Live Wire with Luke Burbank
Live Wire Radio is an independently produced radio show that artfully blends unpredictable conversation, live music, and original comedy featuring all types of cultural talent and creative minds, from emerging artists to established acts. Join host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello for a live recording of this popular radio show, heard nationwide by thousands of listeners every weekend. With special guests: Guy Branum is the creator and host of truTV’s Talk Show The Game Show, a mashup pitting comedians and celebrities against each other for “Best Guest of the Night.” He recently starred in BROS with Billy Eichner and wrote for Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part II. His book My Life As A Goddess made NPR’s 2018 Good Reads List. As a TV writer, Guy was supervising producer on The Other Two, wrote for The Mindy Project, HACKS, and numerous other shows including A League of Their Own and Q-Force. Tamara Yajia is an Argentine writer, comedian, and ex-child star who authored the 2022 poetry collection Poems I Wrote While Taking A Shit. She also wrote and starred in a one-woman show Cumming of Age. Tamara has written for ClickHole, Funny or Die, and several comedy series, including Acapulco, This Fool, and the upcoming Netflix series Strip Law. Currently, she’s developing a show for Apple. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and her dog Odie, who just pooped in the living room. Alexis Okeowo is a staff writer at The New Yorker who has reported on conflict, human rights, and culture across Africa, as well as from Mexico and the American South. She is the author of A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa, which received the 2018 PEN Open Book Award. Her latest book, Blessings and Disasters: A Story of Alabama, is a blend of memoir, history, and reportage that weaves her Nigerian-immigrant family’s story with Alabama’s complex past and present, examining the state as a stage for America’s most extreme experiments. Pete Droge gets personal on his captivating new album, Fade Away Blue, reflecting on the loss of his birth mother, who he missed meeting by months, and the remarkable journey that followed as he reunited with long-lost relatives, battled a mysterious illness, and discovered himself in the process. Recorded with Grammy-winning producer Paul Bryan (Aimee Mann), the collection is largely autobiographical, built on a series of dreamy, cinematic snapshots from throughout Droge’s life. The songs are bittersweet, balancing longing and gratitude in equal measure. Click HERE to purchase tickets to the October 16th show. Our Fall 2025 Season Passes are now on sale! Click here to buy.
Live Wire with Luke Burbank
Live Wire Radio is an independently produced radio show that artfully blends unpredictable conversation, live music, and original comedy featuring all types of cultural talent and creative minds, from emerging artists to established acts. Join host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello for a live recording of this popular radio show, heard nationwide by thousands of listeners every weekend. With special guests: Jeff Hiller is an Emmy award-winning actor, writer, and comedian who has appeared on TV shows such as Somebody Somewhere, American Horror Story: NYC, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, 30Rock, and Law and Order: CI, among numerous others. His film roles include Greta, Morning Glory, Ghost Town, and Set it Up. His 2025 memoir, Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty Year Trail to Overnight Success, details his journey from growing up “profoundly gay” in 1980s Texas to his experiences as an inept social worker and how he clawed, scraped, and brawled to Hollywood’s lower middle-tier. Tara Roberts spent the last seven years following, diving with, and telling stories about Black scuba divers as they searched for and helped document slave shipwrecks around the world. Her journey was turned into an award-winning National Geographic-produced podcast called “Into the Depths” and featured in the March 2022 issue of National Geographic magazine. She became the first Black female explorer ever to be featured on the cover of the magazine. Tara is also a former magazine editor and indie publisher, a nonprofit communications director, and editor of several non-fiction books for girls. Reginald Dwayne Betts is the author of three books of poetry, a lawyer, the founder and CEO of Freedom Reads, as well as a former MacArthur Fellow (2021). His most recent collection. Doggerel, is a majestic new volume of poetry that marks a transformative stage in his life and career. This resplendent tableau ruminates on dogs and the ostensibly trivial joys that transform us—peonies blooming, a “symphony” of wine glasses, father-son bike rides, basketball, seeing and being seen, surrendering to a lover’s touch. Recorded live in a circle with some of her dearest friends, acclaimed singer-songwriter Anna Tivel has released her 7th studio album, Animal Poem, on Fluff and Gravy Records. Known for her introspective and narrative-driven folk music, Anna writes songs that often focus on vignettes of ordinary people’s lives and struggles, drawing inspiration from small, everyday stories. No Depression praises her as “one of the finest storytellers modern folk music has to offer.” Click HERE to purchase tickets to the October 16th show. Fall 2025 Season Passes are now on sale! Click here to buy.
