Items filtered by date: November 2007

At the time Country music is mentioned, the following may pop into your mind: Moon Mullican, Willie Nelson, tax evasion, banjos, fiddles and the "jugs" of Dolly Parton.

Yet, if not already, the Eli Young Band might just come to mind when first thinking about country and western music. Unlike Moon Mullican's genre (Western Swing and Rockabilly), Willie Nelson (Outlaw country) and Dolly Parton (Mainstream country and pop), the four man band's sound fits into the Country music's genre of Country rock. And, after playing together for some eight years, they have had their career explode.

The Eli Young Band, began with relatively small goals, such as being the best band in their dinky town in Texas. Since then their single "When it Rains" "ultimately became the longest running single in the history of the country chart." Their single "Always the Love Songs" "eventually became their first Top 10 hit at country radio (www.eliyoung.net/ 2009.")

They have performed on the Jimmy Kimmel Show and Jay Leno's twice. Plus, "the band made their debut at The Grand Ole Opry, earned their first ACM nomination, CMT nomination and a performance spot at the CMT Awards (www.eliyoung.net/ 2009.") Their list of critical acclaim and other accomplishments goes on and on!

Appropriately, the Eli Young Band have been riding in major style; click the link below to check out the limo they rode in to the Country Music Awards:schlicken.blogsome.com/2007/09/03/redneck-limo/

(I'm thinking no one will be offended by that photo because all of the self-proclaimed, "Rednecks," I know poke fun at themselves and are easy-going people.)

Just for the record, the band actually rode in a jet black limo to the CMA's, which they have a video clip of on their website @ www.eliyoung.net/

Moving along, no one can truthfully say the Eli Young Band didn't work their way to where they are now--they have made the ultimate and painstaking sacrifices in every single area of their lives. From the band's very start in their small town of Denton, Texas, they rehearsed and played local shows while cramming in the duties of being college students and often working two day jobs on top of it all. (Now, that's what I call criteria fit for serious exhaustion and a nervous breakdown!)

As a result, they have missed priceless special moments with their families, the chance to have steady romantic relationships and the comforts and luxuries of home sweet home (e.g. assumingly not having to empty the waste of four men from an R.V plus being overpowered and overwhelmed by the putrid stench of each other's feet!)

Regardless of the Eli Young Band's grueling hard work, heartbreaking sacrifices, and the rough times they've seen in the lives of others, their music is explained as being colored with an underlying infectious optimism. Jon Jones (bass player) sums up the predominate theme of their music best, "It might be raining today, but it might be sunny tomorrow, so it's worth sticking around for (www.eliyoung.net/ 2009.")

Given the band's mighty impressive history, credentials and drive, the question lies whether they will fall short of people's expectations at their show tonight at Joe's Bar in Chicago?

When I walked into the tavern, I couldn't help but notice it was jammed packed with people in their 20's or so, with a basically even guy to girl ratio. To my surprise though I saw more baseball caps than cowboy hats.

The Eli Young Band played their song "Radio Waves" first and their energy as well as the audiences' was depressingly lacking. Yeah, initially their performance was disappointing until they "belted out" their third or fourth song, which was "When it Rains."

Most of the band's songs that followed would start off slow and mellow, and at the middle to end they would have instrumental passion, intensity and vocals of strength, ownership, confidence--gusto!

The Eli Young Band are tight, polished musicians who not only know how to play their instruments well, but also a crowd. For instance, Chris Thompson on drums and lead guitarist, James Young, usually did not stop playing at the end of the band's songs. That is, Thompson gave fun funky beats of the drums while Young displayed eclectic guitar riffs, psychedelic, rock and so on. They created a greater anticipation, in a good way, for the next song to be played and sung.

Jon Jones was no slouch, either--he played the bass right on, masterfully and seemingly effortlessly while having a stoic-like stage presence. His younger brother, Mike Eli (vocals and guitar), interacted with the crowd just the right amount--not to the point where you're thinking to yourself, "Man, c'mon--would you just shut up, and play already"!

A few times Eli ordered him and the rest of the band shots and they raised their glasses to give cheers to the audience. The fans would hold their bottles of Bud and pitcher's of Coors Light up high in the air, before them and the band "tossed them down the hatchet." Eli also held the mic over the fans, who sang at least three of the band's songs back to them.

Yet, my cowgirl hat really goes off to them for their rendition of the Beatle's song "Come Together." It was played low-key, sensually and seductively until in the midst of it when the band turned it into nothing short of awe-inspiring, with chaotic and extra loud sounds coming from all of the band's instruments. It resembled the music in the song "Helter Skelter," magnificently!

