Portugal. The Man Has a Surprising Denver Connection

Portugal. The Man is still feeling it.

John Gourley — the rebel creative force behind the wildly successful Alaska-born, Portland-based indie-rock band — gets his kicks writing and performing whatever new music he conjures up now just the same as he has since 2004.

The group’s latest album, SHISH, is a reflective collection and ode to his beloved homeland, even though he’s been in Oregon for more than twenty years now. The title is a reference to the Alaskan city of Shishmaref, known as “the friendliest village in Alaska,” while the album art is a photo of a man dragging two bloodied seals across the frozen tundra taken by resident Dennis Davis.

“Alaska’s kind of wild, as you can imagine. It’s a pretty wild place,” says Gourley, adding the highs and lows, heavy and slow, throughout SHISH are the audible equivalent of the Last Frontier’s untamable landscape. “Ultimately, what all these songs started sounding like to me is exactly what it’s like being in Alaska.”

The lessons he learned growing up hopping around Alaskan villages ultimately center around the importance of community — how we all need one another and have important societal roles to fill, which should encourage us to lean on one another, especially in times of need.

“We don’t interact with each other enough,” Gourley says, reciting a favorite quote from fellow Alaskan musician Quinn Christopherson. “It takes a village. It’s the most fitting saying for everything that’s happening politically.”

That message is presented loud and clear on SHISH, juxtaposed against the dissonance and din of modern politics, how it divides and tears people further apart. As a result, the album also reflects what it’s like “being an American right now,” Gourley says.

“I feel like I pick up my phone and it’s utter fucking chaos. It’s fucking Metallica. It’s Slayer. It’s Sepultura,” he explains. “Then you set down your phone and walk the fuck outside and get back to fishing or doing your job. The album has lots of those moments where I’m picking up my phone and setting it back down, like, ‘Holy shit, let’s get out of it for a second.'”

Always a beacon of progress, as evidenced by his long history of activism and the foundations he has started (Pass The Mic and Frances Changed My Life), Gourley aims to share what he sees and experiences around him via Portugal. The Man, which has included his longtime collaborator and now wife, Zoe Manville, since 2008. Take the track “Angoon,” an anti-ICE anthem, which includes the verse, “No ICE, no borders enforcers, no owners, don’t need new world order.” Or there’s the Lynchian-meets-Metallica line, “jump in the fire, walk with me,” sung so sweetfully you’d miss the meaning if you weren’t consciously listening to the words.

Portugal. The Man is in California when Westword catches up with Gourley, just before its date in Denver on Wednesday, November 19, at Mission Ballroom. Alaskan-Indigenous artist Ya Tseen is also on the bill. The live band includes guitarist Nick Reinhart, drummer Kane Ritchotte, bassist Dani Bell, guitarist Liv Slingerland and Bonnie McIntosh on keys.

Gourley shares a surprising connection to the city, as his short-lived Portland post-hardcore crew, Anatomy of a Ghost, immediately fell in with the local DIY scene in the early 2000s. He’s quick to share high praise for the players who helped him during those salad days.

“I probably wouldn’t play music if it wasn’t for Denver,” he says. “It reminded me so much of growing up, moving around as a dog-mushing dogsled kid in a builder family. We bounced around all the time. It reminds me that, ‘Yeah, I have little homes all over the world.’ That was my first, so thank you, Denver hardcore.”

But those aren’t just rosy words (for the record, he also loves Blood Incantation, Denver’s preeminent death metal group; Gourley’s worked with director Michael Ragen, who directed “The Stargate” music video, for ages). Gourley teamed up with old friend David Marion, best known for his time fronting Aurora post-hardcore act Fear Before, aka Fear Before the March of Flames, on “Pittman Ralliers,” by far SHISH’s hardest-driving song, complete with a retro synthwave outro.

“David Marion just randomly ends up in Portland and comes over to the house,” Gourley says, explaining that he and Reinhart were working on the track when he stopped by. “It’s just this thrash song, and David Marion is in the other room and literally gave me my first tours, supported us when nobody else did, so it was like, ‘Fuck, yeah, he’s going to be on the fucking record.’”

Marion’s currently on the road with Portugal. The Man, too.

“He just absolutely crushed the vocals on that. I thought, ‘Why don’t you do the whole tour, because that’s fun,’” he adds. “That’s what we did back in the day, so I’m really excited to have him out. That’s our callback to Denver and what he did for us back in the day.”

You can sense the excitement as Gourley recalls that time, before Portugal. The Man, when he learned what it meant to grind it out with Anatomy of a Ghost.  

“The Denver scene was the very first place outside of Portland that accepted us. They accepted Anatomy of a Ghost with open arms,” he shares. “It was like, ‘We’re friends for life. Us against everybody. Our tours are the best fucking tours.’”  

Remembering his roots is obviously important to Gourley.

“It’s something I’ll never forget about playing music, about being a musician,” he concludes, “is where you come from.”

Portugal. The Man, with Ya Tseen, 7 p.m. Wednesday, November 19, Mission Ballroom, 4242 Wynkoop St. Tickets are $65.