From the Pacific Northwest, Oregon's troubadour traveler BRIAN CUTEAN (aka QTN) comes to Rock Island to celebrate the bounty of autumn. The concert is Friday November 19 at First Lutheran Parish House, 1620 - 20th St. This is an all ages event and admission will be $5 to $10 sliding scale and is not a church-related event.
QTN is a many faceted minstrel, a teller of wild tales filled with wordplay and wonder and powerful and colourful guitar chops, an award-winning songwriter-performer and an offbeat unusual and thoughtfully real voice in these days of mass-produced, unremarkable, disposable music.
After five albums and nearly 30 years of songwriting, performing metafables and stories, Cutean has released Guitarred and Feathered, a new CD of wordless acoustic guitar music for mindheartsouls to sing along with; antifrantic music that breathes and celebrates. The new disc has been garnering rave reviews and national and international airplay.
Based in the Willamette Valley of Oregon alternating between Portland and Eugene, Cutean makes annual trips to the southwest and midwest, and his concerts are community events.
With one guitar, a whirl of musical ideas and the sound of hands, wound wires and wood, Cutean weaves together instrumental songs with dynamic playing in the new CD. "The four elements I reached for in this recording, " says Cutean, "are melody, rhythm, a fun bassline and silence. This album is a breather from a world shrill with opinions, instant message me-me-me blogs and 24 hour news chatter. It is universal in every language and the stories it tells belong to us all."
Cutean writes songs like no one else's: love songs from another planet, spacious world poems, conscious wordplay meta-fables that roll off the tongue and folky jazz melodies with a gypsy blues beat and wry whole wheat sensibility. His wordless guitar stylings to provoke and inspire, his stories are laughable, affable and unforgettable; his presentation unpretentious, comfortable and unpredictable.
He has traveled the country for years playing festivals, coffeehouses, concerts, schools and gatherings. Brian's songs get airplay on radio stations the world over and he has been a guest on radio shows like the nationally-syndicated River City Folk. He is a favourite at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas, Oregon Country Fair and many other venues.
Newspapers have said:
-
"...The Tom Robbins of folk music" (The Carbondale Flipside)
-
"Playful, energetic and honest." (The Oregonian)
-
"QTN is the guitarist with one foot in the groove!" (DE Knight, Seraphic Park)
-
"An unclassifiable and irreverent acoustic performer..." (The Austin Chronicle)
-
"One of our leading contemporary songsmiths and music makers" (Victory Music Review)
-
"Brian is one of those rare guitarists who possesses a 'signature touch' that can be recognized in a moment.A splendid piece of work that will always be a jewel in my collection." (Kelly Mulhollan, Still on the Hill)
-
"An adept storyteller ...[whose] lyrics run the gamut of personal reflection to commentary on social issues" (Folkwax)
-
"Introspective, satirical, delightfully absurd and always acoustically gentle to the ears..." (The Austin Statesman)
