The German Art Students
Sunday, September 09, 2012
Rockin' Benefit for Stephanie; September 9, 2012; High Noon Saloon
Jeff Burkhart
The German Art Students
The German Art Students
Saturday, September 08, 2012
Blueheels/Control/Dietrich Gosser; September 8, 2012; High Noon Saloon
Dietrich Gosser
Control
Blueheels
Control
Blueheels
Friday, September 07, 2012
Chris Mills/Cloudbirds; September 7, 2012; The Hideout
It’s been awhile since the last Chris Mills record, Living in the Aftermath, was released in 2008, but he is definitely ready to put out another one. Even going so far as to fly in the producer/guitarist to finish recording in Chicago what they had started in Norway. The bonus is that Mills seldom makes a trip to Chicago without playing a one-off show at the Hideout, so here we were. The record’s, and also tonight’s, rhythm section consists of Konrad Meisner, one of several drummers to rotate behind the kit over the years, and (as always) Ryan Hembrey on bass. It’s always a little disappointing when Gerald Dowd isn’t the one in the drummer’s seat, but I’ve long been a fan of Meisner.
The set was well balanced, sampling from almost his entire catalog, in addition to a healthy dose of new songs, including several I hadn’t heard before. Recent shows had been neglecting “The Silver Line” from the album of the same name. An omission I’ve found inconceivable since I consider it one of the top ten songs ever written. (Though oddly enough, it isn’t even my favorite song on the record.) So it was great to hear it tonight. Other highlights were the heartbreaking, suicide watch “Crooked Vein” and the traditional set-ender, the haunting “Signal to Noise.” For the latter a mysterious man approached the stage, and after getting the OK from Hembrey, took a seat behind the piano. The song was nearly over before I realized their guest was Fred Lonberg-Holm, whose cello makes the track one of Mills’ most indelible in a list of pretty amazing songs.
When they left the stage I was worried they weren’t going to return, the somewhat lethargic clapping from the apparently sated audience hardly warranted another song, but I should have know better. While waiting for doors to open we overheard the end of soundcheck, which to our surprise was Tom Petty’s “The Waiting.” Everybody loves Tom Petty of course, but “The Waiting” seemed an odd choice for Mills and band. His cover choices have always been more esoteric (check out his excellent 2001 covers record and you’ll see what I mean), so something so broad was unexpected. It was terrific of course, and just like he had the rest of the set, Mills looked like he was having the time of his life.
I’m looking forward to the new record and the promise of more than one show a year. I’m not sure how many would be enough, but I would like to find out.
The Cloudbirds
Chris Mills
The set was well balanced, sampling from almost his entire catalog, in addition to a healthy dose of new songs, including several I hadn’t heard before. Recent shows had been neglecting “The Silver Line” from the album of the same name. An omission I’ve found inconceivable since I consider it one of the top ten songs ever written. (Though oddly enough, it isn’t even my favorite song on the record.) So it was great to hear it tonight. Other highlights were the heartbreaking, suicide watch “Crooked Vein” and the traditional set-ender, the haunting “Signal to Noise.” For the latter a mysterious man approached the stage, and after getting the OK from Hembrey, took a seat behind the piano. The song was nearly over before I realized their guest was Fred Lonberg-Holm, whose cello makes the track one of Mills’ most indelible in a list of pretty amazing songs.
When they left the stage I was worried they weren’t going to return, the somewhat lethargic clapping from the apparently sated audience hardly warranted another song, but I should have know better. While waiting for doors to open we overheard the end of soundcheck, which to our surprise was Tom Petty’s “The Waiting.” Everybody loves Tom Petty of course, but “The Waiting” seemed an odd choice for Mills and band. His cover choices have always been more esoteric (check out his excellent 2001 covers record and you’ll see what I mean), so something so broad was unexpected. It was terrific of course, and just like he had the rest of the set, Mills looked like he was having the time of his life.
I’m looking forward to the new record and the promise of more than one show a year. I’m not sure how many would be enough, but I would like to find out.
The Cloudbirds
Chris Mills
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Kelly Hogan/Count This Penny; August 30, 2012; East Side Club
This was the final show of the summer that True Endeavors had booked at the East Side Club, and while the day was quite warm, it was, as they say, cooler by the lake. It was hard to imagine a more perfect night for music. This was the biggest crowd I’d seen at one of these and they stretched the staff at the Tiki Bar on the premises thin, the beer line meandered across the lawn for most of the night. Part of it had to do with the supply of New Belgium beer, of which every ticket holder got one free, arriving late, but the other part just seemed to be that people were thirsty and there weren’t enough people behind the bar to remedy that.
