His music has inspired many around the world, been featured in film, and on Oct. 12, Jon Auer will bring his West Coast Waves tour to Brickworks.
“It will be a pot-pourri of sorts, a smorgasbord if you will,” Auer said, mixing a close-knit dinner party atmosphere with music and storytelling, and joined by guest Daniel DeShon of Desolation Sound.
Auer grew up in Bellingham and entered the music scene at a young age. “Both my parents were musicians, so music was always around. I don’t know what a house would like without a guitar on the couch.”
He added that his father was a professor at Western Washington, meaning he spent a lot of time on campus and around the counterculture at the time. His father set up a small but powerful home recording studio. “I did teenage stuff too but a lot of times I would come home, go in there, put my headphones on and play around, experiment. It was my playground.”
There, in that house, that studio, he would stay up all night mixing the first album of The Posies.
The Posies went on to record several albums and songs written by Auer were featured on the “Reality Bites” soundtrack, and in “The Basketball Diaries.”
“I don’t know how it happens anymore, but then if a producer wanted your music in their film, they paid a lot of money and they kind of, courted you,” he responded when asked what hearing his music on the big screen was like. The directors and producers of “The Basket Ball Diaries” invited the band to a pre-showing in Seattle, which, Auer said, was a surreal experience.
“The song, [Coming Right Along] ended up only being in it for about a minute and a half. Auer has been involved with several bands including Big Star since then and maintained a solid solo career.
Auer has also nurtured a sizable production career having produced and/or mixed records for bands including Love Battery, Truly, The Best Kissers in the World, Sky Cries Mary, Pond, Gnome, The Squirrels, You Am I, Redd Kross, Awesome, Cheap Star, and Spiral Stairs (of Pavement) and the Sub Pop label and also spent time in Nashville playing on the Ben Folds’ produced William Shatner record Has Been.
“It’s funny, you don’t know what your life looks like until you look back,” he said.
While he does not currently live in the Pacific Northwest, it will always be a part of him, Auer said. He and his family visited Orcas frequently when he was younger, and he played one private show in Friday Harbor. Auer is looking forward to visiting his old stomping grounds.
“The Pacific Northwest is in my blood, my genetic makeup,” Auer said, noting its physical beauty and wonderful people making up interesting pockets of culture.
Auers taste in music, he admits, is fairly eclectic. “I have a pretty diverse pallet. I could never fuel my body with one type of food, and I couldn’t just listen to one type of music,” Auer said. “Sometimes you feel like an apple, another day you might want an orange, or maybe a pomegranate.”
He continued saying that it’s interesting because the only reason genres exist now is the very reason people need to know where to put a book back in the library. There are no longer clear genres anymore, but subgenres of subgenres. It’s a classic misconception that because a musician may typically play a certain type of music they only listen to that type. Most musicians, according to Auer, listen to and are inspired by an array of styles. He gave the example of meeting and observing working Henry Rollins. Auer discovered Rollins was a fan of musicians who play music very different from his own.
“Music is so mysterious, I don’t think I can explain why music affects us. It seems to make us feel good. It has a resonant quality. The sound actually has vibrations, plus the lyrics create an alchemy,” Auer said. ”Sometimes it’s easier to get a message across through music than it is to have an actual conversation. Music is soul food, at its best. I would argue that we are living to feel and experience those feelings.”
Music has also been shown to have healing properties. For example, study after study has shown patients with Alzheimer’s or Dementia react positively to music People who could not string sentences together in conversation are suddenly able to sing lyrics when introduced to songs from their past.
“How does music do that? I don’t know, but I’m sure glad that it does. It’s mysterious, and it’s one of the things that makes life worth living” Auer said.
Tickets are $20 and can be bought at Eventbrite at
