Rhonda Kennedy: A life Well Lived
Artist and musician Larry Yes’s studio is full of love. Literally. A mobile constructed of the word LOVE in bright colors twists from the ceiling, and wooden rainbows and placards with messages like “Now is a Gift” line the walls. Toward the studio’s rear lives a different kind of love: spiritual love. This where his mother Rhonda Kennedy’s deities—a mix of incredible statues and icons from around the world—are stored. Starting Saturday April 16th, they’ll be on display at Cargo.
Rhonda Kennedy—also known as the rocker Roadahh X and as the KBOO radio DJ Rev Rhonda of the Church of Northwest Music—was a big-haired brunette with an outsized personality. She was raised in Gladstone by her musician and security guard father and her deputy sheriff mother, who slept with a photo of John Wayne above her bed.
“She was complicated,” Larry says of his mother. Rhonda Kennedy married young, gave birth to Larry, and divorced, spending most of her adult life as a single mother. She plunged into Portland’s night life, making music and friends, writing for the Clinton Street Quarterly, and landing a gig as a DJ for KBOO. She was the last opening act for Big Mama Thornton and performed with Jessie Mae Hemphill. “She wanted to be Janis Joplin,” Larry says.
In 1990, Rhonda Kennedy’s world changed. KBOO sent her to India to interview the Dalai Lama. Her brief time in the Dalai Lama’s presence crystallized her spiritual beliefs. She adopted the Free Tibet cause and founded Artists for Tibet, leading to, among other things, taking the Beastie Boys and eight Tibetan monks to Lollapalooza in 1994.
Rhonda, raised Catholic, embraced all the world’s spiritual beliefs. “She didn’t believe in any one religion,” Larry says. “My mom believed in energy.” In her travels, Rhonda collected statues of saints and deities from Tara to Quan Yin to Mother Teresa to Buddha and the Virgin Mary. She crafted collages of their images, mixing them as if at a celestial cocktail party. “She saw all people as sentient beings,” Larry adds. “All walks of life, all ways of being. She believed we’re interconnected. We’re all family.”
Rhonda Kennedy died on April 1, 2019 at 64 years young. Cargo’s show of her deities is an opportunity to honor both her and her all-inclusive love. Some of her collection will be available for purchase.
(For a sample of Rhonda’s music as Roadahh X, don’t miss the music video Butcher Boy, featuring Chuck Palahniuk as a randy butcher at Portland’s fabled Cornos Market. You can listen to Rhonda’s interview with the Dalai Lama here.)