Evelate, Searchlights
With Dusty Beats and Joe Bass I just let it come to be.
We were a band called Searchlights from 2009 when
I first introduced these two players to each other,
until June 18th 2023, when Joe Bass
sent a group text quitting the band and
requesting to cancel all remaining shows.
Included within was a ten-year hiatus starting in 2012,
when Dusty moved to Ohio to pursue steel
and Joe and I decided not to replace him, but to press pause.
Loyalty, ya know?
Scroll down for links and additional indulgent history.
Breaking News
latest update: November 2023
Original footage of us playing around town!
@mrJoeslapBass on YouTube.
2022-2023 footage:
@Searchlights.pdx on FB
or
For a copy of the *Evelating* album...customized CD copies are available from band members while supply lasts.
So Bring.On.The.Enthusiasm. Chris Baron will get you one, for sure, if you want it.
Joe Bass quits! June 18th 2023. This is the most breaking of all news, really. Look how he stares down the camera with
arrogant repose, solidifying his place in history as The One Who Was Right.
backstory
Hello. Chris here, to tell my side of the backstory
as 2023 begins.
I was playing around Portland with several bands in 2009. Joe Bass and I were in Idiot SCIENCE, and Dusty Beats and I were in locally-legendary cover band Disorderly Conduct. I really wanted to follow up on the Evelate music, and had written songs towards a sequel album. I introduced the two of them...
and the bus was hopped-on.
We came out in Dusty and Elizabeth's Hillsdale basement, where Russ recorded the entire set live. My favorite memory of the music that night was teaching everyone to
sing the callback on "I'm On The HaZe".
We recorded mixed and mastered an 11-song studio album with the great Ryan Ferris over 2010-2011...but never released it. If you have a handmade copy of *Evelating*,
it's an authorized bootleg.
I remember we went on a mini-tour to eastern Oregon, out the Gorge for one weekend, and Joe Bass simply came ALIVE on the road, embracing the physicality and pressurized social demands with spirited poise. Dusty and I had already been heading out there regularly with DisCon, and had established a path for an original band. We rocked, and got asked to return to open for Floater a short while later. Russ rode out with us
and recorded that entire set.
"We Are Not Divided" from the album was that night.
Our last live show before Dusty decided to pursue steel and move to Michigan was March 2012 in Hood River. Joe and I decided not to replace him, but to hiatus him,
so we all went our separate ways.
By 2014, Ryan and I had been continuing to work on recordings, and apart from the eleven songs selected for the *Evelating* album, there were about ten other fantastic-sounding pop-rock tracks. I included eight on my
second solo album *Light Up The Sky* .
In the summer of 2016, Elizabeth put together a beach house trip in Pacific City Oregon, Dusty flew out, and we set up in the garage and played for friends and neighbors. It was wildly...wild. Just ask K8!
Dusty flew out for Thanksgiving 2021, after months (years?) of 2-4 hour phone conversations with him as he drove between midwest job sites, and we set up a Reunion Show at Dublin Pub in SW Portland. The videos are on Facebook @ChrisBaronMusic as the full livestream (that means you get all the jokes in between) and a select few are on the @ChrisBaronMusic YouTube channel.
Dusty moved back to Oregon in Fall 2022, kicking off a run of very fun live shows from Bargeway Pub in The Dalles to White Eagle McMenamins in Portland.
The band ends as of June 18th 2023, with the abrupt departure of Joe Bass. We now live only in fond memory...our final shows (some great performances of songs!) are free for the the People, archived here:
https://www.youtube.com/@searchlightspdx
Be forewarned: at some point, Joe Bass will take ALL these videos down. He doesn't like me anymore.
