Soooooo…. it would appear that I have been absent for some period of time. I have many apologies… travel...work… what not. They are lame but indeed, that is what we have come to expect from these halting pages. But I have not been idle. Half way through, despite all the issues and some mist steps it has been… quite year.
I have seen a lot of music this year. Much of it has been at Off Broadway and I am happy to report again, and again that this is becoming a treasured venue in town. I have lived through the venue being the worst and stupidest of shit holes. Back in the day… when i was a pup it competed rather unsuccessfully with Mississippi Nights and the old Cicero's. But these venues eventually went on to not become a Jacques Cousteau museum or to become a lame incarnation of itself up the street from it’s former location. But Off Broadway ambled on… trudged on...slowly… awkwardly and sometimes horribly. Great bands but a really stupid room. You would arrive at the front door and come in behind the stage into a “lobby”. Then walk around and there was a cool long bar that extended down the side. A “stage” was there, poorly lit. The “room” had a beautiful wagon wheel chandelier which didn’t belong. There was an upstairs which could have been funky but was instead awkward and vision was blocked by the over hang as well as… the chandelier. Doors were at 8. Bands started to play at 9 ish and there were often 3 of them. On a school night you were always out till 1. Too late for people with jobs and too random an experience for a “grown up”
But a few years ago new owners came on the scene. Things started to happen. Good things. Happy things. They started to experiment with:
Earlier shows
Afternoon shows
Shows that started on time
Tall boy beers
Professional employees
Redecorating
Losing the iconic chandelier
Peeling years of...shit of the walls
Painting
Shortening the bar
Bringing in seats for old people shows or partial old people shows. What I am saying is that if you ever have an inclination to see some live music. Hit their website and go out. They bring in some of the most talented acts that are both breaking and established and when local bands play there it is because they are awesome. Their website is:
So some of the shows I have seen recently.
Rhett Miller. Rhett is lead singer and other than one song per album by their bassist sole lyricist for The Old 97s. Rhett is… well… their is really no one else like Rhett. I would assume he is about 40 (I am too bored to WIKI him). He went to Sarah Lawrence (girls school) on a poetry scholarship. Now remember he is from Texas. He dropped out and moved back and started a band and they have turned out 8-10 CD’s and he has dated and married super models and he has long hair and my best friend’s wife loves to go to shows just to see him whip his hair. And he does. But when he comes to town for a show he normally just shows up with a guitar. I think he has 5 solo albums out and he writes great songs. He writes lines like:
“I was going through a hell of a time
When suddenly you showed up
You gave me hope but I lost mine
But hope is not enough
I loved you so hard
It broke my heart
And you weren’t like the rest
Until you left”
Seriously… that is “Dylanesque” which is the nicest thing I can say about a songwriter.
Frankly this show was the most fun. Buy his newest album and buy the new Old 97’s album as well. It is not poetry but is an album full of songs about getting drunk on bourbon and having sex. What could possibly go wrong.
Steve Earle hit the Pageant and reminded us all what a grumpy, great, tuneful, deep, flawed, wonderful nightmare that he is. He had a pretty set with a tight band featuring the husband and wife team “The Mastersons” who opened up the show with a tight swinging sound. She has a sweet voice and he has good chops. Together they ably backed Earle. Steve Earle has had a checkered personal life but has always been a brilliant artist. Sidelined by heroin and drugs it appeared he had straightened himself out after several marriages and had settled with the talented Allison Moorer in NYC. This tour seemed to be about him working through that latest break up. The bottom line with Steve Earle is that he is likely the most soul filled white man out there. He bleeds through his songs and is constantly working out his thoughts in his songs whether it is personally or politically and… you should go see him. The Pageant is not intimate enough for what he was doing on this tour but still… as I said...get off your dead ass and go see a show.
Twang Fest 38 returned this year with it’s normal panoply of touring and local acts. I was only able to hit two nights of the four nights but each one was filled with great music. KDHX does such a great job for my kind of tunes and the Fest gets better and more professional each year and the partnership with Off Broadway seems here to stay which… is good.
More recently I hit Off Broadway to see the late great Robbie Fulks (not yet deceased). Fulks, from Georgia via 20 years or so in Chicago does not come to town enough. he was playing an early show opening for Chatham County Line who is the latest “thing” in Americana/Alt Country...whatever you want to call it. But Fulks… I have seen 4-5 times. I was able to reminisce with him briefly about his first show in the St. Louis at the old High Point...100 or so years ago.
