BY THOMAS CONNER
© Chicago Sun-Times The fun part is watching the guys flinch. It's hard not to. Here they are in Ian Schneller's warehouse workshop, watching him beat their babies — in some cases, their very livelihoods — with a mallet. He lays them on his custom-built workbench and molests them with pliers and screwdrivers and, gulp, the occasional hammer. "Don't worry, I'll use my soft hammer," he deadpans as he whacks the nut back into proper position on an angular, mid-'70s Gibson electric. The guitar's owner chews his lower lip and watches Schneller's hands with a live-wire mixture of concentration and concern. Three other guys wince with every whack. "It's like he's hammering my fingers," one of them mutters. Tonight's class is the midpoint of the four-week "Guitar Setup and Maintenance" course, the initial offering of the Chicago School of Guitar Making. Other classes are now available — "Guitar Electronics," "Glue Technologies," "Tube Amp Building" — but Schneller's unusual (or, more accurately, rare) curriculum begins here, in a basic explanation of how guitars are made and maintained. This is where serious musicians get over watching a man take their guitars apart and put them back together. Then they learn to do it themselves. Because as powerful an icon as the guitar is, especially the electric one, it is essentially a machine. It has moving, metallic parts, which must be cared for and eventually replaced if the machine is to continue to do its work, however aesthetic that work might be. Schneller — a sculptor first, then a rock 'n' roller (a founding member of the venerable, long-gone band Shrimp Boat), now a tinkerer-turned-teacher — tries to impart that practical knowledge to his students. "You have to know how to take care of your tools," he said in an interview later. "Any master craftsman and any truly successful artist knows that." Schneller himself thinks bigger than that. He's more than a serviceman. He's a luthier, he'll tell you matter-of-factly — a maker of stringed instruments. He's put about 150 of them out into the world, from basic guitars to violins, from electric guitars shaped like Pac-Man to something called the Vibration Liberation Unit. His shop is littered with half-finished projects (a nearly 6-foot-tall wooden instrument shaped like a summer squash) to innovative and now popular specials (his virtually indestructible aluminum-body guitars and basses). He upholds what he calls "Chicago's rich history of guitar making." That side of Schneller's enterprises is Specimen Products, a respected guitar-building business he started on the South Side in 1984. Now just west of Humboldt Park off Division Street, the Specimen shop is also the classroom for the Chicago School of Guitar Making. It's an outlet for his skills Schneller didn't exactly anticipate, but it's renewed his hope and improved his perspective on a lone man's contribution to art. "The first time I was in here with a class and I heard the sound of eight little hammers working on frets — oh! I'm all about sound, you know, and that just blew me away," he said. "Chicago was once the guitar-making capital of the world. That's largely fallen by the wayside. It's all overseas now. And I know that as a solo maker I'm not going to impact that at all, but if I can teach what I know ..." His voice trails off, his eyes dart around the studio and he grins ever so slightly. The rad scientist In his blue lab coat, small spectacles and bush of peppery hair, Schneller looks every bit the mad scientist. His laboratory is nearly Frankensteinian. On his carefully cluttered workbench are oddly shaped feather dusters, bottles of eel oil, special-made outlets with voltage control, boxes of cough drops, countless tiny tools. The studio features several smaller benches for students, padded work stations that look like changing tables for infants. Schneller teaches class at a large table near the door, next to his stereo system featuring two homemade speakers with big, arcing bell horns like old phonographs. Tonight he's flying through the lesson plan, talking tremolo vs. vibrato, sine waves, whammy bars, "under-the-saddle transducers" and a brief but fascinating tangent about making a microphone out of a tin can and some salt. His technical lecture is liberally spiced with practical information — a student's question about string lubrication brings up the exceeding importance of a product called Big Ben's Nut Sauce (requisite chuckles follow in this all-male student body) — and occasional anecdotes. He gets unusually animated when he relates the tale of a woman who brought him "a holy grail guitar" last week, an arch-top Martin electric from a manufacturing run of less than a thousand. She bought it at a rummage sale for $75. It's worth about 10 grand. Bigger sound, smaller machines He tells the students most guitar technology peaked in the '50s and '60s. "Since then," he said in our conversation later, "it's all been about market stimulation and miniaturization. Just like we went from vinyl records to cassettes to CDs to DAT tapes — computer technology hasn't changed as much as it's shrunk. It's the same machine doing the same thing, it's just doing it in a smaller space. And I'm willing to accept that the computer keypad isn't the only way humans can interface with technology. That's why I'm so drawn to stringed instruments." Which are, remember, machines, just like computers. But in an era in which our instinct is to throw out and replace whatever breaks down, Schneller's studio — and now his school — is seeing increasing demand. Classes began last fall, and 130 students are currently enrolled, many of them on their third course. The schedule is booked through June, when he hopes to start teaching the big one, Guitar Building, and a waiting list is growing. Schneller said he can't write the curriculum fast enough. "I'm getting people who are frustrated with the disposable nature of things," he said. "They buy things, they break and they bring them here. This class is called 'Setup and Maintenance.' It's about teaching how to keep things going. ... And I'm a sculptor first. Sculpture is more immortal than canvas. The things we make here, or the things we maintain here, they will continue to contribute to society and art long after I'm gone. That's the idea." By Thomas Conner
