10x10 Series: Isabeau Waia'u Walker

Name: 10x10 Series: Isabeau Waia'u Walker
Start: 2025-03-12T19:30:00-07:00
Location: 1 Eugene Ctr, Eugene, OR, United States, Oregon 97401

Schedule

Wed, 12 Mar, 2025 at 07:30 pm

UTC-07:00

Location

1 Eugene Ctr, Eugene, OR, United States, Oregon 97401 | Eugene, OR

The 10×10 Series offers our patrons access to incredible artists near and far for the low cost of $10 per ticket.
Multicultural Kānaka Maoli singer songwriter, Isabeau Waia’u Walker, from Hawaii is fresh off the release of her 2nd LP Heavyweight. Currently based in Portland, OR but from Wailuku, Maui, she is a firm believer in the power of stories shared through song and aims to address the mind and heart in everything she creates. Her voice, her lyrics, her melodies and harmonies are both raw and refined, intimate yet relatable, memorable and haunting.
Heavyweight | Heavyweight is personal; the soundtrack for a heavy heart shored up with gratitude and tenderness. It is a gentle hand over yours, a head resting lightly on your shoulder, a mutual scream into the abyss. Isabeau writes to satisfy an internal tension. Her music is Bright Gloom, joy adjacent songs and stories from The Land of Broken and Demented Toys. Recorded by Ryan Oxford at The Center for Sound, Light, and Color in Portland, Oregon, Heavyweight owns up to flaws, admits to confusion and confesses failure but it is not a surrender. In contrast to her previous LP, Body, these songs are her individual bout with love, sacrifice and loss. It is the wily smile and bruised cheekbone still standing in the next round; the bottoming out and a heartfelt, heartful return. Heavyweight marks the first time Isabeau has recorded a project with a band, with her band of weird and talented brothers. Having the whole gang present throughout the process made room for real time collaboration. Her songs found their most mature form in her band community. Ryan and Isabeau have carved out a new groove in their artistic alliance and their friendship hosts a safe space to orchestrate songs as they mean to be. She is a lyric forward songwriter with stories reminding that while the worst has happened it didn’t take you out…if anything, it emboldened your heart, your love, your resolve. You are now sharper while more tender. Heavyweight is personal, but for all who have met grief. Heavyweight is hers, but also yours. These songs can hold your weight. “Take your heaviness / and give it back to the earth’s own weight / the mountains are heavy, the oceans are heavy.” – Rainer Maria Rilke, from The Poetry of Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus.