RECENT ARTICLES

Payge Turner, the trench-deep, powerful-voiced singer-songwriter who wowed audiences and judges on NBC’s “The Voice” last year and recently helped to open up Western Washington live music again last month at the WA Museum of Flight with rockers, The Black Tones, begins to break up and cry when she thinks about what the idea of home means to her. When asked, it hits her — she’s home. Meaning she is her own home. Wherever she goes, her home – herself – follows, is there. It’s an important realization for Turner, and it’s taken her some 28 years to come to it. But she has now.

The members of the Tacoma-based band, Enumclaw, consider themselves a working-class group. They have slogged in minimum wage jobs, rehearsed in basements and enjoyed their fair share of “tall boy” cans of beer belly-up at a dive bar. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with any of this. But the band members also dream bigger. Part of their identity entails a grind, a push for more, to make for higher ground when the time is right.

Tacoma artist and producer, Chris Blount, is on the way to the airport. The New Orleans-born creative soul is twenty minutes from Sea-Tac to scoop his brother who, when he touches down, will be the newest Northwest resident. Blount is thrilled for his younger sibling’s arrival. He remembers his own trips to the region from Chicago and then later Dallas.

Blount, who moved to Tacoma officially in 2013, had frequented the area many times before taking up residence. While he’s always loved creating work, ever since seeing his playwright father succeed in the Crescent City (more on this later), Blount cherishes the exchange as much as he does any other aspect of the artist’s life.

Reciprocation. Blount wants you to feel the surge of joy that comes from sharing what you love. He wants you to be happy. And he’s made a business of it.