After winning Bandest of the Bands, Rare Monk is ready for the big time
Story by Natalie Horner
Photos by Jenna Westover
Mission one: don’t seem like a prostitute. Mission two: don’t get mugged. Mission three: interview Rare Monk. Waiting under the Haw­thorne Bridge alone at night, mission three somehow seems the most accomplishable. I knock on the door that reads “Audio­Cinema” in faded white stencil letters. No response. AudioCinema is a defunct warehouse in Portland’s southeast industrial district that now acts as a rehearsal and production space for local artists.
A sedan pulls into a parking spot three cars down from me. I hesitate to acknowl­edge its existence, as it could contain any array of shady characters. Or it could be a member of Rare Monk. When a tall, well-dressed man with an afro emerges from the driver’s side, I know it’s the latter. He squints at me.
“Oh, yeah, I remember you,” he says. “I didn’t recognize you with all the shadows. Kind of a sketchy place.”
Isaac Thelin plays violin and tenor sax for Rare Monk. While he unloads instruments from his car, a small truck pulls up and parks to our left. A man wearing a quilted plaid jacket, his long hair strapped back in a ponytail, steps out with a large guitar case: Forest Gallien, Rare Monk bassist. Gallien unlocks the door I’ve been loitering around, and we climb half a flight of partially lit stairs into AudioCinema.
It’s a large drafty space broken up by rows of bus station seating, mismatched couches and chairs, and wall panels featur­ing art from AudioCinema founder Guy Ilan. Whitewashed walls are adorned with framed vintage rock posters and painted canvases lit by gallery lights. Instead of rugs, artificial grass is used to cover sections of the worn wood floor; instead of vinyl, AstroTurf upholsters a few cushioned benches. An abandoned stage occupies one corner, and instrumental rock music can be heard eerily emanating from one of the practice rooms.
A dark-haired man with Wolverine sideburns and big eyes joins us on the little patch of turf we’ve chosen to situate ourselves around: Jake Martin, Rare Monk guitarist.
The last two members of Rare Monk (drummer, Rick Buhr; and vocalist, key­boardist, guitarist, and sometimes violinist, Dorian Aites) are stuck on the wrong side of the tracks behind a train. They arrive a few minutes later, toting their instruments. Good-natured ribbing is tossed between band mates while Aites and his pin-straight, dirty-blond hair finds a seat on what looks like an old bus station bench. Buhr, with his mop of wavy brown hair, parks himself at a tall retro cafe table.
Nearly a week earlier, Rare Monk is on stage at Eugene’s WOW Hall, playing to a throbbing crowd. Fans push up against the stage, holding their arms high above their heads. They jump and dance against each other in a friendly mosh pit. Extended instrumental jams punctuated by catchy choruses urge the crowd to jump, jump, jump to Buhr’s driving beats. Thelin’s sax solos stand out during the instrumen­tal diversions. He strikes an artful balance between soul and precision that reveals his classically trained roots. Aites’ Modest Mouse-esque vocals and keyboards reverber­ate through the gyrating crowd.
They’re competing head-to-head (to-head-to-head-to-head) with five other Eu­gene-based bands in Ethos’ “Bandest of the Bands” competition. For the second year in a row, Ethos teamed up with Ninkasi Brewing Company and the University of Oregon’s Cultural Forum to pit six local bands against each other for a grand prize of $250 and studio time with topsecret productions.
Before the band relocated to Portland and found AudioCinema, where they can practice at all hours of the night, they had to maneuver around neighbors, police, and homework schedules in Eugene.
“We practice twice as much in Portland as we did in Eugene,” Martin says.
“Now we have the practice space and with all of us having different work sched­ules, sometimes we have practice sessions from like one in the morning to three in the morning,” Buhr adds. The dynamic between the group members is brotherly. They finish each other’s sentences, laugh over inside jokes, and share stories as easily as if they’ve known each other their whole lives.
In reality, they’ve only been together as a band for two years.
“I was introduced to Isaac in the back of Roma,” Aites says referring to a local coffee shop just down the street from the Univer­sity campus. “Back when you could smoke back there,” he adds, tossing his head to the side in an attempt to knock his hair away from his face.
If members of Rare Monk are spokes on a bicycle wheel, Thelin is the hub. Nearly everyone was brought together through Thelin. When their original drummer moved away six months after their concep­tion, the search was on for a replacement. Enter Buhr.
“I was in a band with Rick before, so I just kind of grabbed him,” Gallien says. “We had fake drummer tryouts, but we kind of knew Rick was going to be our drummer the whole time.”