© The Chicago Sun-Times The fastidiousness of Donald Fagen is well-documented among his band's considerable contributions to rock 'n' roll. In the studio for Steely Dan records, six-hour sessions were common just to polish 12 bars of rhythm guitar. Noted session musicians would be brought in at great expense to play jazzlike guitar and sax solos — solos Fagen already had written and carefully notated for them. This control freakishness gave Steely Dan's hits and album tracks their celebrated (and sometimes derided) slickness and meticulous swing. Saturday night at the Chicago Theatre, however, Fagen — at 58 and on his first ever solo tour — showed signs of mellowing with age, of letting go of the little stuff. At least he made it look that way. Midway through his less-than-two-hour set, he paused and slumped at his center-stage electric piano. "What do we do now?" he asked. It was a rhetorical question, but the lively audience was quick to answer by shouting requests. "Oh, right there, I heard it!" he said, then turned to his band and seemed to call the next tune ("Third World Man"). Donald Fagen appeared to — gasp! — take a request. It may have been an act (though given the varied set lists I've seen from the tour thus far, probably not), but it was indicative of Fagen's feistiness while free of his longtime Steely Dan cohort Walter Becker. By himself, Fagen clearly wants to get his groove on. His solo albums (one per decade since 1982) have been driven by backbeats more prominent than on most Dan albums before the turn-of-the-century reunion. This was clear Saturday night whenever the set veered from solo work — powered by metronomic drummer Keith Carlock's sparse kit and Freddie Washington's gurgling bass — to a handful of Dan album tracks, each of which opened up the full range of Fagen's nine-piece band. The Dan tunes breathed a bit more, the sound was fuller, richer, broader, and the ensemble sounded like an ensemble. That was the goal of Steely Dan, after all — to combine '50s R&B with the careful arrangement of Ellington's big bands. Fagen on his own, though, tends to shrug off the Ellingtonia and get down to basics. That's not a criticism of his solo work, just a distinction — hopefully a helpful one, given that so many critics write about Fagen's solo outings as indistinguishable echoes of Steely Dan. Every time I've seen Steely Dan live, Fagen has slunk onto the stage, a sheepish member of a large band. Saturday night, though, he strutted onto the stage, plopped down at his keyboard and, raising a single finger high into the air, jabbed down the first notes of "Green Flower Street" like a call to order, or arms. The tight interplay of the rhythm section on that song set the tone for the evening. This was a groove-centric rock 'n' soul revue. Most of Fagen's song selections were delightful surprises — "Teahouse on the Tracks," "Home at Last," "Goodbye Look," "FM," even a left-field cover of "Mis'ry and the Blues" from 1930s Oklahoma City-Chicago musician Charlie LaVere. The new CD, "Morph the Cat," was represented but not dwelled upon (just "Brite Nitegown," "Mary Shut the Garden Door" and "What I Do," featuring Chicago harmonica player Howard Levy). His encore was just one song — again, Fagen slumped and seemed unsure what to play. "I feel like just playing something fast," he said and launched the band into Chuck Berry's "Viva Viva Rock 'n' Roll" with a scorching solo from guitarist Jon Herington. Therein, too, lies another sign of Fagen's relaxed grip. Of the two guitarists onstage Saturday night, Herington and Wayne Krantz, only the former seemed up to Fagen's previous finicky standards. Krantz's solos often went too far afield of the melody, even the countermelody, and filled the theater with a dizzying number of notes. His delivery seemed clumsy, too, as if his left fingers were bandaged. Herington, though he didn't get as many solos, was superb — clean, crisp, remarkably fluid and with a more rockin' tone that suited the somewhat restless spirit of the set. His playing was sharp enough to inspire hopes he'd romp into "Reelin' in the Years." Alas, no. The show was so groove-tastic, though, that two attendees remarked after the show that they wished the tour was playing smaller venues — so they could have danced. Here's to Fagen's return next time in Uptown — the Aragon? the Green Mill? CONCERT REVIEW Donald Fagen at Chicago Theatre By Thomas Conner