Fulks has been keeping himself in Chicago at the Old Town Folk School up there and has helped them create a beautiful community that teaches a lot of people and promotes even more. Fulks is a gem and no one knows about him who does not pay attention to great music. He has a truly unique voice and I don't mean “unique” like Dylan or Niel Young. I mean unique like...fucking beautiful. There is something in the way he resonates that literally can make me tear up and there is both a joy and a mournfulness that he conjures which becomes stunning in a small venue like Off Broadway.
The voice coupled with 30 years of songwriting proved too much for the normal 45 minute opener and he played for over an hour and left everyone wanting for more.
Georgia Hard
She said she was leaving
So I went to follow
Blind love and I-55 got me here
Dirty old salt truck
in the smog before me
And dear old Dixie, back in the rearview mirror
Got a third-story walk-up
With a view of the alley
A mailroom job that isn't all glamour and fun
The woman I came for
Is gone to another
Now my feet are just too planted to run
Chorus:
But there's no Carolina Moon over Chicago
No bluegrass growin' out in my backyard
No fields of sugarcane, no soft Virginia rain
But damn, if this livin' ain't Georgia Hard
Down on Halsted
The women walk by me
Like they can tell
I haven't got a dollar to spare
So it's into a side street
For a beer and a sad song
I guess some things
Are the same most everywhere
So please, Mr. Conwell
Could you except the charges?
When I told you "A cold day in Maacon", I lied
And if your pecan trees still need a-shakin'
I'll be back a-beggin' fast as the grey dog flies”
Chatham County seemed like they were going to be awesome after some awful sound problems. They do 4 musicians, no drummer, and one microphone. It is almost too cute but these guys are clearly killing it and a braver man would have stayed for more but… I am old.
Robbie Fulks/Chatham County Line
Most recently I went to Off Broadway to see the Felice Brothers. The Felice Brothers became like gods to me with the release of their eponymous CD from 2008. Songs like “Whiskey In My Whiskey”, “Scarecrow” and more made a CD that was so solid song to song, so lyrical and so filled with sad energy that it was far and away my best CD released that year. But so what? They came to town to the Firebird once since then and I missed them (out of town) which was clearly my bad but mistakes get made. But I did not miss them this time and they were everything I had hoped and more. They were brilliant. Sad. Emotional. Funny. Talented and… shit… they were beautiful. Ian and James Felice even without their brother Simone play the kind of music that can only be played from playing together for life and loving and hating each other as only brothers can do. The concert ambled, rambled, soared and swooped. It was meticulous and it was a train wreck and it was everything rock and roll is supposed to be. It is clearly for me the best show of 2014!
Songs of addiction and madness that when you read the lyrics they just make you ache… and cringe.
Scarecrow
Would you love me
If I told you I was born upstream
If I told you I come from money
White money
Would you love me
Would you love me
Well, I was born down
By a bad little river in a poor town
Where an indian-giver put a board out
It said "Boarding House"
Call him Scarecrow
He kept whores around
And I'd go there
I'd wait my turn on the broke stairs
And get me the girl with the gold hair
Aw yeah, leave your clothes there
On the folding chair
In that cold room
Your breath would twist just like ghosts do
You said, "Call me Dorothy in red shoes"
And the bed moved
The bed moved
The bed moved
Tracy, don't you wake that scarecrow tonight
Well, the man would come in
It's hard living right giving head when
The sad days of winter have set in
And the medicine for an addict is heroin
I'd find you there in the bath
We'd cook up your shit in a tin can
And you started calling me Tin Man
And we started making plans to begin again
Begin again
You saved a C note
Told me you felt like a seagull
Told me to meet at the depot
With the needle, then maybe we'd go
To Reno
Where you'd be my desert dove
And we'd find a way to make better love
Said, "Baby, that's how the West was won"
And the blood-red sun
Yeah, the blood-red sun
And the blood-red sun
Tracy, don't you wake that scarecrow tonight
Well, the man cries,
"Who gives a damn when a tramp dies?"
But I loved you there in the lamp light
With your bare thighs
And the halo of your hair alive
And all my lifelong
I'll never shake off your siren song
And all of your talk about dying young
With an iron lung and that crazy way
Would you love me
If I told you I was born upstream
If I told you I come from money
White money
Would you love me
Would you love me
And all my lifelong
I'll never shake off your siren song
And all of your talk about dying young
With an iron lung and that crazy way
You said, "Simon,
I think I might stay here with Scarecrow tonight
Simon, I think I'm gonna stay here with Scarecrow tonight."
s
“I put some whiskey into my whiskey
I put some heartbreak into my heart
I put my boots on that ole dance floor
I put three rounds Lord, in my 44”
The Felice Brothers.
Quite a year indeed.
Go see some music.
Save your soul.
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