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an empty theater
i
The former high school auditorium is now a great venue for live music.
Credit: Ashley Forrette

Revolution Hall

Portland’s historic Washington High School is reborn as a music venue and more.

Updated June 22, 2022 1 min read Central Eastside

A landmark on Portland’s east side for more than a century, the redbrick-walled Washington High School sat vacant for three decades. But now, a massive overhaul has restored the school’s status as a class act: The venerable institution has been transformed into one of the city’s top destinations for live entertainment.

At the heart of the remodel is Revolution Hall, an 830-seat venue set inside the high school’s original auditorium. Vintage character abounds, with a full wraparound balcony and wooden chairs providing a great setting for an amped-up sound system — and top-notch performers.

Booked by the duo behind favorite eastside venues Mississippi Studios and the Aladdin Theater, Rev Hall opened in 2015 with performances from Neko Case and the von Trapps. Since then, it’s provided a steady lineup of local and touring indie rock, folk and pop acts.

The hall’s offerings extend to stand-up comedy, film festivals, and lectures, and it’s also the home of the Low Bar Chorale, a drop-in choir that lets attendees sing along with a live band twice a month. Yet another reason to consider heading back to school — at least for the night — in Portland.

Revolution Hall Study Guide

How much does it cost?

Tickets for most events start at $25.
Details are subject to change per event; please check Revolution Hall’s Website for current information.

Does Revolution Hall have a bar?

This old schoolhouse is packed with places to grab a bite and a beer or cocktail before, during, or after a show.

Marthas at the ground level of the hall is part bar-part café, with an outdoor patio for those sunny days and long summer evenings.

Show Bar is another ground-level restaurant, with a full menu and a small event stage.

Assembly Lounge is upstairs, open before and after events at Revolution Hall with a full bar and 20+ beers on tap.

Roof Deck is a first-come-first-served bar in the sky, at the top of Rev Hall. Check the weather before you head out, it’s a fair-weathered bar.
Attractions, Comedy, Film, Music, Nightlife

In and Around the Venue

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Upcoming events

At Revolution Hall

Go To Events
Steve Earle & the Dukes
Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022

Steve Earle & the Dukes

Revolution Hall $45

Steve Earle & The Dukes with Special Guests The Whitmore Sisters Last June, Steve Earle traveled to Luckenbach, Texas, about an hour away from where he grew up, to play an outdoor concert celebrating the life of Jerry Jeff Walker. Walker – the colorful cowboy troubadour whose ballad “Mr. Bojangles” marked a new era of…

Music
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever
Saturday, Aug. 20, 2022

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever

Revolution Hall $20

In early 2016, the release of Talk Tight put Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever on the map with glowing reviews from SPIN, Stereogum, and Pitchfork, praising them as stand-outs even among the fertile landcape of Melbourne music. Chock full of snappy riffs, spritely drumming and quick- witted wordplay, Talk Tight was praised “for the precision of…

Music
Mdou Moctar
Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022

Mdou Moctar

Revolution Hall $28

Prodigious Tuareg guitarist and songwriter Mdou Moctar boldly reforges contemporary Saharan music and “rock music“ by melding Eddie Van Halen pyrotechnics, full-blast noise and guitar-shredding, field recordings, drums rhythms, poetic meditations on love, religion, women’s rights, inequality and Western Africa’s exploitation at the hands of colonial powers to rip a new hole in the sky…

Cultural Communities
Music
Flawless Sunsets
Aug. 25–Sept. 6, 2022

Flawless Sunsets

Revolution Hall Free

Celebrate queer excellence at Show Bar with Flawless Shade. Flawless and a surprise queen will host an interactive drag event from 7:30 – 9:00 PM. This event is 21+ with no cover, so grab a friend and come with cash to tip your queens, honey. There will also be themed cocktails and photo-ops to help…

LGBTQ+
Performing Arts
Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers
Thursday, Aug. 25, 2022

Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers

Revolution Hall $49.50

By mid-March 2020 Bruce Hornsby, in that now historical year, had completed a brief tour of five concerts. “Then all of a sudden, wham!” Hornsby remembers, “Everything shut down.” With “Non-Secure Connection” to release in summer, Hornsby began promoting the album. “So that was fine,” he says, following with an innocent refrain that would become…

Music
Lido Pimienta  + Helado Negro
Friday, Aug. 26, 2022

Lido Pimienta + Helado Negro

Revolution Hall $25

Lido Pimienta Lido Pimienta’s new album ‘Miss Colombia,’ the anticipated follow-up to ‘La Papessa,’ which was awarded the Polaris Music Prize in 2017, is available now. The Colombian-born, Toronto-based global beats trailblazer recorded the album in her home studio, with some additional recording done in the historic Colombian town of San Basilio de Palenque. Miss…