© Chicago Sun-Times The black-clad, tattooed viking of a singer stomps around the stage with a microphone clenched against his spittle-spewing lips. Calling this guy a "singer," you realize, is generous — a job title not quite accurate to the duty he performs, which is more shrieking, roaring, growling and screaming. And whether you respect the catharsis of these "death metal" bands or shake your graying locks at these kids today, you ask the same question: How does that guy do that night after night and not completely shred his vocal chords? One woman has the answer — a short, cheery red-headed PTA mom in suburban New York. Her name is Melissa Cross, but you can call her the Scream Queen. "I am not your mother," she says by way of introduction on her new DVD "The Zen of Screaming: Vocal Instruction for a New Breed," though she is parent to a 5-year-old boy. "He certainly knows how to scream," she added during a recent phone interview from her home. "He's imitating me all the time." Cross, 48, is not a physician, but she's the Dr. Feelgood for the latest wave of hard-core bands tagged with such descriptors as "death metal," "death grunt," "grindcore" or "doom rock." She coaches these young men — they're almost always male, though she just picked up a girl from the band Arch Enemy — on how to communicate their passion without destroying their voices. "They were getting hurt," she says of the bands she saw screaming their lungs out onstage, "and as the genre became more popular and these kids were getting picked up by major labels, I was suddenly the only voice teacher that tolerated them." High-profile clients Those major labels sought to protect their investments, so they put Cross on speed-dial. She now has a client roster that looks like the soundtrack to the latest big-budget horror franchise, performers such as Andrew W.K. and former Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur, and bands such as Lamb of God, Shadows Fall, Thursday, Killswitch Engage, the Agony Scene and Sick of It All. Many of these singers give testimonials in "The Zen of Screaming" (now in stores from, appropriately, Loud Mouth). One confesses, "We're no Pavarottis." Corey Taylor isn't, either. But his band, Slipknot, just won the Grammy for best metal performance. Taylor trained with Cross last year. Learns to warm up "It was such a revelation," he said of Cross' vocal techniques. "It's all about movement, warming up the muscles as well as the voice. A lot of times you go out onstage and you haven't done anything with your body, so even if you have a voice that night it just feels dead. Practicing all this stuff all together before I go out lets me hit the stage with everything, ready to go." Taylor told of an earlier vocal injury, which he suffered after screaming too hard onstage. One of his vocal chords swelled; the injury looked more serious than it was, and for a time Taylor feared his meteoric rock career would end prematurely. "I would just scream and get the craziest sound I could to vent the emotion. It was destroying my voice," he said. "I've lost a lot of range from doing that, actually. It kind of bums me out." Cross led her own punk band while training in Shakespearean theater and opera at school in England; she even opened for Black Flag and X. But when she got back to the States, a friend began introducing her to many of the new hard-core bands he was producing as the styles emerged in the mid-'80s. By 1990, she was teaching classical voice full time. But the rockers kept asking her questions about technique. She decided to turn her informal lessons into something bigger. Word of mouth "I had the education to deal with it, so I took them on. They ultimately became well-known — one called Overcast, one became Shadows Fall, another one went to All That Remains. I had Killswitch Engage back then. One client was from Hatebreed, and he never showed up to his lesson. But he told a bunch of people he was coming, and word got around." Cross has the definition of a sunny disposition. Rosy cheeks, fair skin, and she has lots of tapestries and crafty things lying around. Into her cozy studio walk these hulking tattooed guys. "Ironically, most of the kids are very soft-spoken and, I would say, repressed," she said. "That's why they do what they do. They're up there screaming because they have to. Their lives are so messed up, and they need the release. Most of them are very humble, polite and idealistic — not the monsters they play onstage." They come to the Cross studio not so much for technical training but for behavior modification. The key, she said, is to teach them how to channel their emotion — which is the key in these genres — through different physical processes. "There's always a light bulb moment," she said. "I see it every day. It's a change in the imagery, the ability to divorce the emotional aspect out of the throat. It's like an acting gig: You feel something, but you have the control not to let it permeate the muscles you need to do the work and make the sound. You dissociate somewhat. You feel anger and passion, but you don't make it feel like it sounds. So you can still be in the moment but utterly in control of your instrument." The passion is what draws her to this music, anyway. Enjoys passion, power "I like any music that has integrity. I'm not exclusively a fan of this stuff. I like opera and Beethoven and the Bulgarian Women's Choir. What I really like is the honesty of a performance. This music is full of it. It's theatrical, Shakespearean. At Shakespeare plays they used to throw blood and guts from the stage. It's reality TV onstage. But it can only move you if the performers have what they need to perform — over and over and over. No artistic voice deserves to be silenced just because they felt things too strongly." A second "Zen of Screaming" instructional video is already in the works. This first installment, oddly enough, contains little actual screaming; Cross promises the sequel will have more. After that, it's "The Zen of Speaking" — tips for "stock traders, aerobic leaders, tour guides, anyone who has to speak loudly for a living." EARTHY TONES In the video "The Zen of Screaming: Vocal Instruction for a New Breed," voice coach Melissa Cross knows how to speak to her young rock 'n' roll audience. A sample of some of her vocal techniques, which probably aren't in the conservatory curriculum: The Strapless Bra In explaining how to expand the rib cage for maximum air supply while singing, Cross tells a female student about the "Strapless Bra" posture. "You know, if you have one on that's too big, and you have to expand your diaphragm to hold it on while you rush to the bathroom?" Strike that pose. 'Above the pencil' Cross places an ordinary pencil between the teeth of her students, teaching them the difference between projecting the voice seemingly over it and under it. Over it is the goal, and the difference is clarion. The Dump Or "the brown note," a colorful term for the flexing of a certain group of muscles also employed during, er, gastric evacuation. Is that diplomatic enough? By Thomas Conner
