Thanksgiving and Adrian Orange & Her Band are the names under which Portland, Oregon singer/songwriter Adrian Orange performs. First adopting the "Thanksgiving" moniker around 1999–2000, Orange played experimental folk music, often accompanying himself on guitar and self-recording his albums using analog equipment. While Thanksgiving is essentially a solo act, Orange often collaborates with other musicians in his recordings and performances.
Overview
Thanksgiving (1999-2006)
Thanksgiving's debut We Could Be Each Other's Evidence was released by Vit! Vit! Recordings when Orange was just fifteen years old. In 2000 he co-founded Marriage Records with Curtis Knapp and released his second albumNothing on the label the following year. Orange was notably prolific during this period, releasing six albums, three EPs and several singles under the name Thanksgiving on various labels. He also played drums in the instrumental group The Watery Graves of Portland alongside Knapp and Davis Lee Hooker, and toured and recorded with YACHT, Phil Elverum and Geneviève Castrée.
In 2006 Orange released the LP Bitches Is Lord under his own name and toured the world with a nine-piece backing band, initially known as Child Slave Rebellion and later Adrian Orange & Her Band. The touring group, featuring members of LAKE, François & the Atlas Mountains and Rozi Plain, recreated older Thanksgiving material with new textures and instrumentation described variously as "rogue West African prison-funk" and "acid-tinged dub-jam nomad blues". In February 2007the band reconvened at Dub Narcotic Studio in Olympia, WA to record a self-titled LP, released later that year on K Records. They also released the single Interdependance Dance as part of the label's long-running International Pop Underground 7" series. Adrian Orange & Her Band received mixed responses from critics, although Tiny Mix Tapes described the album as "groundbreaking" and Drowned in Sound praised it as "a vital snapshot of a singer engaged in a constant process of artistic discovery and renewal, with startling, fascinating, often wondrous results".
Recent projects
In late 2007 Orange adopted the moniker Lyllyys and began performing with the greater Portland, ORexperimental music scene including members of Rob Walmart, Jackie-O Motherfucker and White Rainbow. Around this time he contributed vocals to the LP Naked Acid by Valet and released two CDRs of free-form, electronic work. In 2011 Gnar Tapes released a double cassette of Orange's experimental recordings entitled Deep Stain Doublest Dubba Dope Duba Stank Dank Tape. According to the label, Orange had "suffered a near complete mental collapse, triggered by all manners of fatigue" following his most recent world tour and for a time "very few were aware of activities or whereabouts." He has since recorded and performed sporadically, at one point having relocated to Kekaha, Hawai'i.
Influence on other musicians
Orange has been cited as an influence by Laura Marling and praised by the likes of David Longstreth and Charlie Fink. Phil Elverum has described Orange as "an actual real-life lounging grass-grove poet who went on to write the best songs in human history."
