As Brendan wrote on Tuesday, Jason Webley is playing a fucking amazing-sounding show in Everett tonight at 8. And it's not just him, but a posse of rad artists from here and all over, playing music based on a mysterious scrapbook of clippings about the daughter of a founding family of Everett, the Ruckers. Seriously, read the story behind the project—it's ridiculous. And Webley promises he didn't make it up. "Crap like this actually happens to me pretty often," he says by phone. "I could tell a lot of similar windy, serendipitous stories. Maybe it's like people who can find four-leaf clovers or something; these things have a way of popping up in my life."

I couldn't believe it—mystery Everett woman, as a theme, is too much for me. Not for the reason you're thinking, a who-the-fuck-cares-about-Everett-way, though. No: I totally care about Everett. I didn't mean to, it just happened, by accident and circumstance. But more on that later.

And though Everett, Webley admits, is "one of the known armpits of the Northwest," as he grows older, he's "gradually becoming rather fond of the place." Webley, the raucous street accordionist I used to see everywhere when I was growing up in Seattle, is actually from around there, and lives there now. "I never really owned Everett, or told people I lived in Everett," he says. "This concert is kind of my coming out as someone who lives in Everett."

The theater he's throwing the show in is the Historic Everett Theater—"the oldest theater in the state," he points out, and one that was "built just a few years before this woman was born." Tickets will be available at the door. The location's connection to its mysterious, poetic subject is strong. And Everett is such a weird place. A long time ago, "it was a contender to be the major city in the region," says Webley. Now it's an armpit—but a fuckin' lovable armpit.

The first time I ever went up to Everett, I ended up in one of those long, spiraling-chain-of-events nights that ends with a really fucking good story—this particular night ended with me wrestling a dude on the lawn of his old high school until the cops showed up.

Before that, as a Seattleite, I always thought of Everett as more of a concept than a place—a name I hear on the radio traffic report, a place that must exist because of airplanes or something, but if, tomorrow, it vanished in the mist like Brigadoon, I'd never have known. But Everett is weirdly magic, both dirtier and cleaner than Seattle, kinder and less kind, definitely more blue-collar. When I suddenly acquired a whole cadre of friends from Everett, it was decreed I'd have to take a tour. It's a blur—someone in the bar cheerfully yelling "Girlfriends are for fags!" which makes delightfully little sense. Eating dinner at the only place still open late at night: the basement dining area of a Russian sauna, where we were served pre-packaged ice-cream cones and a lot of cabbage, while a totally unsupervised 10-year-old kid in a leather jacket shot pool, skillfully, in the corner of the room. We asked the front desk lady what the big bundles of sticks for sale were for. "You beat yourself," she said. "In the sauna."

There were $1 or $2 shots, there was always someone my friends knew from high school in every bar, and of course this night ended in an "I've always wanted to try MMA fighting" moment on the high-school lawn, with a dude yelling, "It's cool, you can kick me in the balls! That's okay in MMA!" and me having the wherewithal to not take him up on it. Somehow, in my mind, it's all Everett's fault—it was just that kind of night. Everett has shown me many other wonders since then. "Train beers," on special only when you could hear the whistle of the train going past outside; a three-hour show by a funk-rap band during which band members started stripping over the course of the evening, ending the show in just boxers and socks.

When I talk to people about Everett, there are always stories. I met a guy from Everett who told me he'd gone up there to hang out and entered a bar only to find it populated almost entirely by prostitutes in different neon shades of the same outfit, like something out of an old-school Star Trek episode. One of my Everett friends will burst into a barbershop harmony rendition of "The Girl from Everett High" at the drop of a hat and talks about "Everett pride." But his brother? I asked him if he had any Everett pride and he told that by the time he was halfway through high school, he had known multiple classmates who had killed someone.

Guess it depends. I asked an Everetter recently if he knew Jason Webley was from there. Of course, he answered. Everett people are like Canadians; they know if anyone well-known is from where they're from.