© Chicago Sun-Times New Year's Eve, 1976, and the set of "Match Game" was its usual loony cocktail party. The New Year was always festive on this set, as "Match Game '73" was rechristened "Match Game '74" and so on, with reliably cheesy pageantry, until '79. This episode opened with a gaudy fake bird, a bicentennial eagle, floating overhead and dropping an egg with the new '77 logo on it. Later, co-producer Mark Goodson made a rare appearance, asking host Gene Rayburn to read a special question for the celebrity panelists. Rayburn read, in the typical corn-pone style of the hit game show's questions: "Old Man Goodson said, 'By the time it gets to be "Match Game '99," I'll need a new BLANK.'" Rayburn died in 1999, but even then "Match Game" was still filling in blanks on TV schedules. That is, the star-studded game show had been reincarnated half a dozen times, and for the last several years its classic '70s version has been a fixture of cable's Game Show Network. Today, the network is moving the show's reruns back to the fore of its late-night block — that's the "Daily Show" and Adult Swim hour — with two episodes starting at 10 p.m. weeknights. The show's endurance is impressive given that "game show" these days is starting to mean reality-TV gladiator gaffe-fests. Even the Game Show Network now calls itself GSN, shying away from the original implication as its programming fills with reality reruns and new shows that aren't games at all, such as "Anything to Win," a documentary series about "the competitive spirit" debuting Jan. 10. Slipping away is the ding-ding-ding of the game show bell, and all that's left are a bunch of ding-a-lings. "But 'Match Game' has always been a staple on our network," said Lou Fazio, GSN's vice president of programming and acquisitions, this weekend. "We've talked a lot about this in meetings, about the uniqueness of this show compared to other game shows. It's the casualness or looseness to the format, the camaraderie and the banter. You watch a couple of episodes and you notice they don't always finish the game, they'll let the game spill over into the next episode. Because the natural comedy aspect to it — Charles [Nelson Reilly] and Brett [Somers] busting each other's chops, mainly — is what's entertaining." Indeed, "Match Game" is perhaps the only game show in which the game itself is irrelevant. Who cares if anyone wins? The contestants are distractions, unwitting straight players to a panel of sodden cut-ups. You tune in to watch the B- and C-list "celebrities" crack one another up with vaudevillian nyuk-nyuks and occasionally risque (for the '70s) camp. You watch to see what ludicrous outfit Reilly wears while deadpanning and puffing on his pipe. You watch to see just how far Richard Dawson can mack on a woman — contestant, co-star, crew, it didn't matter — in the era before finely tuned sexual harassment litigation. You watch to see these people smoking like stacks and sometimes joking openly about the well-stocked backstage bar. It's the surreality of encamped celebrity, decades before "The Surreal Life." "Everyone on the show was just so likeable," said Rich Prouty, host of the weekly "Improv Match Game" at IO (formerly ImprovOlympic), 3541 N. Clark. "And they all seemed to like each other. They were having a great time. They're just friends hanging out, doing bits, laughing a lot — at and with each other. It's infectious." In fact, three years ago, Prouty decided to launch his own version of the show. "I figured with Second City and 'Mad TV' and 'SNL' people around, I had the exact same caliber of panelists they had for the TV show, right here," he said. He had a successful eight-week run in 2002, and when the smaller theater at IO came available on Monday nights late in 2004, he started an open run of the "Improv Match Game" with local panelists. The show — 10:30 p.m. Mondays (including tonight), free admission — observed its first anniversary last week. "I try to keep three or four of the panelists as regulars, because that was kind of the key to the TV show," Prouty said. "That way, the majority of people know each other, they're comfortable enough to poke fun at each other, take jabs. They made fun of Charles Nelson Reilly's toupee, and kidded Brett about being old. That was the comedy." That's the allure of this chestnut game show. It's not a game, it's a living room full of very funny friends. "This isn't a job, it's a social engagement," Reilly once quipped about his top-tier "Match Game" gig. And what's a little sexism between friends? The show that traded in double entendres often showed its Freudian slips. In one of his more notorious goofs, Rayburn was introducing two contestants, one of whom was a woman with a perky smile and adorable dimples. Rayburn, however, attempted to remark on those dimples, but it came out, "Doesn't she have nice nipples?" Censors, schmensors. By Thomas Conner