Music
Warpaint
Saturday, Aug. 27, 2022

Warpaint

Revolution Hall $27.50

Warpaint is a 4-piece band from California whose unique brand of intricate guitar lines, hypnotic vocals and driving post-punk rhythms combine to create a gorgeous, unique sound. Both on record and on stage Warpaint sound like they’re channeling something truly otherworldly and mystical. Warpaint has seen constant exposure in publications such as The Guardian, The…

Music
Izaak Opatz
Saturday, Aug. 27, 2022

Izaak Opatz

Revolution Hall $12

Like many of his favorite songwriters (John Hartford, Lucinda Williams, Jeff Tweedy), Izaak Opatz is an ungulate in life’s winter pasture, chewing on and metabolizing disappointment, heartbreak, and the other tough stuff into enjoyable musical carbohydrates. A compulsive metaphorager (and inveterate wordplayboy), Opatz breaks it all down with enzymes of wry humor, thoughtful simile and…

Music
 The Get Up Kids
Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2022

The Get Up Kids

Revolution Hall $25

The Get Up Kids are an American rock band from Kansas City, Missouri. Formed in 1995, the band was a major player in the mid-1990s Midwest emo scene, otherwise known as the “second wave” of emo music. With: Sparta

Music
Dirty Honey
Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2022

Dirty Honey

Revolution Hall $29.50

Some musicians take a while to build an audience and connect with fans. For the Los Angeles-based quartet Dirty Honey, success came right out of the gate. Released in March 2019, the band’s debut single, “When I’m Gone,” became the first song by an unsigned artist to reach No. 1 onBillboard’sMainstream Rock chart. Their second…

Music
Murder by Death & Amigo the Devil
Sept. 8–9, 2022

Murder by Death & Amigo the Devil

Revolution Hall $35

Murder by Death & Amigo the Devil: Tour from the Crypt Murder by Death As trailblazers of the early 2000s indie-Americana style, the Louisville, KY-based quintet finds a way of taking tried & true rock-and-roll and knocking it slightly off-axis, into tottering revolutions of something eerie, emotional, immediate, lush, and uniquely theirs. On the surface,…

Music
Joe Pera
Saturday, Sept. 10, 2022

Joe Pera

Revolution Hall $35

Joe Pera is a standup comedian, writer, and filmmaker from Buffalo, NY now living in New York, NY. Joe is best known for his current Adult Swim series, ‘Joe Pera Talks With You’, which The LA Times refers to as ‘TV’s quietest, most artful comedy’. He has performed his subdued standup on Conan, Late Night…

Comedy
Nightlife
Tomo Nakayama
Sunday, Sept. 11, 2022

Tomo Nakayama

Revolution Hall $14

Tomo Nakayama Born in Japan and raised in Seattle, Washington, Tomo Nakayama is an artist whose melodic, complex, and emotionally compelling music has been praised by NPR, New York Times, and The Stranger. After two critically acclaimed indie-folk albums, “Fog on the Lens” and “Pieces of Sky” (named “Best Folk Act” by Seattle Weekly), he…

Music
Oteil & Friends
Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022

Oteil & Friends

Revolution Hall $50

Two-time Grammy-winning bassist Oteil Burbridge has been in the music business touring and recording for over three decades. His first step into the national spotlight came in 1991 when he became a founding member of the Aquarium Rescue Unit featuring Col. Bruce Hampton, a cult classic that has stood the test of time. That led…

Music
Boris
Saturday, Sept. 17, 2022

Boris

Revolution Hall $25

In an effort to sublimate the negative energy surrounding everyone in 2020, legendary Japanese heavy rock band Boris focused all of their energy creatively and turned out the most extreme album of their long and widely celebrated career, NO. The band self-released the album, desiring to get it out as quickly as possible but intentionally…

Music
Ibeyi
Monday, Sept. 19, 2022

Ibeyi

Revolution Hall $30

Since their self-titled debut album seven years ago, Ibeyi’s stunning parallel harmonies and integral minimalist Latin percussion have shared a message of power and possibility across airwaves around the globe, cutting through an individualist framework that emphasizes self over society and success over soul. Ibeyi’s artistic expression of visuals and sound broke through the cultural…

Music
Mclusky
Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022

Mclusky

Revolution Hall $25

Having formed in the late nineteen-nineties and releasing music, if that is what it was, from 2000 to 2004, Mclusky disbanded soon afterward in a slow-motion farce of not enough drama to get press off the back of it. Now they are back – well, most of them – fuelled initially by spite but now…

