Illinois Entertainer

Q&A With Dennis DeYoung

IE: What have you been up to since appearing on these very pages two years ago?

Dennis DeYoung: I’ve been on the road, including some extensive touring in Canada, and I saw the double disc [The Music of Styx: Live With Symphony Orchestra] go platinum and the DVD triple platinum in Canada, which is miraculous, especially at my age! After the success of those projects, I made my first solo rock album since 1988 called One Hundred Years From Now and had [the title track, a English/French duet with Eric Lapointe] as a number one single simultaneously on [Canada’s] pop, AC and rock charts.

• Read more: Hello, My Name Is Dennis

Nacht Nacht — Who’s There

Shoot, we’ve already got a Dimmu Borgir feature in this issue, might as well keep the black metal ball rolling with some Nachtmystium news. Actually, the Chicagoans don’t want to be coined “black metal” anymore, but we’re doing it anyway, otherwise it screws up the whole intro.

• Read more: File: May 2008

A Festivus For The Rest Of Us

If Lollapalooza packs ‘em in with the rumored announcement of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails as headliners, us Chicago folk might be crowded out of our own festival. Pitchfork Music Fest has already squashed the one that gave it birth (Intonation) — you’ll have to excuse us if we’re feeling a smidge overpowered. Escape to Bonnaroo? Summer? In Tennessee? Next.

• Read more: File: April 2008

Hello, My Name Is Andy
Q&A With Andy McKee

IE: What first attracted you to playing the guitar and how old were you?

Andy McKee: I was 13 when I got my first guitar and I asked for a guitar for my birthday that year because I heard Eric Johnson on the radio. They played a clip of “Cliffs Of Dover” and I had never heard instrumental guitar music before. I was just blown away.

• Read more: Hello, My Name Is Andy

Hello My Name Is Dick

IE: Seeing Electric Six at Double Door was how I spent my very first New Years Eve in Chicago. That’s not a question, obviously, just a fun fact.

Dick Valentine: The thing I remember about that show is that we thought it might be our last show ever, since we had recently been dropped by our record label. Also, someone broke into our vehicle later that night and stole Tait’s [Nucleus] keyboards.

• Read more: Hello, My Name Is Dick

Queen Nothing

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion . . . unless it isn’t Aretha Franklin’s opinion, too. So let it be known from here forth that no female singer may ever be lovingly referred to as “the queen” by a star-struck admirer. That’s what Beyoncé did during an intro to Tina Turner’s Grammy performance in February, and Franklin, the Queen Of Soul, was so slighted by the praise heaped on Turner she felt the need to release a statement saying “I am not sure of whose toes I may have stepped on or whose ego I may have bruised between the Grammy writers and Beyoncé, however, I dismissed it as a cheap shot for controversy.”

• Read more: File: March 2008

Hello, My Name Is Shannon
Q&A With Shannon Wright

IE: You’ve just welcomed a new baby. Were you musical as a kid?
Shannon Wright: My grandma bought me a guitar when I was 9, but I hated it because it made my fingers hurt. My parents liked music a lot, but neither of them played anything. I didn’t play music until I was 20. They say whenever there was a radio on when I was little I would go sit by it.

• Read more: Hello, My Name Is Shannon

EMI’s E-M Ergency

In what could be mistaken for a climate-change exercise, lifeboats are circling the offices of EMI Recordings, home to Capitol, Virgin, and Astralwerks Records among others. Nearly 2,000 jobs have been cut — take that, downloaders! — and the fallout isn’t limited to staff.

• Read more: File: February 2008

IE staffers pick their favorite releases and shows from 2007.

• Read more: File: The Best Of 2007

Britney…Britney…Britney…

It must take effort to convince a county court that putting two children in the custody of Kevin “Popo Zao” Federline is a wise decision. But that Britney Spears is on a run of hijinks that’s making Scooby-Doo cringe. To recap, one of eight drug tests she actually made it to (she has allegedly skipped six) reportedly came back positive for amphetamines.

• Read more: File: December 2007

Hello, My Name Is Sammy
Q&A With Sammy Hagar

IE: What were some of the highlights from your 60th birthday celebration?
Sammy Hagar: The highlights were two things: 1) They had huge surprises for me, I mean everyone kept calling me or leaving me messages or e-mailing me saying ‘Hey, we can’t make it. Tell Sammy we love him” — people who have been coming every year, people like Toby Keith. They all told me they weren’t coming. I didn’t mind, though, because sometimes too many people come and it makes it very hard for me and my band because we have to share the stage, and we like to play! And the fans are there to hear certain songs and sometimes we don’t get to play enough.

• Read more: Hello, My Name Is Sammy

Planet Neilsen

Cheap Trickster Rick Nielsen has a bunch of guitars, and apparently he’s out of room for them in his house. According to Rockford’s WREX-TV, the pick-flipping guitarist and his business partner, Brent Johnson, want to build a rock ‘n’ roll hotel/restaurant/museum called (cleverly) Rick’s in Rockford. Besides the massive collection of one-of-a-kind axes Nielsen himself has played throughout his career, the museum might also include six-strings played by Elvis Presley, Jack White, Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townsend, and Eric Clapton, Nielsen told WREX.

• Read more: File: November 2007

Hello My Name Is Kirk
Q&A With Kirk Windstein Of Down

IE: Down was in a state of limbo for a while. Was there any question in your mind you guys would make another record?
Kirk Windstein: I think when we, if you want to call it, “parted ways” after the last one and went our separate ways to do other things, I kinda hoped, and had a feeling — a gut feeling — we would. It’s the type of thing where we always say this is the kind of band we can grow old with, and I think with everything else we’ve done over the years, I knew there would come a point where I would get the phone call from Phil [Anselmo, singer]. I was ecstatic of course and I said “Dude, let’s do this thing and let’s do it for real.”

• Read more: Hello, My Name Is Kirk

Riot, Act III

The cuddly, spikes-n-leather gathering we lovingly refer to as Riot Fest marks its tertiary performance in November at Congress Theatre. And just when you thought it couldn’t get anymore, um, riotous, here come some classic and righteous additions.

• Read more: File: October 2007

Hello, My Name Is Tom
Q&A With Tom Smith of Editors

IE: The lyrical phrases that keep popping up on your new An End Has A Start are bones, flesh, and death.
Tom Smith: Heh-heh. Yeah. A lot of the songs do have me mulling over or thinking about things coming to an end. But I dunno – the lyrics come from me, and they’re kinda personal, and they’re all a reflection of things that’ve gone on in and around my life. And for the last couple of years, there’ve been a few things that’ve happened that’ve made me . . . made me think about these things. I can’t stop these thoughts, these things coming through into the songs.

• Read more: Hello, My Name Is Tom