Art Brut/Team Band; June 9, 2009; Schubas

If you subscribe to Eddie Argos’s method of songwriting, anything worth saying once is worth saying over and over and over. Art Brut’s lead singer has never found anything too mundane to be turned into a song, which has can have its charms but ultimately starts to wear thin by the end of the CD, or in this case the second night of a five night stand at Schubas.

The British band outgrew the tiny club a couple years ago after an early afternoon set at Union Park’s Pitchfork Festival and a healthy blog buzz introduced them to a whole score of Midwest fans. Since then they’ve stopped by the much larger Metro on their cross country tours. As part of Schubas 25th anniversary celebration, the band returned to one of the first clubs they played in Chicago with a week’s worth of shows. Thursday’s and Friday’s shows had sold out in advance, but if tonight’s did it wasn’t until at the door. While a full house was present to greet Art Brut, no one seemed in a particular hurry to get to the show, and the room was only half full when openers Team Band took the stage.

They didn’t miss much. The best thing about Team Band may have been the name, but the drummer’s T-shirt which claimed “I Hate Team Band” was a close second. With their simple melodies and silly lyrics, they quite obviously wanted to be Art Brut but lacked that band’s naïve simplicity. In fact, I’m not even sure Art Brut could get away with their odes to “DC Comics and Chocolate Milk” (an actual song title) if it weren’t for their charming British accents and Argos’s complete unwillingness to be the least bit rock & roll. Throughout the set he pulled his worn white T-shirt over his chubby stomach and proceeded to have an unabashed good time, jumping around the stage and even wandering into the crowd for the bulk of one song.

He confessed his love for the very American comic book company several times during the set. A recent tour of the company led to him changing the lyric of one of their early songs from “Modern art makes me want to rock out” to “DC Comics make me want to rock out,” which I found amusing but for people who love that song it was probably disappointing. Considering the child-like simplicity of most of their songs, it becomes increasingly hard to believe that they actually wrote “Emily Kane.” The song which confesses lingering feelings for his first girlfriend, while still not that deep, is a doctorate thesis compared to the rest of their nursery rhymes.

Admittedly, the ridiculousness and repetitiveness of their lyrics can be pretty painful for someone who professes to be a “lyrics girl.” Still, as long as Art Brut, and Argos in particular, continue to have this much fun, I probably will too.

Team Band


Art Brut

Luka Bloom; June 7, 2009; Shank Hall

At first it looked like it might be a rather sad showing for Luka Bloom who was playing his first show at Shank Hall since the early Nineties. A native of Ireland, Bloom has always enjoyed more success abroad while his brother Christy Moore is a star at home. Even so, he seems to stick to the big cities and Irish festivals when in the US. So I was a little surprised when I learned he would be playing at the relatively small Shank Hall. It was an 8 pm show on a Sunday and when we arrived fifteen minutes before show time only the front handful of tables were occupied. Luckily by the time Bloom took the stage and explained that there was supposed to be an opener but she had cancelled, the room had filled in nicely. He said he wasn’t sure what had happened, and they had considered getting someone else but in the end decided that since it had been awhile since he had played Shank, they might as well make an evening of it.

We couldn’t have been happier, since no opener meant we would get home earlier and get more Luka Bloom. The first half the show was lovely despite the fact that I didn’t know any of the songs, his soothing voice and pretty guitar were enough. In the second half it got even better. Bob Dylan’s “To Make You Feel My Love” was a surprise until I remembered he had done it on his 2000 collection of covers Keeper of the Flame. The Luka Bloom CDs I own are from a small section of time, released between 1990 and 94. Mostly I attribute the impression that I had forgotten about him to out of sight out of mind. I hadn’t seen Bloom in perhaps almost a decade; a show at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music had been the only time outside of a Guinness Fleadh that I had seen him.

Luckily in the second half of his set he dug deeper into his catalog. The first tune I recognized was the gorgeous “Sunny Sailor Boy,” where with very little prompting he convinced the entire audience to sing along on its “ooh waa ooh waa, ooh waa ooh waa my sunny sailor boy.” It doesn’t look like much in print, but trust me, it was lovely. Only a few songs later he pulled out what is perhaps my favorite song. “You Couldn’t Have Come at a Better Time” from 1990’s Riverside is a heart tugger about the fickleness of fate. I was sure that would be all the songs I knew, but he returned for the encore for with a new shirt on that predicted one more.

Sure enough his white shirt with a black bicycle emblazoned meant he was going to play “Acoustic Motorbike” from the album of the same name. The heart-pumping, furious strumming song was a perfect set closer. He wiped the sweat away, handed the large bouquet of flowers that had adorned the stage to the eight and a half month pregnant woman in the front row (he had teased earlier that he didn’t want to play anything too lively for fear she would go into labor), and left the stage. Leaving me very glad that I had decided to make the trip.