Music
Russian Circles
Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022

Russian Circles

Revolution Hall $23

Across the span of their previous seven studio albums, Chicago-based instrumental trio Russian Circles traversed a diverse topography of sounds, moods, and approaches with their limited armory of drums, bass, and guitar. It’s difficult to chart an evolution in their sound when their records have always felt like well-curated playlists. It wasn’t uncommon to hear…

Music
Gang of Youths
Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022

Gang of Youths

Revolution Hall $25

Gang Of Youths frontman David Le’aupepe isn’t like other singers. A charismatic man apart, a creative livewire who’s a deep thinker at the same time as being an incessant talker, a militant look-forwarder who has no intention of resting on any of the success his band has achieved over the past decade. Take this answer…

Music
Private Island
Friday, Sept. 23, 2022

Private Island

Revolution Hall $15

Southern California alt/rock artist Private Island inspires with their whimsical flair to songwriting, lyrical ingenuity inspired by ‘in-jokes’ and tales of good and bad times with friends. Organically forming in the summer of 2013, they united to form an alt/rock realm of tunes with current front-man Christian Lum, Tommy Nickerson, and Cameron Anderson. Their forthcoming…

Music
Juicy Scoop Live with Heather McDonald
Saturday, Sept. 24, 2022

Juicy Scoop Live with Heather McDonald

Revolution Hall $25

Heather is the #1 Female Podcaster in Comedy with her show Juicy Scoop. You can experience and be part of all the juicy hilarious fun with a live stage experience. Get ready to hear the juicy scoop on Hollywood insiders, real housewives, reality stars, and all things pop culture, which will only be shared exclusively…

Comedy
Casey Neill
Saturday, Sept. 24, 2022

Casey Neill

Revolution Hall $15

Casey Neill is a songwriter from Portland, Oregon performing high-energy indie folk infused with haunting melodies and weather-beaten narratives. Neill performs as a solo act as well as with his band, The Norway Rats. He tours throughout the USA, Japan, and Europe, performing at venues such as Town Hall in New York, San Francisco’s Great…

Music
Zucchero
Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2022

Zucchero

Revolution Hall $39.50

Adelmo Fornaciari was born in Roncocesi (Reggio Emilia – ITALY) on September 25th 1955. His family then moved to Forte Dei Marmi in Tuscany, where, between 1970 and 1978, he formed his first R&B bands: Le Nuove Luci, “Sugar & Daniel” and “Sugar & Candies”. By this time, he was already known as “Zucchero”, a…

Music
Matisyahu
Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022

Matisyahu

Revolution Hall $35

When Matisyahu first started touring to packed clubs more than eleven years ago, it was before the release of Live at Stubbs, the now Gold record, and before that record’s single “King without a Crown” reached #1 on the alternative rock radio charts. His performances were a raw expression of his spirituality at that time…

Music
PDX Recovery Film Festival
Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022

PDX Recovery Film Festival

Revolution Hall $15

The PDX Recovery Film Festival showcases films about addictions, homelessness and mental health. Viewers take a real look at what is impacting our communities and generate hope through storytelling and connection.

Film
Matt Nathanson
Friday, Sept. 30, 2022

Matt Nathanson

Revolution Hall $45 – $55

Over his almost 30-year career, Matt Nathanson has evolved into one of the most applauded songwriters and engaging performers on the music scene today. His sixth studio album, Some Mad Hope, yielded his breakthrough multi-platinum hit “Come on Get Higher.” He followed up with Modern Love, a critically acclaimed album (PopMatters called it “the closest…

Music
The Comet Is Coming
Saturday, Oct. 1, 2022

The Comet Is Coming

Revolution Hall $25 – $30

Debuting music from their forthcoming Impulse! records release (March 2019) The Comet is Coming is the soundtrack to an imagined apocalypse. In the aftermath of widespread sonic destruction, what sounds remain? Who will lead the survivors to new sound worlds? Who will chart the new frontier? In a warehouse somewhere in London in 2013 a…

Music
Julia Jacklin
Sunday, Oct. 2, 2022

Julia Jacklin

Revolution Hall $20

If her debut album Don’t Let The Kids Win established Julia Jacklin as an artist to watch, her 2019 follow-up Crushing solidified Jacklin as one of the songwriters of her generation. Three years have passed since its release, but the world is still catching its breath in the wake of Crushing – a release so…

Music
Bear's Den
Monday, Oct. 3, 2022

Bear's Den

Revolution Hall $25

Formed in London in 2012, Bear’s Den has amassed a dedicated international fan base with their anthemic songs. With 4 studio albums under their belt and a collaborative project with composer Paul Frith, they have been a regular fixture in the charts of the UK and Europe since their inception. Their debut album ‘Islands’ also…

