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The Orange Peel Sessions is a clever play on the venerable series of live recordings with the late John Peel. Here, Naked And Shameless tear through an acoustic set of hilarious covers (“Nice Legs (Shame About The Face),” “Pumpin’ 4 The Man”) and suitably comedic honky-tonk originals (“Blood Elegy (The Pain Of Love),” “Bill Monroe […]
Justice For All?
I visited the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in September. The six-hour drive to Cleveland was actually to see the Indians play, but I thought, being a music journalist and all, I should probably check out the Hall Of Fame as well. I’m glad I did it. Beautiful building, stunning architecture, built just off […]
Get In The Van!
CHEVROLET 2008 Express Series Cargo Van We spend alot of time talking about new music equipment in this column, yet in eight years writing “Gear,” we’ve never discussed how to haul it around.
Sister Act
Chicago is a city of firsts. It’s the home of the first steel-frame skyscraper, the first atomic reaction, and the first daytime TV soap opera. It’s also where the term “jazz” was coined, back in 1914. And on August 12th, the Windy City became one of the first major media markets in America to boast […]
Studio Happenings
At ENERGY COMMAND STUDIOS in Park Ridge, A Better Place To Be finished their five-song, self-titled CD. Amery (Amo) Schmeisser did ProTools editing and mixed two tracks. Schmeisser and Dave Banks engineered the sessions, and Banks produced the CD . . . Rapper Young Eighty (Darius McGee) recorded and released his latest CD, Madison Square. […]
Fooled Around & Fell In Love
Booty Bumpin’ (Blind Pig), by legendary good-time guitarist Elvin Bishop, is a CD you will listen to again and again. Bishop and his six-piece band were captured live December 3rd, 2006 at Constable Jack’s in California, and he is still the real deal after all these years. His authentic, rootsy approach to the blues was […]
Cover Story: Tori Amos
Tori Amos Five Times A Lady Tori Amos has released a new album for Epic, American Doll Posse, with an ensuing tour that hits Chicago on November 5th. And if only such a simple explanation would suffice. As with all things in this Cornwall-based keyboardist’s 15-year career, there’s much more lurking just beneath the apparently […]
Billy Joe Shaver interview
Billy Joe Shaver Last Man Standing It’s a double-edged sword when your producer calls you “the last of his breed,” which is how producer John Carter Cash referred to Billy Joe Shaver. Publicly. In the press release accompanying Shaver’s newest album, Everybody’s Brother.
Flosstradamus interview
Flosstradamus Have Scene, Will Travel Flosstradamus are breaking a lot of rules. Not necessarily in the genre-crossing, style-mashing, critically lauded kind of way — though they’re certainly breaking those. Nor are they breaking them in the scene-restrictions-be-damned kind of way. At least not in this instance, though it’s apparent the boys scoff at such petty […]
High On Fire interview
High On Fire And The Art Of Getting Known It’s the middle of August, and High On Fire drummer Des Kensel and frontman/guitarist Matt Pike have been swooped up from their Oakland homes and flown to Philadelphia. Philly (Upper Darby to be exact) is home to Relapse Records — High On Fire’s label — and […]
José González interview
José González Smiling OnThe Inside Having touched down in New York for a one-off performance in advance of his new CD, In Our Nature, Argentinean-by-way-of-Sweden singer-songwriter/acoustic-guitar virtuoso José González walks into his American record company’s game room. It presents a completely different image from the one projected during the 2006 U.S. performances in support of […]
Josh Ritter interview
Josh Ritter Quick Change Guest spots on Letterman and Conan, accolades from both horror master Stephen King and The Boss Bruce Springsteen, superstardom in Ireland, and still Josh Ritter helps out his friends in need. It’s that Idaho upbringing. Appearing: October 16th at Park West in Chicago.
Maritime interview!
Maritime Is This Thing On? There’s an Internet outage at Davey von Bohlen’s house, and the downtime could save the 32-year-old Maritime frontman the burden of trudging through the day’s blog roll. He wouldn’t miss much. No new comments on the band’s Myspace page. No new Pitchfork review arguing “the man can’t sing” (like a […]
Hello, My Name Is Kirk
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 […]
File: October 2007
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.
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