John Gourley, lead singer and guitarist for Portugal. The Man, doesn?t like things too routine.
Not surprising for a man who hails from rural Alaska. While his parents homesteaded, Gourley taught himself to playguitar and sing.
But it was in high school where Gourley happened upon a musical kindred spirit, bass player Zach Carothers, in a band that played covers of Rage Against the Machine anthems, that a musical partnership was born.
“Everything came out of me after I left my roots and everything behind. I had been brought up kind of odd, to be living so far away from everything,” Gourley said.
Gourley and Carothers formed the popular Anatomy of a Ghost. Within months of its 2002 birth, the band had built a huge regional following in its home base of Portland, Ore. The unconventional rock/pop/punk/emo music also caught the ears of music execs, who signed the group.
But the band?s music lacked a spark ? a creativity that Gourley and Carothers sought. They formed Portugal. The Man and are now touring behind their latest CD “Church Mouth,” released by Fearless Records. The music on the latest release ? sort of a Led Zeppelin, White Stripes, Mars Volta mix with a lot of jamming, is a departure from their 2004 debut CD, “Waiter: You Vultures!”
“We went through the first half of last year trying to recreate all the stuff [from the debut album] with drum machines,” Gourley said of their previous tour. “It was sounding pretty good, but we didn?t [play] all the songs on the record, so everyone was complaining.”
Impromptu onstage jam sessions followed, gained popularity and gave birth to a new sound for the band.
“Whatever notion it pursues, Portugal. The Man plays solid rock that sacrifices neither hooks nor power. It all hangs together with an accessibility one wouldn?t suspect from its punctuation,” a critic for the Tampa Bay Tribune wrote.
The band, which now includes drummer Jason Sechrist, has also worked to make the music more accessible and to add to its repertoire.
“It just worked out really great,” Gourley said. “We got into this place,and we?re staying there.”