© Chicago Sun-Times The Guthrie Family, John Flynn, Cyril Neville, Kevn Kinney, Ramsay Midwood and the Burns Sisters At the Vic Theatre A pundit on a Sunday TV news program recently quoted a woman in a northeastern state who asked, "Why should I pay to rebuild New Orleans?" This was cited as an example of the disconnect felt by Americans outside the Deep South as to the relative importance of aiding in the reconstruction of a sacked American city. The program's panel offered several studious answers to her question — jazz heritage, oil flow, even the Louisiana Purchase was invoked — but no one got beyond business and politics. No one ever answered, "Because, ma'am, if you'd lost your home, I'd help you." Most of the bandwagon benefit CDs, songs and concerts during the past three months have avoided that golden measure, as well. It's all for Mardi Gras, y'all! But leave it to the Guthrie family to gather together and remind us — by example — that family is a concept transcending bloodlines and borders. If you think that's dreamy-eyed hippie idealism, fine. But truth be told, the heart of folk music beats underneath an old bumper sticker slogan: think globally, act locally. Don't try to save the whole world. Just do what you can where you are, or where you can go. Arlo's latest such effort is the Ridin' on the City of New Orleans tour, which kicked off with Monday night's concert. For the next two weeks, Arlo and his "family" — actual offspring, such as son Abe and daughter Sarah Lee, plus numerous friends — will travel south from Chicago to New Orleans on the fabled train heralded in Chicagoan Steve Goodman's song (and Arlo's biggest hit) "The City of New Orleans." They'll be playing concerts along the way, raising money for musicians and music venues in the Crescent City. Arlo threw together this tour, and Monday night's premiere — the costs of which, Arlo announced, were underwritten by comedian and Illinois native Richard Pryor — certainly appeared thrown together. The spirit was willing (and thrilling), but attendance was weak. It's starting just like a train, slow and clunky, but it shows every sign it'll roar into Memphis and New Orleans as a polished, shiny package. Arlo's extended family on this night included John Flynn, singing shrill but amusing topical songs; Kevn Kinney of the Atlanta band Drivin' n' Cryin', turning in some intriguing, wide-open blues smoked by his hoarse, Jimmy LaFave wheeze; woozy, enigmatic Texas troubadour Ramsay Midwood, and the Burns Sisters, who awkwardly added harmonies to other acts' choruses throughout the night before delivering two a cappella numbers that elicited cheers and whoops from the pensive crowd. Abe Guthrie's band Xavier performed its usual set of mediocre jam-band noodling (oy, the guitar solos). And though Sarah Lee Guthrie's set, with husband Johnny Irion, wasn't her best, her belting alt-country twang still shone as the most interesting new talent in Woody Guthrie's family. Arlo emceed more than he performed, lending the headline spotlight to Cyril Neville, youngest of the Neville Brothers. After seven folk and blues acts, Neville strutted onstage in his black hat with red sequins and feather and presented a lively, albeit slightly rote, set of the rhythm and blues nurtured in the New Orleans venues Arlo's trying to save. "There's no logic to it," Arlo had said earlier of the eclectic bill, and Neville's deep grooves clearly bewildered the timid folk support players — but people finally started dancing and clapping and getting their blood flowing. Neville climbed behind the drum kit for two songs, including an extended final jam, a tribute to New Orleans. "The storm ain't over, y'all," Neville reminded us. By Thomas Conner
© Chicago Sun-Times Three years ago, a March evening in Oakland, Calif., and the Brad Mehldau Trio is playing a set as mercurial as the weather. The club is Yoshi's, a terribly trendy sushi bar and nightclub, and Mehldau is peaking as his generation's officially respectable ivory tickler ("the Bill Evans of his generation" we critics wrote, ad infinitum). The three staid but stupendous players dabble in original compositions and standards, or covers — whichever term you use for someone else's song. But when Mehldau bridged two songs by calling them "classics," the choice of word elevated many brows in the room. Cole Porter's "Anything Goes"? Sure, classic. But the next tune was Radiohead's "Everything in Its Right Place." Mehldau's accomplishment — and the reason he continues to garner praise — is that both performances melded together seamlessly in that set. Even on his new CD, "Day Is Done" (Nonesuch), which features only one original composition, he's still doing it. He opens with another Radiohead song ("Knives Out"), follows it with Burt Bacharach ("Alfie"), Lennon and McCartney ("Martha My Dear," "She's Leaving Home"), Nick Drake (the title cut). But regardless of who penned them and how impossibly far apart they might be stylistically and historically — he owns the tunes. They're not played for yuks, or irony. It's not Paul Anka crooning a Nirvana hit with a wink; it's a consummate pro deconstructing a melody and making it transcend every classification in radio programming and record shop bins. And that's jazz. But what of the term "jazz standard," which (to Mehldau's generation) has come to mean Gershwin show tunes, Sinatra chestnuts? And where does a young jazz hotshot draw the line between exploding the musical canon and simply being an erudite cover band? "For me, as a performer, personally, the question of what constitutes a 'standard' or a 'cover' is irrelevant