Cover Story
Cover Story: Jehnny Beth
There are Renaissance women, dream-driven ladies who tirelessly toil their way to coveted career kudos like gaining elite EGOT status by winning Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards. There is even a further achievement to shoot for once that title is secured — the PEGOT, via the added plaudit of a Peabody Award, a category […]
Featured: Jay O’Rourke Band
Like many musicians releasing music during the pandemic, Jay O’Rourke had different plans before the virus hit. His band’s new 5–song EP was originally scheduled as a full-length album, but COVID-19 changed all that. The acclaimed guitarist’s third release in four years shows he’s incredibly prolific. Boom Daddy Boom continues a course he charted on […]
Cover Story: Tim Burgess
Benjamin Disraeli believed that “Change is inevitable; change is constant.” John F. Kennedy reckoned that “Change is the law of life, and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” But leave it to Charles Darwin to summarize it best: “It is not the strongest of the species […]
Cover Story: Lucinda Williams
Many artists — when looking back on their catalogs — often wish that they could have done better, compositionally speaking. Hindsight, of course, is 20/20. But when Grammy-winning folk-rocker Lucinda Williams undertook her comprehensive tour last year, celebrating the 20th anniversary of her landmark third Car Wheels on a Gravel Road effort, she never once […]
Q&A: Randy Blythe from Lamb of God
D. Randall Blythe — Randy to friends and family — understands that it doesn’t quite fit his profile as the dreadlocked, feral-throated frontman for molten metal outfit Lamb of God. But this Virginian doesn’t care. Right now, at this perilous point in time, and after everything he’s survived — including detention in a Czech Republic […]
Cover Story – Best Coast
Best Coast anchor Bethany Cosentino admits that her duo’s chiming new Always Tomorrow set, it’s fourth, just might be the Feel-Good Album of the Year. But in retrospect, she only wishes that she at first didn’t have to feel so incredibly bad just to compose it. And she isn’t waxing poetic when she describes the […]
Cover Story: Green Day
On the most instinctual gut level, Billie Joe Armstrong gets it. No question. A la cinematic director Godfrey Reggio’s 1983 visual masterpiece Koyaanisqatsi, life — nationally and around the world — has tipped completely, horribly, maybe irrevocably out of balance. On one recent day alone, the headlines said it all: Freakish, climate-change-spurred floods are swamping […]
![Cover Story: Grace Potter [with added Photo Gallery from Riviera Theatre]](http://illinoisentertainer.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/gp9-e1581298059207-150x150.jpeg "Cover Story: Grace Potter [with added Photo Gallery from Riviera Theatre]")
Cover Story: Grace Potter [with added Photo Gallery from Riviera Theatre]
In the DC Comics universe, Superman always had his Fortress of Solitude, a secluded palace on the frozen Arctic tundra where he could go to muse on his complex relationships with villains, the Justice League, and indeed his planetary protectorate, humankind itself. Not bad, as exotic getaways go. Vermont-bred folk-rocker Grace Potter, on the other […]
Cover Story – Caroline Polachek
The relationship between art and its attendant inspiration has been analyzed countless times over the years. The French painter Henri Matisse, for instance, said that the main impetus for creativity was simply courage, while author Jack London believed that you had to hunt it down with a club. Renowned acting coach Stella Adler posited that […]
Cover Story – Liam Gallagher
What becomes a legend most? It’s an old question when it comes to pop stars and celebrities in general. Not rhetorical at all, but a real procedural, albeit aesthetic conundrum whose answer — either flamboyant or conversely simplified — can often have disastrous long-term results on the career of the said performer. You’ll […]
Cover Story: Sam Fender
Ostensibly, this is an article about British rock newcomer Sam Fender and his brilliant, one-in-a-million debut disc, Hypersonic Missiles – easily the best album of the year. Nothing can touch it; it’s so far ahead of the pack. But it’s also a moment where we can’t help but break with a few staid journalistic traditions […]
Cover Story: The B-52s
Kate Pierson may not have coined the suddenly-popular new portmanteau “glamping,” a mashup of glamorous and camping. Nor did she come up with its posh concept —experiencing the great outdoors, but through the comfortable buffer of the most modern of conveniences. No, the bouffant-haired B-52’s founder had nothing to do with any part of this […]
Cover Story: Perry Farrell
It took Brazilian author Paulo Coelho just two weeks to write back in ’87, but the compact little novel The Alchemist is one of those metaphysical, feel-good reads that not only deserves to be on every literate bookshelf alongside The Little Prince, but demands to be revisited every couple of years lest its wisdom be […]
Cover Story: John Paul White
It’s a morsel of time-tested wisdom — initially put forward by Mahatma Gandhi — that just becomes more relevant with each passing day: “Be the change that you want to see in the world.” As in, stop kvetching about Donald Trump and all his horrific misdeeds and get involved with the grassroots groundswell of fighting […]
Cover Story: Steve Earle
It’s a puzzlement, a Sphinx-like riddle for the ages. How in holy hell has resident alt-country iconoclast Steve Earle managed to keep his mouth shut over the past three Trump-and-Brexit bedeviled years? Make no mistake, what he’s offered instead has been stunning —2017’s picture-perfect loper So You Wannabe an Outlaw — polished still brighter by […]
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