Repatriated Portlander with 52 songs in his heart offers up a CD on his hometown

by Margie Boulé

Sunday, March 8, 2009

The Oregonian

Ian Doescher did it. He wrote and recorded 52 songs about Portland in 52 weeks.

Folk tunes. Swing numbers. Rap songs. Barbershop ballads. Kids ditties.

He did it all with his voice, a Mac computer, a recording software program and a very supportive wife, Jennifer Creswell.

Oh, and his sense of humor helped, too. When you've committed to a project like writing a year's worth of songs about your hometown, you might as well find the fun in it.

So there are plenty of songs Ian recorded with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek. Songs such as "Storm Center." Ian calls it "a run-for-your-life kind of song," an "ode of terrifying proportions," about how the KGW-TV First Alert Storm Team, "somewhat sadistic prophets of doom: half news anchors, half crazed scientists," scares people with its weather promotions.

KGW's chief meteorologist, Matt Zaffino, wrote on his blog, "Sounds very B-52s to me. Well done, Ian. The newsroom folks were rolling over this."

The seeds of Ian's yearlong Portland song project were sown two years ago in New York state. Ian and Jennifer, both Portland natives, had spent a number of years at colleges and grad schools in the Northeast. They were homesick and wanted to return to Oregon with their two young children but didn't have the money to finance a move.

So Ian wrote several songs about Portland, created a CD and put it up for sale on the Web site CD Baby (cdbaby.com).

Some were funny -- "Urban Growth Boundaries Can't Stop My Love (I'll Go Out to Gresham for You)" -- but the ballads made it clear, to quote one refrain, "I wanna come back to Portland."

I wrote a column about Ian's album, he sold some copies, and the proceeds helped pay for the family's return to Oregon in early 2008.

"We've never looked back," says Ian, who's 31. He and Jennifer found Portland to be as wonderful as they'd remembered.

In part to thank those who'd helped fund their return, and as a creative exercise, Ian decided to set himself the challenge of writing songs specific to this city and putting them on a blog (portlandsongs.com).

There's no question the songs are local. Check out "Not Hip Enough for Hawthorne."

"Who's cool enough to live on Hawthorne anymore?" Ian asked in his blog that week. "Certainly not me. No square-dressing a cappella geek gets to live on Hawthorne -- we just get to write songs about it."

And then there's "Meet Me on Peacock Lane," from December:

I can put up the tree,

Ring silver bells,

Share a candy cane.

But for this to be

A merry Christmas,

Meet me on Peacock Lane.

There are protest songs, such as "Smelly River" and "Just Another Northwest High Rise." There's a song about the toss of the coin that gave Portland its name, a drinking song for McMenamins and good old-fashioned love songs to our city, like "People-Watching in Pioneer Square."

And who wouldn't enjoy the classic "I Lost My Family at the Junior Rose Parade"?

Now that the year is over, Ian has put his favorite 20 songs on a CD, "The Portland Songs Project," which is available at CD Baby and other digital distributors, including iTunes. ("Just search 'Doescher,' " Ian says.)

Ian admits he's a little relieved the project has come to an end. "It was fun to do," he says, "and it's certainly a lot of fun to have done, at this point.

"There were weeks when I was excited to be writing and was full of ideas, and then there were weeks when it was like pulling teeth. My goal was always to get the songs posted on Sundays. Sometimes it would be Sunday at 3 in the afternoon, and I'd find myself in front of a microphone going, 'Think. Think. Think.' "

Some weeks, "I would think I was going to write one song and what would come out would be absolutely different."

For example, just after the new year began, "I was thinking about doing a sort of happy, beautiful 'It's a new year in Portland' sort of song."

But then he started thinking about a story he'd read about the initiation of the smoking ban in restaurants and bars. And "I had just watched the movie 'Hot Fuzz' the week before.

"What I ended up with is basically a cop song, about a (fictitious) hard-core police squad that goes around enforcing the no-smoking ban."

It's called "2009 Squad":

Call us the arm of God,

And we're not joking.

We're the 2009 Squad,

Gonna keep you from smoking.

Sometimes Ian recorded when he was sick -- his voice is scratchy in a song about the farmers market.

Sometimes his 5-year-old son, Liam, "would be making his own noises or singing along." You can hear Liam, just a little, on "Not Hip Enough for Hawthorne."

Ian learned a lot about songwriting during the course of 52 weeks. "I've always been a person who writes by inspiration, not by sheer force of will," Ian says. So making himself come up with something every week has really helped improve his skills.

"The discipline made me realize there are tools you can use, as opposed to just relying on a perfect melody to come into your head."

Since the family arrived in Portland, Jennifer has been working as a priest at St. Luke the Physician Episcopal Church in Gresham. Ian finished his comprehensive exams for his Ph.D. in ethics from Union Theological Seminary and is working on his dissertation.

He's also starting a new job this month. He'll be the pastor at Calvary Presbyterian Church in Northeast Portland. The church has a strong music program, Ian says. "I'm sure there will be much music going on.

"I'm very excited about it. Services are at 10:30 Sundays."

Maybe he'll start writing hymns.