Before we turn the mic over to local drummer Jared Forqueran, let's first list his resume, and then see how much room we have left.
One of the busiest figures on the local music scene, Forqueran, 31, has played with Autumn & Empire, Threes, Poor Bastard's Romance, Person People, Jukebot!, Warm Gadget, Anastacia, David Bowers, and local theater productions like “Hair” and “Chicago” since he moved to Bend from San Diego in 2003.
More recently, he was playing with Eric Tollefson, Jay Tablet, Tone Red and Josh Hart.
And next week — after a couple of farewell gigs this weekend — Forqueran will pack up and head for Denver, where he'll work toward making music his full-time career.
“I just feel like I need to expand my horizons and challenge myself,” he said. “I wish I could stay here and do what I want to do, which is make a good living playing music and travelling all over the place, but I've tried it so many times here and it's just fallen apart.
“It's always a gamble,” he said, “so you might as well give yourself the best chance you can.”
Forqueran said he loves Bend and that the scene here changed his life, specifically citing the crew behind the old downtown bar The Grove and the “proud older brother” feeling he gets seeing younger bands like Larry and His Flask and Empty Space Orchestra succeed.
In San Diego, Forqueran was a metal guy. In Bend, his ears found all kinds of new sounds.
“I came up here and was exposed to all this electronic music and hip-hop and Burning Man and all this stuff that I would've never been exposed to living in this huge metropolis, and I come to this little tiny mountain town of Bend and all these things changed my life,” he said. “I'm forever grateful for this town and the people and this scene. It's a lot of good memories.”
He's excited to be moving to a fertile scene like Denver's, where rock and jam bands are established, electronica is on a sharp rise, and there's a little bit of everything in between, as you'd expect in a big city.
“The people of Denver and Colorado in general are ... rabid music fans,” Forqueran said. “They go out to shows and they support. It's very refreshing, and I'm just looking forward to getting a little piece of it.”
— Ben Salmon