After the band played "Always the Love Songs" and for their encore "Small Town Kid" they gave their autographs and threw a bunch of guitar pics and some of their t-shirts to their fans. (During which time the band wore genuine smiles.)

I spoke to about three people after the show and they said it was good and they didn't have any complaints.

An additional person I probed, Ken Snyder, told me his favorite thing about the Eli Young Band is how they are with their fans. He revealed they had allowed him to party with them on their tour bus before. Ken said he was so taken by the band, being "very personable" coupled with their "great music," he has been following them for the past two years. Ken, whose from Ohio, has been driving from state to state in even the worst of winter weather to make their shows.

Another long time fan of the band, Shannon Sawyer, whose also from the band's little Texas town, had no difficulty answering what she likes most about the band--she said she really likes "that they're not mainstream country."

Perhaps, more interesting, though, was I saw Eli stick his tongue out at a pretty blonde backstage. It did not look as if he meant in a good way, either. I'm so nosey, I would love to know how he and the lady are associated! Maybe, the National Inquirer will let us "busybodies" know someday.

Of greater significance, new songs from the band's "Jet Black & Jealous" album were well received from the crowd this evening. I'd say the loudest screams from their most recent songs came from after they played the one "Crazy Girl." So, "for whatever my two cents are worth," I predict we will be seeing and hearing a lot more from these guys.

Lastly, speaking for fans of the Eli Young Band in Chicagoland, "Y' All Come Back Now, Ya Here?"

If you don’t like drinking with friends, playing drinking games with strangers, or laughter of any sort, better to stay at home than see this show at the Pub Theater. On the other hand, if you love any of those things, than you must see the show that truly understands the heart of Chicago. Bye Bye Liver is an interactive, engaging, eccentric, Chicago drinking play that will have you clutching your side for a solid hour between socials (Everybody Drink!).

“Come to drink, stay to laugh,” says creator, director and producer of Bye Bye Liver, Byron Hatfield. “The idea is celebrating all the crazy stuff you do when you’re drinking, not getting drunk while you watch the show.”

The Pub Theater is located in Lakeview and is situated – appropriately – above an actual pub. The audience area is made up of small café style tables that fit about four people with chairs facing the small stage that are taken out of your junior high English classroom. The concept is to make the audience feel like they’re about to be drinking in a pub with 100 of their newest and closest friends. In fact, before the show started, one of my ‘new friends’ stated “this is my third time seeing this show; you’re going to love it.” If she’s willing to come back a third time that gave me great hopes that it was going to be a great time.

With drinks in hand the show began, and here’s the general gist: when the lights were down, we were watching sketch comedy, when the lights were up, and we were playing drinking games with our neighbors and the cast members. The games were great, but it was the cast that stole the night, and my attention. I didn’t stop laughing throughout the entire show.  

“We call ourselves the gateway drug for comedy,” says Byron. “For many people, this is the first show they see in Chicago, but it’s one that they can relate to. And hopefully makes them want to see more Chicago theater.”

Adds cast member Sherra Lasley, “We’re the hub for good comedy. It’s comedy that speaks to the audience and the true culture of Chicago.”

The idea of interactive comedy is not new to the Chicago area, but Bye Bye Liver simply gets it right. The actors are classically trained in everything from Improv to Shakespeare, so you know you’re going to see great acting, but it’s the relatability of the material that makes this show a stand out. Talking with members of the cast and the director after the show, I learned that they draw from their own real life experiences as well as stories from audience members, fans, and Chicagoans.

The show holds up an oh-so-realistic, hilariously accurate mirror to society. From sketches that delve into the eternal question of “why do girls go to the bathroom in groups?” to hilarious scenarios of drunken hookups, dealing with issues of love and loss, or just plain embarrassing moments of having too much too drink and saying things we’ll regret in the morning (we’ve all been there), the cast of Bye Bye Liver spoofs them all, sparing no one.

But the show isn’t without its challenges…

“As the bartender in the show, and the host, my goal is to be the ultimate drinking buddy, the kind of guy you look at say ‘I want to hang out with him.’ It’s difficult to accomplish, but when you can balance that ability to lay down the law and still be likeable, then you’re going to have a great show,” says co-founder of the Pub Theater and actor, Josh Dunkin. “We really thrive on audience enthusiasm, and for us, the material is so true to life that every audience member can relate on some level and have a great time.”

