Our performance on the Chicago Acoustic Underground has finally arrived!

You can view images and hear the podcast at this link.

Here's the CAU site.

Thanks to Michael Teach and the entire CAU crew for letting us be a part of this Chicago tradition!

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After last night's practice, we are completely ready to record the next album. So many songs came together all at once. The four of us are just in the process of coordinating our holiday schedules to see if getting the recordings in before the end of the year is possible. Stay tuned in here for all the current info.

In even better news, Joel returned from his honeymoon ready to play with the band again. He's been MIA from rehearsals due to the wedding and the job for so long that we won't be able to get him up to speed in time to record everything, but we will have him on at least one track for Tune Back In. Even though we've done so much without him around, he continues to be a member of the band in spirit if not in body.

As if that weren't enough, we're talking to Johnny about recording a live album this Spring. Johnny did the cd mastering for our first album and is an accomplished musician in his own right. He has a reel to reel we could use to create an all analog album in this digital age.

See you at a show!

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On Friday we played a two hour show at Uncommon Ground on Devon, and it was an excellent time. The event was appropriately named the "Honky Tone Happy Hour," because the room had a genuine honky tonk feel, a lot like you'd find in a Nashville bar. People filtered in and out as we played, some were there to have a drink, others listened in while they were waiting for a dinner table, and still others were just passing through. But the room had a really warm feel, and people danced and clapped along during the time they spent with us. Thanks a lot to Uncommon Ground. Hopefully we'll get a chance to do another one of these real soon.

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Reggie’s Music Joint – Even though it was a Sunday night, we never want to pass up an opportunity to play on one of Chicago’s finest small venues. Located in the south loop, across town from where we usually play, Reggie’s has become one of our favorite spots, and this time it certainly didn’t disappoint.

There was a big crowd out for the pig roast the bar was throwing that night, and a busload of party-hungry folks coming directly from the White Sox game gave the whole night a second wind just about the time we were taking the stage. We wanted to keep the energy high, so we reeled off a set list packed with our more up-beat original songs, including several slated for the new album that have become real standbys recently, with a sprinkling of our more bluegrass and blues-rock covers.

The crowd and the venue both showed their love by letting us play as long as we wanted, and we marked a milestone in our career as a band. For the first time ever, an over-enthused fan jumped up on stage with us and danced along as we played, although the bouncer eventually pulled him off.

Thanks dancing guy! And thanks Reggie’s Music Joint!

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We just got through an intense weekend of shows. It all started with a live radio performance on the Full on Fridays with DI radio show.

In case you missed it, you can visit our tunes page to hear an mp3 of the show - or click here to open the audio in another window/tab.

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Last night's show at Stanley's Kitchen & tap was the second time we played their pig roast. It was every bit as fun as the first. Perhaps even more tiring as well. I hadn't played my upright in a few weeks, and I forgot how much those strings rip through my fingers. After four sets, my hands are in need of a rest. Unfortunately, we have another pig roast to play at tonight.

Reggie's has been the place to play different basses. So far, I've played my Upright and the green ibanez there (St. Patrick's Day Show). I think the viola bass is coming out tonight. Reason - it sounds best with a pick and I don't think my fingers can cut it with the upright tonight.

Hopefully, we'll get some good pictures at Reggie's - I don't have many with that bass. It's a nice looking hollow-bodied hofner clone. The sound is super slinky and mellow with the flat-wounds I have on it now. I have to pick the thing to get a good punch out of it. Together, the pick attack with those strings on the hollow body add up to a cool unique sound for an electric. We'll see how it goes.

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We got a nod for our third appearance at Reggie's. Perseverance is paying off! Here's the page.

Mad Bread, Grace Askew, Mississippi Gabe Carter

Channeling a little dusty folk is in every Midwesterner's genes, but Mad Bread dresses it up with a bit of Southern banjo charm that saves the group from overwrought moments of acoustic melancholy. The band rides a bluegrass/rock hybrid not too different from The Avett Brothers' quieter moments.

(Gavin Paul)
Sunday, August 23 at 8pm
Venue: Reggie's Music Joint
Tickets: $5

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The website data was wiped out while our server was transferring to a different host. We're back up and running, but it might be a while before we find enough to news about.

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A lot of people have asked if “The Captain’s Lament” is supposed to be about the Civil War, so I thought I would write a little bit about how the images that appear in the song relate to its narrative. In part because of the strong perspective voice of the captain, the song at first gives the impression that it is grounded in a particular time, and a particular war. The composition and arrangement of the song, steeped in folk idioms, probably contributes to this impression in the minds of most listeners. Folk music suggests to the listener that they are about to hear a story, with more concrete elements of character, setting, and plot than in most pop music.

Admittedly, a lot of the images and artifacts that make appearances in the song are borrowed from the Civil War era. The image of an officer on a horse in the first line is one (“I don’t want to sit astride my ivory horse in the rear any more”). The ambulance train mentioned in the first verse (“Anyone who thinks that you get used to it after a little while, hasn’t seen the ambulance train that stretches miles and miles”) is another. Probably more than any of the specific images or references, the captain’s archaic manner of speech (“I felt the pain of their mortal wounds even as they were my own”) evokes the nineteenth century.

But if you listen closely, there are a few distinct references that make it impossible for the song to be grounded in the Civil War. In fact, these references make it impossible for one to take the song’s narrative too literally. For one thing, there is a line that mentions to Idaho (“They write letters to their folks in Illinois and Idaho”), which was an unorganized territory during the Civil War, and not part of the United States until fully three decades after it ended. Another veiled hint that the song is not fixed in the Civil War era comes in the second verse when the captain quotes Richard Nixon (“Back home the politicians speak of peace with honor in our time”). “Peace in our time with honor” are words from Nixon’s famous speech in which he defended the escalation of the war in Vietnam by claiming the mandate of the so-called “silent majority” of Americans who approved of his policy.

I have always resisted characterizing “The Captain’s Lament” as a song “about” the Civil War, because that reading assumes that the narrative can be trapped in a specific point in time. Instead, I tried to explore some of the universal characteristics of war, and to make broader statements it, by assembling a set of artifacts that are irreducible to any specific place in time. Call it purposeful anachronism: the juxtaposition of images that share a common theme but do not fit together into a specific context.

It was not my intention for the song to be historical. If it was, then I could easily be criticized for accidentally being unhistorical, or factually inaccurate. Instead, the song is purposefully ahistorical, outside of or unrelated to history, but evocative of its themes.

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