Sunday, March 2 Noise Pop Festival 2025 With URAL THOMAS & THE PAIN support tba Doors 8PM Tickets $27 ADV / $30 DOS All Ages Walking through the residential heart of Portland’s Mississippi district, you’ll come across a lot that first appears to be a lumberyard. Behind the piles of wood you’ll find a charming wooden house under the overcast Oregon sky. Flickers of animated voices and music and laughter become more audible as you approach. After you knock on the door, it opens to the sweet smell of home cooking as warm as the house’s visual ambiance. This local landmark is the home of soul legend Ural Thomas built by hand with found materials decades ago. If you wander down the stairs you’ll find a practice space the soul man built for neighborhood kids to rehearse on Sundays after church. The basement is overflowing with musical equipment. And everything from the drums to the mics to the amps are set up and ready for you to plug in and play. When you walk down into the room you may see Portland’s Soul Brother Number One at the table chuckling, telling stories and jokes, smoking, and espousing his personal humanist philosophy obtained from 82 years of unfathomable experiences. He’s often joined by either his generations of biological posterity or the adopted family that is his band The Pain. You may also find this infinitely magnetic personality ripping through a cover song at full volume or working out a new original with his loved ones. Though Ural Thomas is universally recognized as one of the most exciting singers remaining from the original soul era, and an active musical institution for over sixty years, his band, all decades younger, are treated as equals. The Pain are no backing band – but rather a well-oiled tightly-knit musical aggregation that’s spent the last eight years with Thomas developing a unique sound of its own. Despite the usual COVID-19 obstacles, Ural Thomas and The Pain finally completed and released their much-anticipated third album “Dancing Dimensions” in 2023. While exploring everything from sweet Chicago soul to airy West Coast psychedelia to Sly funk, their latest collection retains the distinctive sound the band organically developed over years of relentless work. Classic yet unmistakably contemporary at the same time, “Dancing Dimensions” is the most accurate representation of The Pain’s unique flavor, power, and musical breadth committed to vinyl thus far. https://linktr.ee/UralThomasAndThePain