Live Wire with Luke Burbank
Join Emmy award-winning host Luke Burbank for the taping of Live Wire, the fastest growing entertainment show on public radio. We’ve got a late-night stride, an Oscar Wilde wit, and the charisma of Ferris Bueller grand marshaling a parade. Music, comedy, and conversation, live and packed with surprises.Featured Guests: TBA Tickets$30 General Admission$45 Preferred Seating (First 5 rows of Front Center Section – available in advance only) Click HERE for tickets. Doors open at 6:30 Guests subject to change.
Live Wire with Luke Burbank
Live Wire Radio is an independently produced radio show that artfully blends unpredictable conversation, live music, and original comedy featuring all types of cultural talent and creative minds, from emerging artists to established acts. Join host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello for a live recording of this popular radio show, heard nationwide by thousands of listeners every weekend. With special guests: – Sean Sherman, Oglala Lakota, born on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, is a chef and leader who has been cooking across the United States and the world for the past thirty years. His main culinary focus has been to raise awareness of and revitalize Native food systems in a modern culinary context. In 2014, he founded The Sioux Chef, a food education and catering project, in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area. His first book, The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen, was published in 2017 and won a James Beard award for American Cooking. His restaurant Owamni opened in Minneapolis in 2021 and was honored on many best new restaurant lists, winning the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant. In 2023, Sean was named to Time Magazine’s list of 100 most influential people. – Chuck Klosterman is the bestselling author of nine nonfiction books (including Football; X; The Nineties; Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; and But What If We’re Wrong?), two novels (Downtown Owl and The Visible Man), and the short story collection Raised in Captivity. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ (London), Esquire, Spin, The Guardian (London), The Believer, and ESPN. Klosterman served as the Ethicist for The New York Times Magazine for three years and was an original founder of the website Grantland with Bill Simmons. – Georgia Maq served as the trailblazing frontwoman of the punk trio Camp Cope for 8 years, confronting music industry sexism with fierce indie rock and earning international acclaim before their 2023 farewell show at the Sydney Opera House. Now based in LA, Maq continues opening up on her vulnerabilities and heartbreaks in her solo career. Her latest release, God’s Favourite EP, marks a shift toward soulful Americana ballads, mining themes of romantic and self-love and growing far beyond her Melbourne punk origins. Click HERE to purchase tickets to the February 19th show. Spring 2026 Season Passes are now on sale! Click here to buy.
Live Wire with Luke Burbank
Join Emmy award-winning host Luke Burbank for the taping of Live Wire, the fastest growing entertainment show on public radio. We’ve got a late-night stride, an Oscar Wilde wit, and the charisma of Ferris Bueller grand marshaling a parade. Music, comedy, and conversation, live and packed with surprises.Featured Guests: TBA Tickets$30 General Admission$45 Preferred Seating (First 5 rows of Front Center Section – available in advance only) Click HERE for tickets. Doors open at 6:30 Guests subject to change.
Live Wire with Luke Burbank
Live Wire Radio is an independently produced radio show that artfully blends unpredictable conversation, live music, and original comedy featuring all types of cultural talent and creative minds, from emerging artists to established acts. Join host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello for a live recording of this popular radio show, heard nationwide by thousands of listeners every weekend. With special guests: – Atsuko Okatsuka is an award-winning comedian and actress making waves across the globe with her one-of-a-kind humor, boundless energy, and infectious charm. Her highly anticipated second stand-up special, Father, recently premiered on Hulu and internationally on Disney+, quickly climbing into the top ten on the streamer. Her previous special, The Intruder (HBO), won a Gracie Award for “Best Comedy Special” and was named a best special of 2022 by The New York Times, Vulture, and Variety. With viral moments as legendary as her stand-up (she and her grandmother created TikTok’s #DropChallenge), her unique style of comedy is captivating audiences worldwide. – John Craigie has mastered the art of creating live shows that feel more like intimate conversations than performances. Infusing humor, wit, and poignant storytelling, his shows make audience members feel like old friends. His latest live album Greatest Hits… Just Kidding… Live – No Hits captures the warmth and spontaneity of these memorable nights. As a tried-and-true performer, he has regularly sold out solo tours in addition to hitting the road with the likes of Langhorne Slim, Brett Dennen, Mason Jennings, Bella White and Jack Johnson. He has picked up fans with sets at Newport Folk Festival, Pickathon, Edmonton Folk Festival, and High Sierra Music Festival as well as numerous international tours. His catalog has garnered tens of millions of streams with favorites such as “I Am California,” “Highway Blood,” “Don’t Ask,” and “Microdose.” 2024’s Pagan Church with TK & The Holy Know-Nothings spent six weeks at #1 on Americana Radio Albums Chart. His 10th studio album, I Swam Here, is set for release on February 6, 2026. – Daisy Hernández is the author of The Kissing Bug, winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the inaugural title for the National Book Foundation’s Science + Literature Program. Her memoir, A Cup of Water Under My Bed, won Lambda Literary’s Dr. Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award and was a Publishing Triangle Award finalist. She co-edited the classic feminist anthology Colonize This! and is an associate professor of creative writing at Northwestern University. Click HERE to purchase tickets to the March 19th show. Spring 2026 Season Passes are now on sale! Click here to buy.
