About this Event
Erik Koskinen Band w/ Rose Gerber
Join us at Cravin' Gravy Social club to welcome one of Minnesota's finest songwriters, Erik Koskinen (full band) to our space, with special guest Rose Gerber.
January 8, 2026
7pm doors, 7:45 music
Tickets: $18 adv ($20 dos)
Full Bar $
ABOUT ERIK KOSKINEN
Erik Koskinen is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, whose music is not categorized by sub-genres. Stylistically he is on his own while heavily influenced by American roots music. The rhythmic integrity and musical tone is as important as the lyrical content and the artistic intent. Koskinen has reverently entered the anthology of uniquely crafted wry songs with the likes of Woody Guthrie and Ry Cooder while speaking as plainly as your neighbor. The Minneapolis Star Tribune calls Koskinen “the real deal” and “The best country songwriter in Minnesota”
Words from Fluff and Gravy's Jeffrey Foucault
He's a lights-out guitar (player) and his band is as good as any band in the country. But he's also a top-shelf writer, with a blade-sharp wit and love songs so real and tender they seem to transcend the form. I know of few writers whose relationship to their own landscape, in this case the rural north, is so elemental, and so integral. His songs feel like weather.
People know him in Minnesota, where most bar bands seem to cover at least one of his songs, but otherwise he's still one of the best kept secrets in the country. He sings about an America that doesn't get much play anymore, the one where the people at the bottom can't quite get ahead, and where working people aren't cartoon props in a culture war, but shrewd human beings living hard lives, and hard loves. His songs have the diamond-hard clarity and simplicity of Tom Petty, and like Petty, Koskinen can sing a literal statement without metaphor or ornament, and make it move like poetry.
The spiritual hunger in rock 'n' roll that came from blues and gospel is still a hunger in these songs, and if you listen hard, you can hear that lean coyote voice - wary, feral, full of fierce delight - lighting up the wee hours from somewhere out on the prairie.
FULL DISCOGRAPHY
Down Street / Love Avenue (2024)
Burning the Deal (2019)
Cruising Paradise (2018)
Erik Koskinen Live at the Real-Phonic Radio Hour 2011/2015 (2015)
American Theatre (2014)
Keep It To Yourself (2010)
Rose Gerber
Based in Portland, OR, Rose Gerber is an American roots explorer, incorporating country, folk, rock, alt-rock, and alt-country into a seamless signature aesthetic, where cowboy boots meets Doc Martins.
Her catalog includes an LP, several EPs and a bounty of singles. She has shared the stage with touring acts like Big Richard, Never Come Down, Margo Cilker, and performed at iconic NW festivals such as Pickathon, Treefort Music Festival, and Jackalope Jamboree
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
665 N Tillamook St, 665 North Tillamook Street, Portland, United States
USD 21.05
