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When Jamie Dunphy pulled up to our meeting in his beater ’90s Ford Ranger, wearing a flannel, it was clear that his roots as a PNW musician are still deeply planted. Since taking office, Dunphy has positioned himself as a relatable voice on City Council; a Portlander with fresh takes on how to make the city more livable for everyone, not just those with deep pockets. Specifically, Dunphy spoke about his plans to make Portland a music capital again, by co-creating a city government supportive of working-class musicians and artists that encourages sustainable growth for the city’s evergreen music industry without bending to the powers that be (and that want to be) in Portland.
If you’ve been paying attention at all, even just the tiniest little bit, you’ve noticed that Portland has been experiencing myriad growing pains for the last decade or so, causing the city to become a much harder place to thrive in than it used to be. Among the hardest hit in this time of growth are working class musicians, a point of Portland pride and a cross section of our city that includes communities of all races, genders, sexualities, ages, abilities, etc.
Here’s where Dunphy comes in. Elected to Portland City Council in November 2024, Dunphy is the first elected official to make music a policy priority. He remembers what many consider to be the golden years of Portland music culture. When we had bands blowing up internationally, when you couldn’t walk a single block on the east side after 5 pm without hearing a band practice, when artists (not just creatives) were flocking to the city to take part in supportive, diverse music and arts scenes.
What happened to all the house venues? What happened to bartending or being a barista part-time and creating art full-time because rent was $500 a month? Gentrification, obviously, which Dunphy sees and wants to do something—a lot of things—about.
For a start, Dunphy says Portland needs to “change zoning codes and noise ordinances to preserve existing noise-creating businesses,” putting the onus of sound-proofing on new builds and not existing establishments. So, for example, if some horrendous urbanpod apartment complex went up in that empty lot next to the Nova (fka Bossanova Ballroom), it would be the responsibility of the developers to soundproof the new building and not the responsibility of established venues to soundproof themselves. As of the writing of this article, nothing like this exists anywhere in the laws or ordinances of Portland. This would also support the safety and continued flourishing of the city’s DIY and house venues, practice spaces, and raves—all of which are essential to the health of thriving music scenes, even if such events aren’t your cup of tea.
Dunphy identified Portland’s Title 14 ordinance as a tool designed to help residents and the police subjectively target the amplified bass and drum-heavy music of Black, Brown, and rave communities. As an example, he referenced Solae’s Lounge, an Alberta jazz club the city tried to impose a 10 pm music curfew upon; the restriction proved unsuccessful, but the club has since closed. Dunphy pointed to new developments in the area, built without soundproofing, and the compounding problem of gentrification. “We’re not a small town anymore, we’re a small city, right? We are in an urban environment. If you’re gonna move to a hip neighborhood, there’s gonna be noise.”
As a former touring musician—who even played Warped Tour 2005 with his band Leaving The Scene—Dunphy has hauled countless pounds of gear to and from his van, in and out of venues around Portland and the country. So naturally, another city program Dunphy wants to expand is musician-specific loading zones outside of venues that reserve street parking for musicians to park their tour rigs as close as possible to the venues, making load-in and load-out significantly easier. This would be especially helpful at venues like, for example, Swan Dive and the Six, which have hefty staircases to navigate before and after shows. Such a rule would also help bands and venue staff keep an eye on tour vans, often loaded with a band’s cumulative life savings in the form of music equipment. Dunphy hits the nail on the head when stating, “community safety comes from community.”
One of the bigger, more widely-discussed fights Dunphy has taken on is with the new Live Nation venue that’s being planned for the Central Eastside. The three lots on SE Water, amounting to almost an acre, were sold by the city of Portland to Beam Development and Colas Construction for a song to the tune of $2.41 million. Beam and Colas plan to construct a 3,400 capacity venue and lease it to Live Nation, the multi-billion dollar parent company of Ticketmaster.
The city’s approval of plans and permits for this build, even as hundreds of community members showed up to object at board meetings, public hearings, and press conferences, has continually dismayed musicians and music fans. All while the much-beloved Doug Fir is now over a year late in opening their new location in the same neighborhood, due to miles of bureaucratic red tape.
Concerns over the new Live Nation venue are many, ranging from environmental to economic, from cultural to safety. There’s a rational that national tours frequently skip Portland because the city doesn’t have mid-to-large size venues, so this new space won’t directly compete with the current local music ecosystem, just add to it. But what happens when Live Nation starts subdividing its space (similar to what Moda Center does with Theater of the Clouds), and taking gigs away fromt local venues? Live Nation has built a reputation for doing things like this in other cities and is facing a massive antitrust lawsuit—alleging anticompetitive and monopolistic business practices—from 40 US states as co-plantiffs. Woof.
Plans for the Live Nation venue don’t include attendee parking, and Dunphy thinks that’s a major safety concern. Anyone who’s watched a spandax-clad suburban cyclist lift a bike over stopped trains in the Central Eastside won’t have a hard time imagining music fans doing the same. “You have $100-$200 tickets to go see a concert,” Dunphy proposes, “and there’s a train in the way; you’re gonna climb over, right? Absolutely, that’s dangerous.”
As a city councilor, Dunphy says there’s nothing more he can do to stall Live Nation’s slow slide into the Central Eastside. However, as a board member and a sub-committee chair at grassroots music nonprofit MusicPortland, he still sees moves on the board.
In that capacity, Dunphy has worked with other area music advocates, who have appealed to Oregon’s Land Use Board of Appeals to try to get the land use permits that have been granted to Beam Development and Colas Construction overturned and sent back to the current Portland City Council for review. “The previous City Council,” he says, “They rushed their decision. We had hundreds of people testify in opposition to this.”
These are just a few of the music-focused plans Dunphy has in store for his time as a City Council member, let alone everything he wants to address concerning houselessness, the economy, climate collapse, etc. When asked what show he was going to next, he smirked and said he was headed to the Dante’s 25th anniversary gig that night to see Mudhoney and Help.
