Brandon and I were recently guest on John C. & Claudia F. Savage’s podcast Thick in the Throat, Honey. You can hear the episode by clicking the link below.
https://www.thickinthethroathoney.com/podcast/2018/episode-13-interview-with-amy-and-brandon-conway
Two artists interview two artists–with our children playing in the adjoining room sometimes, sometimes under our feet. Amy Conway is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work utilizes performance, drawing, writing, video, installation, collaboration, and comedy. Her pieces tend toward reflections of the personal. Brandon Conway is a guitarist who primarily focuses on free improvisation. He likes both minimalism and maximalism, spontaneous intuition and nerdy formalism. Amy let’s everything run together and percolate. Brandon compartmentalizes his art, work, and family life. They have two boys, Alvah and Heywood, aged 10 and 8, who love video games and comic books.
about Thick in the Throat, Honey:
Portland, OR-based performance duo Thick in the Throat, Honey (Claudia F. and John C. Savage) began in 2007 at The Atlantic Center for the Arts. Morphing the traditions of jazz, spoken word, experimental music, chants, and devotional intoning, the duo is known for their unique melding of the disparate.
Arab American poet Claudia F. Savage, M.A., regularly collaborates with other disciplines and has been awarded residencies at Ucross, Jentel, Hambidge, and Mineral School. Her poetry, essays, and interviews have most recently been in Columbia Journal, Denver Quarterly, water-stone review, and BOMB. She is the author of Bruising Continents (Spuyten Duyvil, 2017), The Last One Eaten: A Maligned Vegetable’s History and The Hour of Anjali. She teaches privately throughout the country, as a Writer in the Schools in Portland, and through Literary Arts in Portland. Her collaboration with Detroit visual artist Jacklyn Brickman, reductions, about motherhood and ephemerality will be exhibited in 2019.
John C. Savage has been compared to Rahsaan Roland-Kirk, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Noah Howard, Herbie Mann, and Colin Stetson. He is known equally as “a thoughtful and rigorous improviser” and “a badass, knock-down-drag-out force to be reckoned with” (Willamette Week). John has received honors from New York University, the Oregon Arts Commission, and Portland’s Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC), and holds a Ph.D. from NYU in music performance. His album Black Heron and the Spoonbill (PJCE Records, 2015), featured Claudia’s poetic work which “captured the feel of the album’s carefully layered soundscapes” (Willamette Week).
Thick in the Throat, Honey’s work has been supported by the Creative Music Guild, Portland’s RACC, Oregon State University, and Literary Arts. They have performed and lectured at The Improvisation Summit of Portland, No Fest, Sacramento Poetry Center, The Extradition Series, and with other interdisciplinary duos throughout the Pacific Northwest. Their first album, Love Letters We Never Sent, was released on Thrum Recordings and is available at www.thickinthethroathoney.bandcamp.com and on their website.
amy conway: art 