The ensemble cast plays four shows a weekend, two per night at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m., on Fridays and Saturdays, and if you still need validation of their talent, the show sells out every weekend.

This is one show that you must see, if only to get in a good laugh and a good drink with friends. But if you’re thinking that it’s just for the young (er) crowd -- think again. The audience was made up of long standing couples, first dates, big group gatherings, mother and daughter outings, and reunions with old college buddies. There is no age maximum, (though you do have to be 21 or older to see the show), so if you’ve ever been to a bar in Chicago, or have had a drink with friends, you will enjoy this show. That’s a promise.

I’m already rallying friends and getting ready to go again, and you should do the same.

I recently ventured out to the Hemmens Theater in Elgin, a simple 45-minute drive from downtown Chicago to see one of my favorite rock performers, Rick Springfield, in action and was very pleased with the venue. First of all, the abundance of free and handicapped parking makes for easy entry and an economical night, now that ticket prices for concerts continue to soar.

The venue itself was well equipped with several bars to serve the crowd and drinks are allowed into the theatre. Also, there were lots of bathrooms for the ladies, which for some reason is still a problem in many area theatres at intermission time. 

The most important part of any concert venue is of course the sound and sightlines. I was a little further back - about halfway back towards the center of the house but the sound was still absolutely pristine. Although they could use one more aisle down the center to allow guest to move out of their rows to rest area more quickly, the seats themselves were roomy enough to allow you to enjoy the show and dance around a little without bumping elbows with fellow patrons.

Now that I know where the Hemmens is and how to get there quickly, I will definitely add it to my professional watch list for artists I cover in the future and you should too!

For more information on upcoming shows and directions check out the Hemmens.org website and get ready to rock!

You can tell when a folk musician’s getting up in years, and it’s painfully obvious when a rock band is well past their prime, but there’s something about certain soul and funk musicians that seems to defy the laws of age and time. They can prompt us to look at their faces, but the years are hardly showing. Enter Aaron Neville at the Venue in the Horseshoe Casino this past Thursday: the man looks the same and the man sounds the same. One is almost led to believe that the man feels exactly the same as he did in 1966, when he released his biggest hit, a Number One single on the Billboard R&B charts, Tell It Like It Is.

Aaron Neville’s quintet, featuring big brother and saxophonist Charles Neville of the Neville Brothers, started out the night amidst a border of done-up Christmas trees and lighted presents on either side of the stage. This was clearly going to be a serious holiday celebration. After the drummer and backup vocalist introduced the quintet, Mr. Aaron Neville himself ran onto the stage and started into “It’s All Right,” written by Curtis Mayfield and made famous by The Impressions. With five stellar musicians backing him up, the real star of the song and the rest of the night was Aaron’s bizarre, saintly, unlike-anything-else-you’ve-ever-heard vocal cords. They’re just one more reason to make you think that this man doesn’t age, and they’re still strong enough to stand up alone or lead a Tabernacle Choir.

Musicians with one or two hits (and sometimes more) on the oldies stations almost always feel compelled to cover other peoples’ songs from the same era, and to some this is expected and encouraged, while to others it’s inexcusable. I fall somewhere in the middle of these two groups, because it’s always songs that I like which are covered, and I like a little bit of cheese on my sandwich, but I respect musicians for their own contributions to musical evolution and would have preferred to hear some of the more obscure New Orleans funk that Mr. Neville is also loved for. That said, the next song of the night was “Don’t Know Much”, from 1989 – which hit the Adult Contemporary charts and not any soul or funk charts, but it was an original all the same, and it tasted good. The band played music from several genres during the set, from doo wop to country, and all that seemed to tie them together was that they were having so much fun on stage and that these were obviously the songs that gave them the most pleasure to perform. Around the middle of the set, Aaron sang a touching version of “A Change Is Gonna Come,” a song a lot of people have very high standards for. It’s a difficult song to live up to, and after setting the original and untouchable version by Sam Cooke aside, for me nothing reaches the heights of the Otis Redding and Baby Huey versions. Aaron’s live version did, however, move me and the rest of the audience with its conviction, and really showcased his voice and the emotional heights it’s capable of reaching.