Lead vocalist Dorian Aites also adds keyboard, guitar, and violin to Rare Monk’s multifaceted sound. (Photo courtesy Sreang “C” Hok)
With the band complete once again, they were free to continue to develop their sound. When they originally started play­ing, they classified themselves as a “jam” or “party” band. Loose structures of songs guided their practices and shows, but most of their material was improvised.
“We struggled a lot to move from jam-based stuff to actually writing songs because when we first got together, it was just so fun to jam all the time,” Gallien says. “But recently, we’ve been really good at just fo­cusing. We’ll have a day where we sit down and write a song.”
Evidence of their focus is clear at “Band­est of the Bands.” With only a twenty-minute set to work with, they manage to squeeze in three full songs.
“It’s really cool that Bandest of the Bands came right after the tour because we’ve gotten so used to playing different length shows,” Buhr says. “Some shows we could play two-hour sets, and other shows we could only get up on stage for thirty min­utes. So we’ve been good about being really flexible with that.”
Rare Monk’s very first tour wrapped up in late January. They traveled in a van through Oregon, California, and a little slice of Nevada, playing fourteen shows in eighteen days.
“It was definitely part trial,” Gallien says. “To see if we would implode spending three weeks together in a van.”
Deemed a success (the van breakdowns were kept to a minimum and no one died), the group now wants to focus on expanding their fan base even more.
“We recorded a little EP about a year-and-a-half ago, and we basically just weren’t very happy with how it turned out with how much time and money we put into it,” Gallien says. “So we’re just trying to do it right this time. We just want to have a good display of our music recorded.”
“Yeah, it’s not a good representation of what we are anymore,” Aites adds. He seems to have surrendered in the battle with his hair, as it actively hangs in his eyes now. Gallien picks up where Aites leaves off.
“As soon as we get an album out we’ll have something we can push to people,” he says. “Like magazines for CD reviews, hope­fully radio. The album is the thing.”
Back at WOW, the guys have wrapped up their sweat-inducing set and are clearing their equipment from the stage. Clearly disliking this, the crowd chants their name repeatedly in an effort to retain them, but their cries go unheeded and the band leaves the stage.
About forty-five minutes later, Rare Monk’s win is announced, and the anxious crowd is in full support. The band, previ­ously standing composed in the middle of the floor, are now jumping, laughing, and hugging each other ecstatically. They take the stage to accept their first-place plaque, and Aites says a grateful thank you to the crowd and event sponsors. The kind of smile that splits cheeks is plastered across each of their faces. They are victors for a night.
“It probably wasn’t our best perfor­mance, but the energy was great,” Martin reflects on their winning set a week later.
“We had our first little mosh pit,” Gallien adds. “That was exciting.”
Sitting around our patch of turf, the group is starting to get antsy. Their instru­ments lay in their cases, littered around their feet and not in their hands. Martin leans back against the red couch he shares with Thelin and Gallien. I fear if I don’t leave now he may fall asleep before they get around to practicing tonight. Their songs have to be in pristine condition if they want to lay them down in their recently acquired studio time. The members of Rare Monk thank me again as they gather up their instruments. The sound of their animated voices bouncing around inside the cavern­ous AudioCinema follow me back into the shadows of the Hawthorne Bridge.
 


Gallery • 2 Photos

“I’m Gonna Rare Monk Your Ass”