Exploring the Ashland music scene with Casey and The Cutoffs

ASHLAND, Ore. — We’re all familiar with Ashland’s theater history and culture, but what you may not know is the town has a booming music scene. Whether it’s local musicians or bands passing through, on any given evening you can find live entertainment in most downtown locales.

One of those local bands is Casey and the Cutoffs, an Ashland based band formed by singer and guitar player Casey Minnick, and drummer Max Malcomb in 2021. Their current bass player, Miles Simpson, joined earlier this year. While the trio most commonly plays in Ashland, they’ve also toured up and down the west coast.

As for their musical backgrounds, they are as unique as the band members themselves. According to Casey, his journey with music began in his teen years “I asked for a pet snake, and my parents bought me a guitar instead.” Max says he’s been playing the drums for about 15 years now, “I did my parent’s worst nightmare, and I asked for a drum set my freshman year. I’ve been playing ever since.” For Miles, however, well you could say it was fate, “When I was about 14 years old, I had some friends that were starting a reggae band. And they’re like, hey, we need a bass player. So then, I got designated to bass.”

While the band chooses to stay away from covering other musician’s work, they said they do like to pluck phrases of segments from some songs and transform them into something unique. In fact the band explained they try to never play the same set list twice, to give their audience a fresh experience at every show. “We want you to experience something new and unique every time.” said Casey. That unique experience could come from the music, or even the band’s interactions with each other, “I cut Miles’s pants off at our last show,” explained Max, referencing an occasion when their bass player’s full length pants needed to be shortened to cutoffs to match the band’s namesake.

While live music isn’t something exclusive to Ashland, the trio says there is something unique about their Southern Oregon audience. “You’ll play a show in Portland to 100 people and everyone will just kind have their arms crossed, pretending they’re not having any fun. But then you play in Ashland to like 15 people that (…) come out and dance and rock out and it’s really cool and they’re the ones that make it really special.” said Miles.

With so many Ashland businesses offering live music on any given night of the week, odds are you can catch Casey and the Cutoffs at your favorite haunt. But if you don’t want to leave it up to chance, the band is playing at Local 31 on Friday April 5, and Oberon’s on Friday April 12.