There’s no question that the Pacific Northwest has played a key role in modern rock and roll. That fact was on full display when Rolling Stone and Sonesta International Hotels hosted the final installment of their 2025 Musicians on Musicians live tour on Thursday night in Portland, Oregon. In an intimate ballroom on the 10th floor of the Royal Sonesta Portland Downtown, a crowd of dedicated music lovers and Sonesta Travel Pass members watched as Sleater-Kinney and John Gourley of Portugal. The Man sat down with Rolling Stone senior music editor and Nashville Now podcast host Joseph Hudak for a music-driven conversation before taking the stage for a pair of intimate performances. Sipping themed cocktails and mocktails–including the Riot Grrrl Refresher and the Feel It Still –guests chatted excitedly about their music, travel and their Portland favorites.
Onstage, Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, who moved to Portland in mid-1990s, talked about the artistic community in their adopted home city, and the role Portland, and the Pacific Northwest overall, has played in the music industry.
Koury Angelo
“It’s really about community. Connecting with people, not just virtually, but really making an effort to be with other people. It’s really vital,” Brownstein said onstage. “Not just for creativity and art, but for humanity. In order to ward off cynicism and pessimism, you need to immerse yourself among other people. And it helps make you compassionate. Community is just a way of being yourself. And it’s an allowance of hope with other people. To me that’s what Portland is.”
As for Portland’s musical secret sauce, Tucker credits the rainy weather. “If it’s sunny and nice out all the time, you’re just walking around and doing your thing, but it’s not. You’re inside thinking about things, ruminating, and then you pick up a guitar and it makes it a little bit better,” she said.
Gourley made his way to the city from his native Alaska in the early 2000s and found a circle of fellow misfit creatives with whom to make music, similar to the camaraderie of the Riot Grrrl movement that Sleater-Kinney spearheaded in the Nineties.
“Seeing people wanting to uplift each other and support the scene and everybody’s in each other’s bands, there’s just something about being around that sort of energy,” he said of the Portland music community.
Koury Angelo
And while music was the focus of the evening, Hudak couldn’t help but bring up Brownstein’s comedic tribute to the city, Portlandia. The sketch comedy series—a satirical look at the town and the people who live there—ran on IFC from 2011 until 2018 and co-starred Fred Armisen. When Hudak asked the panel if the show accurately portrayed the city, Brownstein was quiet, but Gourley couldn’t help answering for the group. “All my Portland friends were walking around like, ‘It’s not fucking like that.’ And it is like that,” he said, eliciting knowing laughs from the locals in the crowd.
Following the conversation, Gourley was joined onstage by his wife and creative partner Zoe Manville for an acoustic set that leaned heavily on Portugal. The Man’s new album, Shish. The duo performed several of the album’s tracks for the first time, before teasing their 2017 breakout “Feel It Still.” But true to their Portlandian buck-the-system roots, they didn’t play their biggest hit, instead ending with the live debut of a powerful new track.
Koury Angelo
Then, Tucker and Brownstein took the stage for a duo performance of songs from Sleater-Kinney’s career-spanning catalog, including the title track of their 1996 album, Call the Doctor. It was a rare opportunity for fans of the globally renowned group to see them perform in such an intimate space.
The exclusive evening was a testament to both loyal music fans and devoted Sonesta Travel Pass members. As Hudak said at the end of the evening, it was the kind of event that only Rolling Stone and Sonesta International Hotels could bring to life. Now the countdown is on for 2026 as Sonesta Travel Pass members gear up for even more musical events across America’s most celebrated cities.
