Ari Shapiro is probably best known as a reporter and host for "All Things Considered" on National Public Radio, but reporting from around the world is just his day job. He's also an accomplished musician who spends his vacation days touring with the Portland band Pink Martini.
And next week, he will bring his first ever solo show to Portland, the place where he grew up.
Shapiro was born in North Dakota but moved to Portland when he was eight years old. His family lived near the border with Beaverton and he attended Beaverton schools.
"Portland feels like my hometown," he said over the phone Wednesday from Washington, D.C. "It's the place that shaped me more than anywhere else."
Instead though, he's a journalist reporting at the national level, and so he lives in Washington, D.C., where at 39, he leads an impressively energetic life.
He rides his bike to work every day -- he's never owned a car. And he works over 40 hours a week.
He spends some weeks in the studio in Washington, D.C. and some on reporting trips, like the one he recently took to Indonesia, where he met pigeon racers, a stand-up comedian who performs while wearing hijab and a doctor who serves a community of transgender women.
He uses most of his vacations from NPR to go on tour with Pink Martini. While this schedule might seem exhausting, Shapiro said, "It's the variety that keeps me energized and engaged and curious."
Now, he's spending vacation days to bring his show, "Homeward" to Oregon.
"This solo show is a really new project for me," Shapiro said. But it's a project he's been working on for a long time, a combination of his main outlets: journalism and music.
In the show, Shapiro sings songs that tell stories of the people he has met as he's traveled the world. For now, he finds those stories to be more compelling than his own.
"The kinds of stories that I am interested in telling are the stories of other people's experience," he said. "However I might feel about something is almost incidental to that."
Radio fans will find the stories he tells in the show overlap with stories he has told on air. And Portland music fans will find another thing to love about "Homeward": Each night of the Portland show, either Storm Large or China Forbes will join Shapiro to sing a song.
As far as what Shapiro will do while he's home, beyond visiting his parents and performing, he said his answers are a little cliche: He'd like to go for a long bike ride and visit the best new restaurants, once he figures out what they are.
If he has time, he might head to Cannon Beach or the Columbia River Gorge to see it for the first time since it was ravaged by fire this summer. If there's snow, he'd love to cross country ski on Mount Hood.
These are the places that he grew up with, he said, and they remain important to him.
"I love Portland so much," he added, "and I think if I were a teacher or a dentist or a chef I would move to Portland in a heartbeat. Portland will always feel like home."
"Homeward" plays Nov. 14 at the Eugene Hult Center and Nov. 16 to 18 at the World Trade Center Auditorium in Portland. Tickets are $60 for Portland shows and $33 to $37.50 for the Eugene show.
-- Lizzy Acker
503-221-8052
lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyacker