Her take on VanTuyl’s “Rose of Nowhere” with its simple trotting beat and quiet country sound was an early standout, as was the new tune “Maryhill Peaches, Goodnoe Pairs,” an almost painterly ode to the Columbia River Gorge that captured the essence of this Pacific Northwest wonder with layered textures from fiddle and accordion. Ever a fan of geography, Cilker worked her way south to her home state, introducing the new tune “Noise, Babe” as being something of a homage to both Neil Young and California before using her pearly white guitar to lay down one of the most rocking moments of the night, complemented by Conlee’s boogieing saloon-style piano rolls and Ferrera’s twangy picking. After a soulful, organ-soaked “Keep It On a Burner,” Cilker shifted gears into a cover of Ian Tyson’s “Road to Las Cruces” that hit like an old cowboy folk tale with Baker’s eloquent fiddle work shining brightly, only to follow it up with a poignant version of Bob Dylan’s “Every Grain of Sand” that put her old-soul sensibilities on full display. Another new tune called “Highway 11” floated along with a more robust alt-country sound, building excitement for what we can expect from a new album and segueing nicely into a poignant rendition of Butch Hancock’s “When the Nights are Cold.”
In the final stretch of the set, Cilker mixed things up as she dipped into her earlier material with a solo acoustic “Bilbao Precipitation.” She invited her longtime collaborator and producer Sera Cahoone to the stage to join her for “Up to Me,” following it up with a surprising choice cover of The Jayhawks’ “All the Right Reasons” that saw Conlee injecting beautiful piano work. She welcomed the rest of the band back to close things out on a high note with a rousing, choogling “Tehachapi” with lively fiddle and accordion, and the swaying, dreamily rocked out “Trout Lake.”
By the time the band returned to the stage and encored with “Steelhead Trout,” the performance felt like a celebration and a homecoming of sorts. Family, friends, and musical peers were in the audience, cheering them on for having just played Cilker’s biggest headlining show in Portland to date. The Rose City helped give her a start and is home to her label Fluff & Gravy Records, and each show here, to larger audiences, takes on the feeling of a victory lap. For Cilker’s part, she reciprocated with the kind of easygoing radiance and measured confidence of a purveyor of timeless songs that has become her signature. It also left the audience with a lingering excitement that Cilker has plenty more music to give us down the road.
All photos by Greg Homolka
One Response
Thank you for the well-crafted review. It was a fabulous show, after a relatively long absence from a Portland stage for her, but very affirming to see her load the Aladdin with an enthusiastic crowd of local fans. I was very anticipatory to hear her new material and was not surprised, but still stunned by how well-developed, lyrically rich and seasoned the new material is. If there ever was a spot-on, heart-stirring anthem to the essence of the Columbia River Basin, I’d be hard pressed to find a better or richer example. All the new material felt well worn and ready for delivery to the world. I felt lucky to hear one of folk/country/Americana’s most accomplished lyrical artists in a relatively small venue and thinking (like every time I see her) that this artist’s work is deserving of a much, much larger audience, given the depth of her work at such a relatively young point in her career.