December 17, 2007 -- By Bob Ham

Holcombe Waller, once known as a humble, but outrageously talented singer/songwriter, is becoming more and more renowned for his more theatrical presentations. Combining video projections, costuming and music, Waller made a huge splash in the Portland arts community with a show he produced earlier this year called Patty Heart Townes. In it, Waller used the music of Patty Griffin and Townes Van Zandt to speak of the inner turmoil of the character he played, a clown named Mihael Sagalovesky.

More recently, Waller has been combining his theatrical intentions with his own work, resulting in Into The Dark Unknown: The Hope Chest. The show, which premiered as part of September's Time-Based Art Festival is, in Waller's words, "a performance art piece masquerading as a folk show." In it, Waller takes the songs' themes of love and loss and recontextualizes them into the spiritual yearnings of a kind of church group portrayed by the band on stage.

"We're just sitting there doing this folk show," Waller says, "but every once in a while there will be these dramatic stage movements," most of which involve the sparse set design and the projected films that are being shown behind the group.

The TB:A performance, and other versions of the show, were recorded both on audio and video, and will be pressed as a small-run CD and DVD release that will only be available at Waller's performance this Tuesday at the Doug Fir Lounge. "This is not like a record that I expect to come out on a label," Waller says, "It's just a way to get the music out there and to raise money to put back into the show."

Tuesday's performance will be a more straightforward version of the songs that make up Unknown, but will have it's share of surprises, as Menomena's Danny Seim will be performing with the band for a few songs "to make it musically more expansive," says Waller. "We've never had a drummer and we want to know how adding drums and percussion will add to that."

Waller is already in talks with On The Boards, a group in Seattle that stages a festival of new works by Northwest artists, in hopes of putting together what he calls "a full theatrical realization for the show." He is already in talks with a scenic designer and a lighting designer about getting a full, self-produced version together for performances in Portland and San Francisco, and will be doing a truncated version of Unknown for the On The Boards festival in May of 2008.

As any true artist, especially one as gifted as Waller, he is always looking forward to his next project. "I'm working on an album right now," he says, "I have so many songs. I haven't released a record since 2005."

For a lesser creative type, this flurry of activity might be the cause of a nervous breakdown, but Waller says he "works well under pressure. I always want to get new stuff done. Without any pressure, I would just end up flying to Hawaii and sitting around."