Sid Rosen & Friends open next installment of Second Saturdays

CORVALLIS — The Second Saturdays concert series presents Sid Rosen & Friends and River Rocks from 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday, March 8, at SunnySide Up, 116 N.W. Third St. The beneficiary for this month’s event is Winter Soldier II.

River Rocks is an ensemble of four musicians — Laurie Childers (vocals, keyboard, guitar), Mina Carson (vocals, guitar, mandolin), George Beekman (percussion) and Bill Veley (bass) — that plays songs combining lyrical expression with vocal harmonies. Both Childers and Carson write songs with a strong political presence. With influences of folk, rock, and jazz, it’s hard to pigeonhole the chord structures or the instrumentation.

Opening for River Rocks will be Sid Rosen & Friends, which is made up of Rosen (guitar), Beekman and Otto Gygax (percussionists). Sid’s genre is fingerstyle, instrumental guitar, and he’ll play mainly electric guitar on March 8. His tunes contain definite influences from Indian and Middle Eastern music, which he describes as a “musical melding of East and West; expansive, inspiring, meditative at times.” He uses intricate rhythms, provided by tabla and dumbek.

In winter 1971, a group of more than 100 Vietnam veterans provided first-hand testimony about war atrocities they had witnessed or committed. Drawing a contrast to the “summer soldier and sunshine patriot” (Thomas Paine, 1776) they termed it “Winter Soldier.”

This month, other veterans are demanding that the veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts be heard. From March 13 to 16, Iraq Veterans Against the War (www.ivaw.org/

wintersoldier) will present “Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan,” at the National Labor College in Washington, D.C. The event will bring veterans together to testify about their experiences and to present video and photographic evidence.

Second Saturdays is sponsored by Corvallis Alternatives to War, Chapter 132 of Veterans for Peace, and the Troubadour Music Center.