Adrian Orange is a nice young man from Portland who has released an impressive amount of records under the name Thanksgiving. He's a protégé of Phil Elvrum (The Microphones/Mt. Eerie) and WL250 will mark his Toronto début. Shaunna Bednarek emailed him some questions and he was more than happy to answer.

HOW OLD WERE YOU WHEN YOU STARTED PLAYING MUSIC? WHAT WAS THE FIRST INSTRUMENT YOU LEARNED? HOW MANY DO YOU PLAY NOW? I was nine when my nanny and some of her friends encouraged me to start playing music. I decided on the guitar because that was what a lot of the people I admired played. I played all day long for a long time. I'm not sure why I was so excited about it. Maybe because I felt like it was something I loved that I could do well if I tried. I play the drums a lot now. I have sort of come to the conclusion that anything is an instrument and anyone can play any of the instruments. I am not very good at horns and woodwinds, though. I would like to learn them, and then I could play most all instruments that I know of in some way. And then it would be time to invent some that are impossible to play.

WHAT DO YOU WRITE ABOUT? I guess I just write about being alive. Life is very full of inspirations. I never feel limited or uninspired when I think about all of the peoples' lives and all the inanimate lives that are in the universe, and all the moments. I try be honest and simple in the way I say what I see and know and imagine as much as possible, in the hope that I can say something true without being able to know everything (since no one can). Being more and less general seems to help. I try to think about things much more than write about them.

IS THERE ANYTHING ABOUT PLAYING HERE YOU'RE LOOKING FORWARD TO, OR DREADING? I am looking forward to everything about playing there, except for the Airplane Ride and the Customs and Immigration. Some of my friends and I have a joke about "C.B.F." which stands for "Canadian Border Feeling" - the feeling of dread one gets when they have to go through the Canadian Border. It is the strictest border I have ever been through. Maybe some Canadians feel that way about the U.S. border.

ARE THERE ANY BANDS FROM TORONTO THAT YOU'RE EXCITED ABOUT? When I was spending some time in Vancouver I recorded some songs with Jon-Rae Fletcher at The Hive and played some shows with him and drank some beer in a park with him. Then he moved to Toronto, and I have not seen him since. But I guess I am playing with him at this festival and I am very excited to see him and hear him play and stuff. Very. Yes, he is a very awesome dude. I'm afraid I don't know much else about bands from Toronto, but hopefully I will find some through this festival.

WHO FROM PORTLAND SHOULD TORONTONIANS BE EXCITED ABOUT? Thank you for giving me this opportunity, Shaunna, to give what we sometimes call in this business "props". Dear Readers, please "Google search" and "Google image search" each and every one of these. BANDS: "WORLD" (Adam Forkner and Honey Owens), everyone on "Marriage Records", especially "YACHT", "A John Henry Memorial", "Brad Adkins", "Viking Moses", "Rob Walmart", "Kid Finish", "The Watery Graves of Portland" (I play drums in that band), "Mise En Abyme", "Andrew Kaffer", "White Rainbow", "Bobby Birdman" is here for a couple months, "The Blow", everyone involved with "Audio Dregs", "States Rights Records" and "Collective Jyrk", and those entities themselves, and "Rollerball", these are some friends of mine who have been playing very awesome music forever. POETS: "Tom Blood", "Curtis Knapp". PAINTERS: "Scott Rawls", "Maria Dixon", "David Coyne", "Davis Lee Hooker".

IF, ONE DAY, OUR COUNTRIES WERE FORCED TO CELEBRATE THANKSGIVING AT THE SAME TIME, WOULD YOU PREFER THAT THE CANADIANS MOVE IT TO NOVEMBER, OR THAT THE AMERICANS MOVE IT TO OCTOBER? October, so it would be closer to Halloween.