Opening the show were local favorites Count This Penny. The group’s core members are Alan and Amanda Rigel; they both sing and pass the bass and acoustic guitar back and forth. Tonight they were also accompanied by John Ray on banjo. The trio had just returned from a tour in the southeast where they made stops in Tennessee and Kentucky, which is back home for the Rigels. Their music is rooted in Appalachian folk, but they owe their appeal to the chemistry between them. Tonight wasn’t the official release of their new CD Pitchman, but the discs had just come in and they were offering them for sale. And I sold a lot of them. I had already volunteered to do merch for Kelly Hogan and since I was already sitting at the table, I told Count This Penny I would be happy to sell their stuff too. Their songwriting is terrific, the production (done at the now shuttered Smart Studios) is stellar, and Amanda’s voice in particular couldn’t be more gorgeous.
I always associate Kelly Hogan with Chicago, part of a scene that includes Andrew Bird, Jon Langford, and Robbie Fulks, but she calls Wisconsin home now and much like Count This Penny she’s quite enamored of her adopted state. Her band is still pure Chicago, drummer Joe Camarillo and guitarist Jim Elkington are part of Langford’s Skull Orchard while bass player KC McDonough has played with Fulks and also joins Hogan in the Flat Five. They did a fine job of filling in for the studio musicians who backed Hogan on her first new release in many years. I Like to Keep Myself in Pain is a collection of mostly covers reinterpreted by Hogan. The list of contributors is a who’s who of the best songwriters of the last decade, many of whom she’s collaborated with. Robyn Hitchcock (who wrote the title track), M Ward, John Wesley Harding and the Magnetic Fields’ Stephen Merritt to name just a few. The songs are well chosen and flatter her remarkable voice. She couldn’t sound more different than the Welshman Langford but his “Haunted” may be the best of the bunch, surprisingly because she lightens up the dark tune.
The songs all play well live, and she interspersed anecdotes from her career and from the songwriters before each song. One of the best was a song she’s been doing for years. The Magnetic Fields’ “Papa Was a Rodeo” showed up on Under the Country Underdog and sounded lovely tonight, with the charming and handsome Elkington taking the last chorus, his hint of a British accent giving it even more weight. In fact the only song that wasn’t a winner was the encore, a very surprising choice of the Hold Steady’s “We’re Gonna Build Something This Summer.” Hogan’s voice is just too, for lack of a better word, wrong for one of Craig Finn’s wordy rants. I have to admire her for trying though. And it certainly didn’t detract from an overall lovely night by the lake.
Count This Penny
Kelly Hogan
Opening the show were local favorites Count This Penny. The group’s core members are Alan and Amanda Rigel; they both sing and pass the bass and acoustic guitar back and forth. Tonight they were also accompanied by John Ray on banjo. The trio had just returned from a tour in the southeast where they made stops in Tennessee and Kentucky, which is back home for the Rigels. Their music is rooted in Appalachian folk, but they owe their appeal to the chemistry between them. Tonight wasn’t the official release of their new CD Pitchman, but the discs had just come in and they were offering them for sale. And I sold a lot of them. I had already volunteered to do merch for Kelly Hogan and since I was already sitting at the table, I told Count This Penny I would be happy to sell their stuff too. Their songwriting is terrific, the production (done at the now shuttered Smart Studios) is stellar, and Amanda’s voice in particular couldn’t be more gorgeous.
I always associate Kelly Hogan with Chicago, part of a scene that includes Andrew Bird, Jon Langford, and Robbie Fulks, but she calls Wisconsin home now and much like Count This Penny she’s quite enamored of her adopted state. Her band is still pure Chicago, drummer Joe Camarillo and guitarist Jim Elkington are part of Langford’s Skull Orchard while bass player KC McDonough has played with Fulks and also joins Hogan in the Flat Five. They did a fine job of filling in for the studio musicians who backed Hogan on her first new release in many years. I Like to Keep Myself in Pain is a collection of mostly covers reinterpreted by Hogan. The list of contributors is a who’s who of the best songwriters of the last decade, many of whom she’s collaborated with. Robyn Hitchcock (who wrote the title track), M Ward, John Wesley Harding and the Magnetic Fields’ Stephen Merritt to name just a few. The songs are well chosen and flatter her remarkable voice. She couldn’t sound more different than the Welshman Langford but his “Haunted” may be the best of the bunch, surprisingly because she lightens up the dark tune.
The songs all play well live, and she interspersed anecdotes from her career and from the songwriters before each song. One of the best was a song she’s been doing for years. The Magnetic Fields’ “Papa Was a Rodeo” showed up on Under the Country Underdog and sounded lovely tonight, with the charming and handsome Elkington taking the last chorus, his hint of a British accent giving it even more weight. In fact the only song that wasn’t a winner was the encore, a very surprising choice of the Hold Steady’s “We’re Gonna Build Something This Summer.” Hogan’s voice is just too, for lack of a better word, wrong for one of Craig Finn’s wordy rants. I have to admire her for trying though. And it certainly didn’t detract from an overall lovely night by the lake.
Count This Penny
Kelly Hogan
Saturday, August 25, 2012
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