Bloglander

Each day this week, we’ve previewed bands playing at this weekend’s inaugural Birds on a Wire festival in Pullman. You can also check out our full story — featuring Rocky Votolato, Justin Townes Earle and Joe Pug — which came out in today's paper.

Click here to read a story we wrote in November about Horse Feathers, who are also playing at Birds on a Wire.

Of all of the acts playing at this weekend's festival, Portland's Super XX Man — a project that's been around in some incarnation or another for the past 15 years — is one of the kookiest. The band is the brainchild of Scott Garred, a Pullman native, a man who spends his days working as a therapist at an Oregon mental hospital, counseling patients with music therapy.

You can tell that Garred is in tune with the human brain, composing songs rife with emotion and meltdown. Sometimes he speaks in evil thoughts — whether they're his or those of his patients, we don't know. But he's stone-faced as he confesses them. On "Psychotic Breakdown," he's frank: "I started hearing voices / told me things like burn your house down / so I did. I burned my house down." Thank god for mental illness.

Super XX Man plays the Belltower on Saturday, March 27 from 4-5 pm. Birds on a Wire runs Friday evening and all day Saturday. Tickets are $35 in advance, $45 day-of. For more info go here.