Live Wire with Luke Burbank – Portland Book Festival Special
Join Emmy award-winning host Luke Burbank for the taping of Live Wire, the fastest growing entertainment show on public radio. We’ve got a late-night stride, an Oscar Wilde wit, and the charisma of Ferris Bueller grand marshaling a parade. Music, comedy, and conversation, live and packed with surprises.Featured Guests: TBA Tickets$30 General Admission$45 Preferred Seating (First 5 rows of Front Center Section – available in advance only) Click HERE for tickets. Doors open at 6:30 Guests subject to change.
Live Wire with Luke Burbank
Live Wire Radio is an independently produced radio show that artfully blends unpredictable conversation, live music, and original comedy featuring all types of cultural talent and creative minds, from emerging artists to established acts. Join host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello for a live recording of this popular radio show, heard nationwide by thousands of listeners every weekend. With special guests: – Cheryl Strayed is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, which was made into an Oscar-nominated film. Her bestselling collection of Dear Sugar columns, Tiny Beautiful Things, was adapted for a Hulu television show and as a play that continues to be staged in theaters nationwide. Strayed’s other books are the critically acclaimed novel, Torch, and the bestselling collection Brave Enough, which brings together more than one hundred of her inspiring quotes. Her books have sold more than 5 million copies around the world and have been translated into forty languages. – Earlonne Woods & Nigel Poor (EAR HUSTLE) Earlonne Woods was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. In 1997, he was sentenced to 31 years to life in prison. While incarcerated, he received his GED, attended Coastline Community College, and completed many vocational trade programs. He also founded CHOOSE1, which aims to repeal the California Three Strikes Law, the statute under which he was sentenced. In 2017, he co-founded the prison-based podcast Ear Hustle, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and two-time Peabody Award nominee, among numerous other awards. Nigel Poor is an artist and podcast host whose work explores the ways people leave behind evidence of their existence. In 2011, Nigel got involved with San Quentin State Prison as a volunteer teacher for Mount Tamalpais College (formerly the Prison University Project). In 2017, she co-founded the prison-based podcast Ear Hustle. – Patterson Hood is a musician and songwriter living in Portland, OR, originally from Muscle Shoals, AL. In addition to playing in the band Drive-By Truckers, he is a solo artist. His first solo record in over a decade, Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams, was born out of a friendship with producer Chris Funk (The Decemberists). The pair would often perform together for fun and during Hood’s solo tours, making far-off plans to make a record together. They eventually went into Jackpot Studios in Portland. Many of the songs were composed on piano marking a bigger departure from his work with Drive-By Truckers than prior solo efforts. Click HERE to purchase tickets to the April 9th show. Spring 2026 Season Passes are now on sale! Click here to buy.
Great Comedy – Always a Great Night of Stand Up Comedy
Join your host Emily Hemson and some of Portland’s best local and regional stand up comedians for a night of comedy, prizes and a guaranteed great time!Featuring:Katie NguyenSir Lance EdwardKirsten KuppenbenderTanner TorkelsonBen HarkinsJulian GrayTICKETS:General Admission $20At the Door $28Preferred Seating $35 (seating in the first 7 rows of the center section) 21 and over onlyCLICK HERE for the latest information on our health and safety policies.
Gina Yashere: The Woman King of Comedy with special guest Mx. Dahlia Belle
Comedian Gina Yashere brings her fierce and funny comedic style back to the stage this summer with a new solo tour, The Woman King of Comedy. With the success of her hit TV sitcom Bob Hearts Abishola on CBS, that she co-created and stars in, this is a unique chance to hear her personal story of how she made it in Hollywood from the streets of London.Mx. Dahlia Belle opens the show. Tickets: $25 Advance$30 At the Door Minors ok when accompanied by a parent or guardian. Review our Health & Safety Policies HERE