As the decorated stage and name of the tour made clear, this was a holiday show, but Aaron only played a handful of Christmas songs over the course of the two hour set, including “Bells will be Ringing” and “Merry Christmas Baby”, most famously covered by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. As someone who’s never fully understood what is so great about Christmas music, I found myself enjoying most of the Christmas songs, partly because the classics were so pretty with Aaron singing lead, and partly because the rest of the songs borrowed a little more heavily from R&B and funk influences. It was, strangely enough, a Christmas song that brought my attention to just how musically capable Aaron’s quintet was. For a drummer to be able to drive Christmas songs with such a funky groove is quite impressive. Aaron joked that the backup vocals of his drummer and bassist were his own personal Tabernacle Choir, and he wasn’t too far off. When they weren’t doo-wopping and goofing around on stage, they provided clean and clear harmonies as a bottom layer for Aaron’s voice to soar octaves above. His brother, Charles Neville, led a few songs on sax while Aaron took short breaks off the stage, and his lung power made him seem not a day older than his more famous younger sibling.

Shortly before the encore, the band finally broke into “Tell It Like It Is”, which prompted several members of the audience to stand up and start dancing. Everyone had wanted to do this all along, but had felt too hindered in the somewhat stodgy venue of the casino to leave their seats. The old hit even moved one woman to find her way up to the stage and throw her hands up towards Aaron with a drunken fever in her eyes before being politely moved out of the way by a security guard. This woman couldn’t help it, though. She understood what this night was all about: It was a funky holiday celebration, and it was just a little bit sensitive, too. She did just what we all wanted to do – she touched that music, and she opened those shiny presents under the tree. 

Chicago Ford Center/Oriental Theatre

I really enjoyed this production starring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth from start to finish.  The play opens with a wonderful group number celebrating daughter Wednesday’s transition from child to woman, in which her pigtails are ceremoniously removed and she is welcomed into the long history of the family tree. Her mother, Morticia, sensuously played by Bebe Neuwirth, reminds her of their hopelessly romantic family creed, which is what Wednesday must find in a mate, “Passionate and true, forever- even after death!”

The whole show centers on wonderful feminist themes of sexual and romantic awakening and reawakening for the various characters, especially the women. Mrs. Alice Beineke played by  Carolee Carmello, mother of Wednesday's (Krysta Rodriguez) new and scarily “normal” beau, has an absolutely show stopping number during “Double Jeopardy” wherein she realizes the love has gone completely out of her marriage. It is mournfully and masterfully sung and the audience responded in kind with long thunderous applause.

Some of the new musicals don’t have any songs that really stand alone and stick in your mind but the song” Let’s Not Talk About Anything but Love” which expresses Gomez’ eternal fixation on romance has a wonderful feel and lyrics reminiscent of classic Cole Porter.

There lots of genuine laughs courtesy of the accomplished Nathan Lane, and Grandmama played by Jackie Hoffman who consistently does excellent, very funny character work. She has a great line where she admits she smokes marijuana in the attic, but claims it’s medicinal - she has gingivitis!  Jackie says about the role, “I’m from an Orthodox Jewish home in Queens, and my first contact with the Addams Family was from paging through The New Yorker and finding those cartoons. They were just so weird and dark and smart and very funny. I think of Grandmama as having a thick European accent, maybe a bit senile, and always mixing some sort of potion. My costume? I’m kind of like some ancient hippie from Woodstock who wears a crazy poncho and cool granny glasses. And I can tell you, I use everything I ever learned from working at Second City in this part.”

One specific thing I was eagerly awaiting though which never materialized was a real dance number for Bebe Neuwirth, who played Morticia with beauty and sexy charm. I realize most musicals now are choreographed with the future touring company and long run in mind wherein the major dance moves are reserved for the chorus of dancers only in order to save wear and tear on the leads, but Bebe, also one of my favorite Jewish actresses, is well known as an accomplished dancer and still has the legs to prove it. When she finally rips the constrictive Morticia dress and Nathan exclaims in surprise, “You have legs!” I got ready for her showstopper, but alas it was just more of the very safe, simple easy dance moves watered down for her and Nathan and the chorus to sort of walk through.

The mostly older crowd of critics and fans at the Chicago World Premiere dug The Addams Family too, as was evidenced by their enthusiastic clapping along with the Addams family theme, na na na na- clap clap, at the end of the show. It made us all feel like a kid again, kids who came from our own crazy but loveable Addams families and lived to tell the tale!

Sh-Sh-Shakin’ it at the House of Blues in Chicago this past week were fans grooving to the sounds of Rooney with guests Tally Hall and Crash Kings. This indie rock performance swept the fans off their feet for those who were there. The weather may have been a factor in the lack of crowd, but that didn’t stop any of the bands from doing what they love and they put on a good show. Don’t let these bands fool you with their short list of record releases because what they throw at you is musically talented.