‘Repair’ to debut in benefit concert Saturday

Presenter: This Saturday, Aug. 30, five bands will perform in a benefit for KEPW and RAVEN, a grassroots nonprofit dedicated to supporting Eugene’s houseless and disadvantaged neighbors. One of the bands, Repair, will be making its debut. Here’s Echo from KEPW to talk with Ellen about the upcoming performance.

Echo (KEPW, Chemical Restraints): Every city has its own ghosts, but not every city has the patience to listen to them. Some drift unheard between walls and some rattle through alleyways, and some gather under old roofs until they find voices willing to translate them.

[00:00:35] Repair, a debuting spiritual drone band feels like that kind of translation—not just music, but the sound of something larger pushing through, something that has been waiting for centuries.

[00:00:48] On Saturday, Aug. 30, 2025, they’ll step into The White Church at 1166 Oak St. as part of the Carnival of Cracked Mirrors, a gathering of the feral and the luminous, the burlesque dancers and the jokers, the comedian and the dirge.

[00:01:05] It’s not a showcase, it’s a ceremony. From 7 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., a procession of artists will spill into the room like a fractured light, each one bending the audience towards revelation, and in the midst of it all that, Repair will debut with a set designed not for distraction, but for immersion; not for escape, but for confrontation.

[00:01:28] The word ‘repair’ carries its own sly irony. To repair is to mend, to restore, to return something to working order. But anyone who has brushed against drone music knows it doesn’t fix in the traditional sense. It doesn’t paper over cracks or offer tidy resolutions. Instead, it amplifies the fracture until you realize the break itself was holy all along.

[00:01:52] Repair steps into that paradox and embraces it fully. Their sound isn’t decoration, it’s architecture: a slow construction of space where silence, vibration, and endurance collide. On that night in that church and beneath those lights, their music will rise like a tide and hold us in its undertow.

[00:02:17] And if we’re lucky, we’ll come out on the other side with our fractures intact, only sharper, clearer, and more alive. Welcome to the show, Ellen.

[00:02:27] Ellen (Repair): Thank you. That was absolutely beautiful, thank you so much. A little bit of information about how we came to the name Repair. So Repair consists of myself as vocalist in English, Spanish, and Hebrew, and lyricist, and all the music is improvised by my bandmate, Will.

[00:02:55] And recently we have performed two concerts under his solo project, which is My Burning Bush, where I was a guest lyricist and vocalist for the most recent album, the most recent two concerts, and a previous album in 2022.

[00:03:15] And we met because I used to coordinate a monthly experimental music night at Rooted Space in the Whiteaker. And he performed at a couple of the same shows where I performed in other bands and we just bonded and it’s just grown from there.

[00:03:32] But we sort of experience our musical union as a spiritual nexus, and I would characterize us as bringing forth a synergy and a symbiosis that can be felt, that sort of radiates out with our music.

[00:03:59] And ‘repair’ has multiple meanings. There are multiple words that can mean repair. In Hebrew, there’s teshuva, which is the inward repair, which is bringing oneself back into harmony with the self and with the divine, and seeing those as not separate.

[00:04:23] And then there is tikkun olam, which means repair of the world, which is about working at the micro and macro level to try to make improvements in the quality of life for the planet, for all species of flora and fauna, not just for humans, but including across the entire human family.

[00:04:52] So it’s very potent and very providential that we will be making our debut at this specific benefit where the causes are really close to our heart.

This event is a benefit both for KEPW—and the E-P-W in KEPW radio station stands for Eugene PeaceWorks, where I was a staff person for a little over a decade—and for RAVEN, Radical Assistance for Vulnerable Eugene Neighbors, which is trying to pick up some of the crucial survival supports and harm reduction supports for unhoused neighbors that are no longer being provided by White Bird. And I was a member of the White Bird Collective as a social work professional for seven years.

[00:05:53] So if we could pick anywhere, any causes in the world to bring Repair into the universe, this is the perfect event for us, and we are so very humbly grateful to have been invited into this. And ‘spiritual drone’ is Will’s term for the way he manifests musically what I am manifesting lyrically.

[00:06:25] Echo (KEPW, Chemical Restraints): What made you want to play a punk show?

[00:06:29] Ellen (Repair): We wanted to play this specific benefit and also I personally had come to The White Church and seen Chemical Restraints, having first heard about you from Paddy Farr, who I go way back in time with.

And I have my own history on both sides of providing and receiving mental health supports, and an enormous fan of your band and its messaging and its sound, and this is just an absolutely beautiful opportunity for us in every way.

[00:07:08] I really hope that people will still take advantage of the option to participate in the silent auction. There’s still the opportunity to donate goods, services, commissions. There’s still the opportunity to pay only $10 to get a table and chair provided for you. If you’re with a nonprofit and you have information to share, or if you’re with a band and you have band merch, or if you’re a crafter, an artisan, a writer, any conveyor of any goods or services, this is a fantastic outreach opportunity.

[00:07:51] I see many ways that people can plug in and be part of this holistic evening of healing.

[00:07:58] Echo (KEPW, Chemical Restraints): Absolutely. I mean, drone music has often been described as meditative, even spiritual. Do you see your music as a form of prayer, ritual, protest, or something that refuses all those categories?

[00:08:11] Ellen (Repair): I would say it’s something that blends all those categories. (Oh, wonderful.) So, Will has been doing My Burning Bush for a very, very long time before he and I ever met. And Repair is sort of a mirror image to My Burning Bush in terms of different approaches to the song crafting process. But they share in common a goal of conveying a sense of serenity and a sense of awareness.