Music
Tortoise
Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2022

Tortoise

Revolution Hall $28

Tortoise has spent nearly 25 years making music that defies description. While the Chicago-based instrumental quintet has nodded to dub, rock, jazz, electronica and minimalism throughout its revered and influential six-album discography, the resulting sounds have always been distinctly, even stubbornly, their own. It’s a fact that remains true on “The Catastrophist,” Tortoise’s first studio…

Music
Graham Nash
Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2022

Graham Nash

Revolution Hall $45 – $325

Graham Nash – An Intimate Evening of Songs and Stories Graham Nash’s passionate voice has often been heard in support of social and environmental justice. During this tour, Graham is partnering with the Guacamole Fund, and 100% of lift on Guacamole Fund tickets is paid to organizations that work in the environment and wildlife, social…

Music
Todd Snider
Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022

Todd Snider

Revolution Hall $30

Troubadour, meaning an itinerant singer of songs, is a word that dates back centuries and comes from the French verb “trouver,” which is to find. These musical wanderers would find and invent stories humorous and intellectual, romantic and earthy, performing them as they went from town to town. Troubadour is also the word that acclaimed…

Music
The 2nd Annual George Harrison Celebration
Oct. 7–8, 2022

The 2nd Annual George Harrison Celebration

Revolution Hall Cost Varies

30+ musicians, forming a veritable who’s who across Portland’s music scene, get together to bring you two momentous concerts by and for George Harrison! Friday 10/7 – Return of the sold-out 2020 performance of the Concert for George featuring Harrison’s magnum opus and arguably, the best post-Beatles release by any of the Fab Four, All…

Music
OG Garage a Trois
Sunday, Oct. 9, 2022

OG Garage a Trois

Revolution Hall $25

“Garage A Trois, aka guitarist Charlie Hunter, saxophonist Skerik and drummer Stanton Moore, return in the form from which they were born 22 years earlier with a new studio album, ‘Calm Down Cologne.’ A high-stepping mind/body elixir, ‘Calm Down Cologne’ finds Garage A Trois in full improvisational flight, composing live, in the moment, on the…

Music
Jodi Picoult & Jennifer Finney Boylan
Monday, Oct. 10, 2022

Jodi Picoult & Jennifer Finney Boylan

Revolution Hall $39.99

From Jodi Picoult, the bestselling author of Wish You Were Here, and Jennifer Finney Boylan, the bestselling author of She’s Not There, comes a soul-stirring novel about what we choose to keep from our past and what we choose to leave behind. Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life…

Readings & Talks
Marlee Matlin
Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2022

Marlee Matlin

Revolution Hall $35 – $95

An Evening with Marlee Matlin Marlee is an Academy Award-winning actress and activist appearing in the Apple TV+ film CODA, which won 3 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Marlee takes audiences through the highs and lows of her Hollywood career and journeys as an activist. Four Amazing Women, Four Incredible Stories VOICES Lectures turns 30…

Readings & Talks
serpentwithfeet
Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022

serpentwithfeet

Revolution Hall $20

serpentwithfeet: DEACON’S TOUR serpentwithfeet is not only imagining but exploring a world wherein Black love is paramount. His new album, DEACON, is “a study rather than a story,” delving into Black, gay love and the tenderness in the best companionships, romantic or otherwise. DEACON highlights serpent’s growth as a songwriter, taking a more straightforward approach…

Music
Satsang
Friday, Oct. 14, 2022

Satsang

Revolution Hall $25 – $100

Recorded and self-produced with the help of bandmate and longtime collaborator Parker Brown, this record finds the duo tucked away in a secluded cabin in Southwest Montana, digging back into the foundation on which Satsang was founded. “These songs were all so personal to me,” says Drew McManus. “Whether it was sifting through the stage…

Music
JR De Guzman
Saturday, Oct. 15, 2022

JR De Guzman

Revolution Hall $29.50 – $39.50

Born in the Philippines and raised in California, JR De Guzman began performing comedy while working as a music teacher, which he quickly learned meant teaching Taylor Swift songs to teenagers. He has entertained worldwide, performing for Stand-Up Tokyo and ROR Comedy in Japan, the Jokers Ball in Indonesia, the Badaboom Comedy Series in Amsterdam,…

Comedy
Pete Souza
Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022

Pete Souza

Revolution Hall $40 – $60

Pete Souza has spent more time in the Oval Office than almost any person in history. During the Obama administration alone, Souza was inside the presidential bubble for more than 25,000 hours and made nearly 2 million photographs. The result is an unprecedented view of how our democracy really works. Souza’s The West Wing and…

Readings & Talks
AHI
Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2022

AHI

Revolution Hall $15

Ahkinoah Habah Izarh, better known by the stage name AHI is a Canadian singer-songwriter. He has been a two-time Juno Award nominee for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year, receiving nods at the Juno Awards of 2019 for his album In Our Time and at the Juno Awards of 2022 for his album Prospect.

Music

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