in terms of its viability as a vehicle for my interpretation and improvisation," Mehldau said in a recent interview. "I'm aware that if someone recognizes a song, it's an 'in' for them. It will make them perk up their ears and perhaps draw them into what I'm doing more quickly. But what will hold them is what I do with the song — the way I improvise on it, the way I shape the melody and, most importantly in a trio situation, the way the band communicates together, and the overall individual texture sonically of a given song. These factors are aesthetic more than anything else. Aesthetics for me rest more on musical attributes — melody, harmony, rhythm and timbre — and in this understanding, the choice of material is extra-musical." But it's that "in" with audiences that keeps these guys coming back to including and sometimes spotlighting other artists' songs in their repertoires. Look at all the boomer rockers (Rod Stewart, Carly Simon, etc.) banking albums full of selections from the "great American songbook." In a roundabout way, these discs are helping young jazz players challenge the contents of that mythical book. Take, for instance, the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, a more manic trio bashing out some the wildest, most innovative young jazz on the current scene. The band's new disc, "The Sameness of Difference," is also top-heavy with covers. Its previous 12 CDs have been nearly all original creations, but new producer (and jazz business legend) Joel Dorn encouraged the guys to get outside themselves. After all, that's what hooked him. "I caught 'em at Tonic downtown [in New York], and they played all their own material. It was cool. The musicianship with these guys is astounding," Dorn said last week from New York. "But I think they encored with 'Alone Together,' and it was a very unique version, and I thought, 'If they can do that unique a version of that song, I'll bet they can do things equally as exciting with other material.' It's not like this album is 'The Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey Goes Hollywood' or 'Way Out West.' These guys just really did something that rang a bell in my head, and that's what made me want to work with them." That decision had a little weight to it; Dorn has been in "retirement" for years, producing archive discs and box sets, and he rarely returns to the studio unless there's a "wow" factor. Dorn joined Atlantic Records in the late '60s and produced hit discs for a variety of jazz and jazz-leaning artists, including Les McCann, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Eddie Harris and Roberta Flack ("Killing Me Softly," etc.). "It was that song ['Alone Together'] that hooked him," JFJO pianist Brian Haas said of Dorn. "I think so many people have this experience with jazz, too — even a legendary pro like Joel. He came and heard us and perfectly respected us, but it was only when we played something he understood, a template he recognized and could frame us with, that he paid full attention. He came back a second time and liked everything. It was that one tune that opened him up to the possibility of the band and, really, the music. Look at [John] Coltrane's 'My Favorite Things.' That's what put him on the map. That's how people tune in." • • • The Jacob Fred guys (Haas, drummer Jason Smart, bassist Reed Mathis — Fred is a made-up moniker) tour constantly, relentlessly. When we caught up with them for an interview last week, they were in the van heading through New York to New Hampshire. In the background, on the van's stereo, Mehldau's new album was playing. "Brad's got a new drummer, and he's really amazing," Mathis gushed about the Mehldau Trio's new Jeff Ballard. "He can swing and open up, but most of the time he's playing backbeats. They're stretching out and improvising like they always have, but it has this dance-oriented drive to it. It does some cool, weird things to these standards." Standards, eh? So in the 21st century, when "oldies" radio has caught up to Hall & Oates and Earth, Wind & Fire, does that mean "standards" have moved forward on the timeline as well? "It's a funny word," Mathis said. "It can mean a lot, just like 'jazz' can." "Dorn told us, 'You guys are completely not jazz — and that's what makes you more jazz than anything else I've ever heard.' Then he paused and said, 'It's like the sameness of the difference," Haas said. Thus, the new album title. "But, you know, Cole Porter was the equivalent to Radiohead in his day," Mathis said. "He was writing catchy hooks that you can't forget, but with weird chords that sounded wrong if anyone else tried them. Listen to Brad, he really pulls that stuff off. His playing is so beautiful. He could be playing 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' and you could listen to it for hours. He extracts the guitars and the lyrics and says, 'Hey, check out this composition.'" Precisely, said Mehldau. "I do not get any more or less excited about playing a song because of what era it comes from," he said. "Each song — and that includes originals of my own, which make up a fair portion of my performances — exists in its own locus and is fairly malleable in terms of the possibilities of interpretation. This is where the jazz aspect comes in. There are more-inspired performances and less-inspired ones, and the level of inspiration is not tied to what song we're playing. "What constitutes an inspired performance is to what extent the players surprise themselves and the audience. That element of surprise runs contrary to a notion of doing justice to a particular song. It has to do more, in fact, with forgetting about the song at a certain point