Live-looping Tony Smiley brings layered sound to Churchill School

Tony Smiley’s layered set at Churchill School gave Baker City the kind of night that feels made for a small town with a working arts space: a seasoned touring performer, a regional duo and a historic building that has become a local gathering place.

Smiley, known onstage as The Loop Ninja, built songs in real time by recording guitar riffs, bass lines, keys, drums, beatbox parts and vocals one piece at a time. The result was a full-band sound coming from a single performer, and no two songs landed exactly the same way because nothing was pre-recorded. That made the show at Churchill School different from a standard acoustic stop. It was a live construction project, with each layer added in front of the crowd.

The bill fit the room. Bag of Hammers, the La Grande duo of Luke McKern and Holly Sorensen, shared the night with Smiley and brought its own looping-based approach to improvised instrumental and vocal grooves. The pair formed Bag of Hammers in 2012 after working together in various projects since 2008, giving the lineup a Northwest feel that matched the scale of the venue.

Churchill School, at 3451 Broadway St. in Baker City, has become one of the city’s most distinctive performance spaces. Built in 1925 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2008, the former elementary school was purchased in 2018 by Brian and Corrine Vegter after they had lived in Baker City for 12 years. Since then, the building has been restored as an arts, music and recreation hub. Its cafeteria and gymnasium now function as a concert room with room for about 250 people, a size that makes shows feel close and immediate rather than remote.

The night also carried the kind of local pull that keeps people downtown for live music. Smiley, whose Bandcamp profile lists him as based in Vancouver, Washington, has toured full-time for more than 20 years and generally stays within a five-hour radius of home. He grew up in Hood River, started on drums at age 8, was grounded from his drum kit as a teenager and later found an old acoustic guitar in the attic, a path that eventually led him to a self-made looping act built for rooms like Churchill School.