Peter Mulvey & Randy Sabien; June 6, 2009; Café Carpe

After ten plus years as a fan I thought by this point that I knew all of Peter Mulvey’s tricks, but it seems he still has a few things up his sleeve. Take tonight’s show at Fort Atkinson’s charming Café Carpe, always a destination for its eccentric charm, stellar acoustics and delicious jambalaya with Creole sauce, where Peter was joined by incomparable violinist Randy Sabien. Another Wisconsin musician recognized far beyond his home state, Sabien is known for his jazzy instrumentals and revolutionary technique. It seemed an unlikely pairing, but by the end of the night I was surprised they hadn’t played together before.

I had presumed that Randy would play first and then Peter, but instead they played the whole night together, well, except for the first song. They had just sat down following one of Carpe co-owner Bill Camplin’s droll rambling introductions where he called Sabien one of the best violinists in the county (yes, county not country), when Peter realized he had left some essential cables upstairs. Sabien played an instrumental while he fetched the missing pieces. When he returned they started the show as they had meant to. The original opener was supposed to be a popular classic by Gershwin or that ilk, but after spending the morning entertaining children at the Fort farmer’s market, Peter had a better idea.

No one knew quite what to think when the pair broke into the classiest version of “Rubber Ducky” I’ve ever heard. Yep, “Rubber Ducky,” really. Peter’s surprise at the Sesame Street censors letting them get away with “chubby” in a bathtub song led to a discussion of other surprising moments; including the Count counting Q’s (try it). The inclusion of the children’s song led to a humorous moment later in the night when Sabien inserted the instantly recognizable tune into a solo during “The Knuckleball Suite.” They followed that with a sarcastically labeled “children’s song” by Tom Waits. The decidedly non-child appropriate “Jockey Full of Bourbon” followed Peter’s hilariously spot-on impression of Waits singing the “Alphabet Song.”

With all the jokes and storytelling it may seem more like a comedy routine, but the truth is these are two of the finest musicians I’ve seen on the Carpe stage. Instead of playing the songs on the CDs that they had for sale, they opted mostly for new songs and well-chosen covers like the aforementioned Waits in addition to a stunning version of Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows.” Even with all the stunning musicianship and quick wit on display, some of my favorite moments were small ones- Peter pausing mid-song to respond “Bless You” to a sneeze in the audience and him quoting one of my favorite movies with a grinning quip in Sabien’s direction, “You just keep thinking Butch, that’s what you’re good at.” Honestly, I think Peter and Sabien could give Butch and Sundance a run for their money in the comedy department.

Madison Music Foundry presents the Iron Hammer Band and Rock Band; June 6, 2009; High Noon Saloon

Stacey Earle & Mark Stuart; June 4, 2009; Darlene’s House

As president of Madison’s folk society, Darlene has plenty of opportunity to book house concerts; she just doesn’t do it very often. So when she told me a couple months ago that she had confirmed Stacey Earle and Mark Stuart for the beginning of June, I wrote it on my calendar. Sure, I was curious to see how other people hosted house concerts, but mostly I was lured by the knowledge that Darlene and her sister cook all day to provide the appetizers and desserts for her shows.

I’d tried providing snacks at my first couple house concerts, but it just never seemed right since my shows feel more like those at a venue than in a basement. However, in Darlene’s kitchen with the early evening sun streaming through the windows, it didn’t seem wrong at all. Besides they are much better cooks than I am, I will definitely be asking for the amaretto cheesecake bar recipe.

The basement of her spacious home is long and narrow allowing rows of six chairs to be set up. Since these are also the chairs she uses for the summer series Folk on State, all of her chairs actually match, giving it a more professional look than my mismatched collection. Local musician Tracey Jane Coomer supplied the PA which featured a terrific sounding Bose stick, which is well worth its price tag but which I couldn’t even think about getting for the basement. It sounded great, I was comfortable, well-fed and had a beer in my hand, too bad the music was a bit of a disappointment.

Stacey Earle (sister of Steve) has a sincere country charm whose sugary sweetness started to grate just a little by the end of the show. I now know where her nephew Justin picked up his Ladies-and-Gentlemen style of banter. For the most part though, her clear, pretty voice with its hint of twang and simple songs were easy enough to watch. Her musical partner and husband Mark Stuart didn’t fare as well. His ingratiating banter filled with jokes that just weren’t funny (yes, we did get it) was slightly annoying, but it was his illusions of grandeur as a guitar player that I’d had enough of by the end of the night. While they were not quite as terribly as the Mighty Wind-esque couple at the Black Orchid who forever ruined “Somewhere over the Rainbow” for me, I was having flashbacks.

The couple has been playing together for the last eight years but recently announced that they would start playing separately. That should work out well for Earle, Stuart on the other hand… well, he has his Mel Bay guitar technique video to sell, maybe that will be enough.

The Classic Tawnies; June 1, 2009; The Crystal Corner