Live Review: The Claudettes at Mary’s Place • Rockford
The Claudettes (photo by Jeff Elbel)
The Claudettes
Mary’s Place
October 18, 2024
Rockford, IL
Review and photos by Jeff Elbel.
Enjoying a busy fall season on the road, Chicago’s inimitable wonders, The Claudettes, swung to nearby Rockford for a return visit to Mary’s Place. The watering hole rests along the Rock River and is the oldest bar in town. “This is a legit music venue disguised as a dive bar,” pianist Johnny Iguana affectionately said. The band played nearly 30 songs, drawing from all corners of its wide-ranging influences.
After an instrumental appetizer of rollicking blues and tango, singer Rachel Williams strode to the stage with a striking presence, recalling Annie Lennox and Tilda Swinton to deliver “Give it All Up for Good.” While packed with Iguana’s witty and musically literate original material, the set list offered insight into the band’s motivating forces via carefully chosen covers, including Irma Thomas’ “Ruler of My Heart” (with Iguana’s saloon-Gershwin piano) and blues dynamo Sugar Pie DeSanto’s “Git Back.” For a simmering performance of DeSanto’s slow-burning “Slip-In Mules,” Iguana wryly offered a role to the crowd at the busy bar nearby. “This is an audience participation song, and that means shut the fuck up,” he said with a laugh. “Winter Came While You Were Gone” was classic Bacharachian pop. Zach Verdoorn’s sturdy bass and warm background vocal elevated the tale of post-traumatic experience in “The Aftermath.” “Are they still looking for me?” sang Williams and Verdoorn in sweet, paranoid harmony. Later, Verdoorn played a cartwheeling 50’s pop lead on his Bass VI during “Billy’s Blues” and brought the house down with an unhinged performance of The Rivingtons’ novelty hit “The Bird is the Word/Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow.” Williams treated Mary’s Place to one standout performance after another, bringing soulful power to the cheeky “24/5” and Aretha Franklin’s explosive “See Saw” and heartsick longing to “(You are My) Whole World.” The band’s lunatic post-punk flavors, theatricality, social consciousness, and snark were evident during “Grandkids Wave Bye Bye,” inclusive anthem “Irregulars” (followed by a call to get out the vote), and “Mr. Pecker’s Apoplexy.” The latter described an attempt by the publisher of the National Enquirer tried to blackmail Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Williams and Verdoorn commented on the club’s Halloween decorations, including the eerie presence of a life-sized witch model that loomed over Iguana’s shoulder. “That’s modeled after my father’s sister,” he quipped. “What’s wrong with that?”
Highlights of the set included all four songs from the band’s new vinyl EP, sold only at concerts. Drummer Michael Caskey propelled the slinky R&B groove of the hot-blooded “Touch You Back.” “No Matter How Much” was a dramatic cabaret stomper about being suckered by hollow promises and the protagonist’s ensuing regret. Iguana committed to the bit when dedicating the wry “Largemouth Bassist” to “all the great fish-hitters in rock and roll,” with a closing hat-tip to “tilapiist Phil Manzanera.” “Party! Before Country,” exhorted the crowd with the turn of phrase, “Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what this party can do for you.” Iguana dazzled with rollicking blues piano during instrumentals “Hammer and Tickle” and “You Busy Beaver, You.”
The set concluded with the rowdy cautionary tale “Naked on the Internet” (complete with Caskey’s drum quote from Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild”) and a campy, riff-rocking mashup that fused Nazareth’s “Hair of the Dog” with the Beatles’ “Day Tripper” and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Born on the Bayou.” The Claudettes’ high spirits, good humor, and broad stylistic acumen kept the dancers moving and an expanding Rockford fanbase grooving throughout the night – even those who kept talking around the bar.
Category: Featured, Live Reviews
