After a great trip to Portland (more on that later), I ended up leaving town early to beat the freezing rain that was supposed to hit the Columbia Gorge on Wednesday night. So I didn’t end up in an icy, fiery crash, but unfortunately I also missed out on seeing Sam and Frank, who I was going to meet up with at the Goodfoot that night. I’ve known them both for years and years. Sam lived across the street from me for a long time, and both of them played with Travers in Elixir — an instrumental rock band in Portland that was just astonishingly good. But good things don’t last forever; Travers ended up moving to Chicago and the band dissolved.

Frank has been making a name for himself around town lately, though, with a one-man show. He plays drums with one hand, keyboards with the other, and sings, too. A couple months ago, a Portland photographer caught one of his shows and wrote a glowing piece, which I quote here:

So about a month ago, I was out with friends at the Ash Street, having a few beers, talking about music and who’s banging Lindsey Lohan. When, out of nowwhere, this band started killing it in the other room. It sounded great, so I got up to go check them out. When I got to a place I could see, I was floored. There was only this one guy on the stage playing drums with both feet and and his right arm, while his left arm was playing two keyboards. Oh yeah, and he was singing. When I looked over at my friend’s Eli and Joe, they were a mixture of joy, amazement and jealousy. (Joe was pounding his head on the table in between cigarettes) The guy playing was Frank Dufay. An Oregon native and an obvious Brian Eno fan.

That’s about half of what he wrote, so don’t forget to stop by the page, to read the rest and see all the great photos he took.

You should also head over to Frank’s audio & video page to download samples, and send for his quite affordable DVD & EP. I hear he has T-shirts available as well . . .