[00:08:56] Echo (KEPW, Chemical Restraints): That’s well spoken. (Thank you.) The Carnival of Cracked Mirrors is about transformation through fracture. What does it mean to you to debut in a space built on distortion, burlesque, comedy, and rebellion, rather than a traditional music venue?

[00:09:13] Ellen (Repair): I would definitely say that we are not a traditional band in any, yeah, any sense at all. (Love it.) We see ourselves as opening to the celestial flow, seeing what dream states elicit for us, what maybe walking meditative states elicit for us. We’re conduits of music and words rather than artisans. We are open to what it will benefit other people to experience flowing through us.

[00:10:03] And I feel like being in an environment that embraces so many different art forms from the most physical to the most cerebral as a logical place for us to plug in.

[00:10:19] Echo (KEPW, Chemical Restraints): You’ve spoken about music as a form of spiritual repair. Do you think that kind of repair happens communally at a concert, or is it always something personal?

[00:10:32] Ellen (Repair): I don’t think that those are mutually exclusive. (I love that.). I believe that each—it’s like, take a mosh pit, for example. Each person might be participating in a unique way, the way that they are moving their head, their arms, their legs might be different than that of their neighbors dancing around them, but it becomes one mass that sometimes moves in synchrony in a circle and sometimes is a bit more chaotic than that, but it’s simultaneously a profoundly individual and deeply communal experience.

[00:11:21] And that’s what I think happens when people come together for a common set of causes, like at this benefit, and these causes are currently intrinsically political.

[00:11:41] Having an independent radio station is more important than ever because federal funding is being pulled from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio.

[00:11:54] Having street-level survival services is more important than ever because homelessness is being criminalized. These are times when we have to develop our own independent sources of mutual aid. And music can be a form of mutual aid—having musical outlets, having dancing outlets, having meetups where people can connect and become friends.

[00:12:36] Maybe even—I’ve made lifelong friends at concerts. I really believe that it is both an individual and a communal experience to partake of any ritualized musical space, which I consider this benefit to be.

[00:12:58] Echo (KEPW, Chemical Restraints): Preach! That was beautifully done. (Thank you.) What do you want someone to carry home with them after hearing Repair at the carnival? Not just in their ears, but in their heart.

[00:13:08] Ellen (Repair): A sense that healing can be attained through anything that induces an inner tranquility and the reason that that’s more important than ever is that all the traditional structural supports that people, particularly low-income and survival-level-income people have relied upon—Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP—these are all under attack and possibly going to even disappear.

[00:13:54] We don’t know what’s going to happen with Social Security. We don’t know what’s going to happen with the Affordable Care Act. There are all of these unknowns that leave people in a very precarious state. And considering oneself to be externally provided for is not something that people can rely on right now.

[00:14:18] And so we’re having to drift into this space where we increasingly have to become self-reliant, but not self as Human A, Human B, but interdependence of all those who are community-minded, recognizing what parallel systems need to be built to replace what’s being taken away. And sometimes to be able to operationalize ideas, to bring things to fruition, someone has to attain an inner centeredness and inner calm.

[00:15:14] And if any music, including but not limited to Repair, can help people attain that inner serenity that allows them to work for the collective good, there’s nothing better.

[00:15:28] Echo (KEPW, Chemical Restraints): Well, folks, that was Ellen of Repair and she’s one half of the dynamic duo that will be gracing the stages of The Carnival of Cracked Mirrors, and you want to see her. You should come on down. Our doors open at 7 p.m. We’ll be going till 11:30 p.m. That’s 1166 Oak St. on Aug. 30, Saturday, coming up.

[00:15:53] When the last vibration of Repair’s debut dissolves into the rafters of the white church, the room will not fall silent. It will hum. Maybe faintly, maybe imperceptibly, but the air itself will feel different. This is the mark of drone music. It alters perception. What once sounded like background becomes foreground.

[00:16:16] What once felt like absence becomes presence. The Carnival of Cracked Mirrors is a place designed for exactly that kind of shift. Burlesque dancers will reclaim the body. Comedians will unmask the absurd. Bands will shake walls and spirits alike, but when Repair takes the stage, something else happens: a slowing down, a recalibration, a collective inhale that doesn’t quite exhale until long after the night is done.

[00:16:45] There is a peculiar gift in being a debut band at such an event: no history, no expectation, no baggage, just the raw electricity of first contact. Audiences will not come to Repair with nostalgia or comparison. They will come with ears wide open, ready to be transformed. That’s the kind of debut that can change not just a band’s trajectory, but an audience’s relationship with listening itself.

[00:17:11] The White Church will hold this night like a vessel. Its walls will amplify every vibration, its wooden bones carrying resonance into every corner. And when the carnival closes its doors at 11:30 p.m., the echoes will still be there, woven into the building, waiting for the next gathering.

[00:17:30] This is the legacy of nights like this. They don’t end, they reverberate. They seed themselves in memory, in silence, in collective consciousness and cracks.

[00:17:41] So if you are searching for something, a break from the numbness, a place where fracture becomes holy, a sound that doesn’t just entertain, but unsettles, The Carnival Of Cracked Mirrors is your invitation.

[00:17:54] Saturday, Aug. 30, 2025, The White Church, 1166 Oak St., 7 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. Come for the burlesque, comedy, chaos, stay for the drone. Leave with a new way of hearing, because sometimes the only way to be repaired is to listen long enough to fall apart.

[00:18:18] Presenter: That’s Echo from Chemical Restraints, with Ellen from Repair, both performing at the Carnival of Cracked Mirrors this Saturday at 7. Tickets at the door, with a suggested donation of $10 —no one will be turned away. Nonprofits and vendors, contact Echo@KEPW.org.