Etix is the official ticketing source and partner of TOC Portland. With a career now spanning six decades, Robyn Hitchcock remains a truly one-of-a-kind artist – surrealist rock ‘n’ roller, iconic troubadour, guitarist, poet, painter, and performer. An unparalleled, deeply individualistic songwriter and stylist, Hitchcock has traversed many genres with humor, intelligence and originality over 30 albums and seemingly infinite live performances. From The Soft Boys’ proto-psych-punk and The Egyptians’ Dadaist pop to solo masterpieces like 1984’s milestone I Often Dream of Trains and 1990’s Eye, Hitchcock has crafted a strikingly original oeuvre rife with sagacious observation, astringent wit, recurring marine life, mechanized rail services, cheese, Clint Eastwood, and innumerable finely drawn characters, real and imagined. Born in London in 1953, Hitchcock attended Winchester College before moving to Cambridge in 1974. He began playing in a series of bands, including Dennis and the Experts, which became The Soft Boys in 1976. Though light years away from first-wave punk’s revolutionary clatter, the band still manifested the era’s spirit of DIY independence with their breakneck reimagining of British psychedelia. During their (first) lifetime, The Soft Boys released two albums, among them 1980’s landmark second LP, Underwater Moonlight. “The term ‘classic’ is almost as overused as ‘genius’ and ‘influential,’” declared Rolling Stone upon the album’s 2001 reissue. “But Underwater Moonlight remains all three of those descriptions.” Along with his musical efforts, Hitchcock has appeared in several films, among them collaborations with the late Jonathan Demme on 1998’s concert documentary Storefront Hitchcock and roles in 2004’s The Manchurian Candidate and 2008’s Rachel Getting Married. An inveterate traveller and live performer, Hitchcock has toured nearly constantly for the past four decades, playing countless shows worldwide, from Africa to the Arctic. Locked down in Nashville and London by the global pandemic of 2020, Hitchcock and his partner Emma Swift began their Live From Sweet Home Quarantine livestream series, performing weekly sets joined by their two cats, Ringo and Tubby. 2021 saw the publication of Hitchcock’s first book of lyrics, Somewhere Apart: Selected Lyrics 1977-1997, featuring 73 songs and 34 illustrations in a beautiful cloth-bound edition from Tiny Ghost Press.