and surrendering to the improvisation. The song becomes a pragmatic vehicle." Even Mehldau comes back to the Coltrane example. "Coltrane's performances of Rodgers and Hammerstein's 'My Favorite Things' or 'Chim-Chim-Cheree' from 'Mary Poppins' are a constant for me," he said in a statement upon release of "Day Is Done" in September. "The way Coltrane's band blows up those songs into something great and dangerous, on this huge scale, that's a real guiding light for me in terms of what I'm trying to achieve in a band performance. The original tune is referred to, but it's raised up and becomes transfigured, giving the listener a transcendent experience." • • • Indeed, what these players danced around was the simple fact that the choice of song is largely irrelevant. Just give the jazz cat a melody, any ol' melody, and let them knead it into their particular hot, nourishing stuff. Richard Niles, the host of "New Jazz Standards" on BBC's Radio 2 in England, summed it up in a recent e-mail exchange: "[Standards] have always been drawn from 'pop.' In the hands of a great jazz musician, playing a song by Gershwin is no different from playing a song by Fleetwood Mac." The Jacob Fred guys knew this, but they were resistant to it — at least, they were hesitant to record an album dominated by other people's songwriting credits. In fact, they weren't sure about most of Dorn's ideas at first. Most of the trio's discs have been live recordings, but its last studio effort, "Walking With Giants" (2004) is indicative of how these three work. They spent months recording, re-recording, overdubbing, tweaking, tinkering and overthinking. The results were still invigorating, but they lacked the crackle of the band's live energy. When they headed to New York to work with Dorn, they assumed another lengthy road was ahead. "We finished our first day and expected to keep recording, but Joel walks out and says, 'Nah, it's done, babies,'" Haas said, still clearly flabbergasted. Nor did the band want to record so many covers. But Dorn insisted, and the band is now pleased with the results. "It did let us do our thing, and show that our thing is beyond our own writing," Haas said. "I mean, this is the way the universe and the world continue to shrink and shrink. Every new melody is in some way derivative of a hundred old melodies, and the way we use tunes is as bare skeletons for different types of explorations." "It's kind of the 'in' thing for modern jazz groups to play pop music," added Mathis, who opens "The Sameness of Difference" with a fluid reading of Jimi Hendrix's "Have You Ever Been to Electric Ladyland?" "Mehldau and such are staking their reputations on it, which is fine. It sounds a little gimmicky sometimes at first, and we wanted to avoid that as much as we could. I wanted to play our selections as seriously as we would play Beethoven. "So we had to pick songs we really connect with. The Hendrix song is so deep in our psyche, and the Bjork song ['Isobel'] takes me right back to high school, to some fundamental feelings. When the Flaming Lips album came out ['The Soft Bulletin,' from which they pulled 'The Spark That Bled'], we listened to that twice a day in the van. It was thrilling to see some of this come out of our own instruments, and these became more intense when we started playing them in performances. The audience picks up on it. You can feel them go 'a-ha!' and connect more deeply to what you're doing." Haas agrees: "Mehldau, all this stuff — it's part of a canon to reinterpret melodies. It doesn't matter where they come from anymore. The wisdom is in taking one and putting it into a new context. That's what we do every night." GREAT MOMENTS IN JAZZ COVERS OF POP SONGS Louis Armstong, "Stardust" Armstrong in 1929 was a pop star himself, but this chestnut was a winner just before his reading of "Ain't Misbehavin'" became a jukebox hit. Benny Goodman, "Sometimes I'm Happy" A pop song that, in 1935, Goodman made swing, swing, swing. Charlie Parker, "Just Friends" In the '50s, Parker sought to record his sax with a string section. Fans worried, but his reading of this tune on "Charlie Parker with Strings" is considered by fans — and Bird himself — as one of his best performances. John Coltrane, "My Favorite Things" Coltrane's 1960 reading of Maria's ditty from "The Sound of Music" sounds like a quaint idea — until you hear what he does with it. Miles Davis, "My Funny Valentine" and "All of You" Miles' live concert album in 1964 was stuffed with standards — and set a few. Ramsey Lewis, "The 'In' Crowd" and "Hang on Sloopy" Is it pop? Is it jazz? Chicago's Ramsey Lewis did a little of both in 1965, and audiences ate it up. By Thomas Conner
© Chicago Sun-Times Taylor Hanson is the last person we expected to discuss the bean-counting intricacies of the music industry. Or smoke a pipe. But the ever-androgynous author of "MMMBop" does both in his band Hanson's new film, "Strong Enough to Break," a documentary about the hit trio's major-label nightmare. After signing with Mercury in 1997 and scoring a huge hit with its debut disc, "Middle of Nowhere," Hanson (including brothers Zac and Isaac) wound up a victim of the music industry massacre of years later, when Mercury was folded into the Island Def Jam conglomerate. Its supporters were fired or bailed, and Hanson was battling just to get a record made. "Strong Enough to Break," which shares the title of one of brothers' recent singles, chronicles the now grown-up Hansons' decision to form their own indie label, 3CG Records, and manage their own affairs. It follows the tale right up to the release of this season's new disc "The Best of Hanson: Live and Electric" and the current tour, which comes here for a two-night stand at 7 tonight and Thursday night at the House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn. Tickets are $28; call (312) 559-1212. Q. You're taking the documentary around to college campuses. Any particular reason why you're targeting that audience? A. Students can play a role in what is happening out there. We're activating them, getting them involved in music. It's a crucial time in the business, and this documentary illustrates some of the issues. ... Media has been a one-way street. TV, radio, newspapers, publications — you couldn't interact. And now so many media companies have consolidated to a level where they've removed choice from the roster. There aren't as many songs on radio and TV anymore. The pipeline has narrowed, and the fans have been disenfranchised. We're saying there are new ways around that; ... [students] can change the way music will be heard tomorrow. Q. What can students do, and to effect what changes? A. They can actively express what they want to hear on radio and TV. Get involved in saying, "I want my request to be heard." And they have to actively pursue the places filling the gaps — the indie labels, seeing more local gigs, indie Web sites, streaming radio stations, etc. Look for the models that allow you to interact. Q. You were home-schooled. Where did you learn how to run your own business? A. Before we started our label, we were already running a business. We already had employees creating videos and Web sites and merchandising and touring. That's part of why we're such believers in actively communicating directly with the fans — we always have. But nothing can educate you for the realities of running a business other than just running a business. Q. Will you ever be able to write another "MMMBop"? A. We have the freedom now to write whatever we want. That's the point. By Thomas Conner
© Chicago Sun-Times Woody Guthrie: ART WORKS Edited by Steven Brower and Nora guthrie Rizzoli. 300 pages. $45. In her management of the Woody Guthrie Archives, Nora Guthrie has seemed determined to make a Renaissance man out of her famous folksinger father. On paper, the projects that have come out of the archives during the last decade are often head-scratchers (Woody Guthrie's klezmer music?). But each one has proven not merely illuminating but also wholly inspiring in subtle, powerful ways. By lighting the shadowy corners of her dad's life, she not only broadens his legacy — she widens the scope of human possibility. Woody, it seems, could and did do anything, not because he had inherent skills but because he was possessed with an unshakable "Why not?" kind of confidence. Such examples fill us ordinary folks with hope and that, more than anything he ever specifically sang about, was Woody's persistent goal. The best thing to emerge from the archives is the handsome Woody Guthrie: Art Works (Rizzoli, $45). It's an exploration of Guthrie's visual art, most of which has been unpublished and unseen for decades. In light of his status as a musical icon ("This Land Is Your Land," etc.) and the fountainhead of Bob Dylan, this thorough visual examination is worthwhile because of the startling fact on which it's founded: Woody almost didn't become a songwriter at all. "Contrary to popular mythology, it was with paintbrushes in hand, not a guitar, that Woody Guthrie hit the road for California," Nora Guthrie writes in her introduction. She then recounts an episode from that first westward journey from Oklahoma that, she argues, decided exactly which legacy he would leave. Woody was hitchhiking with several other young men when the car ran out of gas. Woody headed into town to drum up food and gas money by painting signs, as he'd done for years in Pampa, Texas. He was successful, but when he went back to the car to retrieve his supplies — the guys, the car and his brushes were gone. That week, he discovered he could feed himself much better by playing old folk tunes for misty-eyed migrants. "Had fortune and destiny worked a slight shift of the hand," Nora writes, "it's very possible that Woody Guthrie might have become a visual artist. And this book might just as easily have been an episode uncovering the unknown songs of Woody Guthrie, rather than his unknown art." As such, this dignified romp through Woody's sketches, cartoons, paintings and illustrations (alas, the signs throughout the Southwest are long gone) is interesting to Guthrie acolytes and tone-deaf art lovers alike. Steven Brower's insightful — and, thankfully, concise — analysis of the works provides both historical and biographical context for each phase of Woody's expression, from the early line drawings (most of which are infinitely more inventive than, say, John Lennon's) to later abstract swaths and dabs (often smeared right over typed lyrics). Brower even notes the slight importance of Woody's visit to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1944 as contributing to his knowledge of art history. The day after that visit, Woody wrote home to his wife of the whirlwind experience and how it reminded him of his first passion (in a letter from my own research at the archives, not from the book): "We saw the original of the Guitar Player [by Picasso] you liked so well. ... It was in the same room as Van Gogh, Cezanne, and some others. I always feel like a painter when I come out of a gallery. When I'm inside one, I feel like a sniffing dog." Aside from the esthetic of its subject, the book itself is beautiful. The reproductions are excellent — worthy of note, given that most of these "works" are doodles from daily calendar books and personal journals (one of Woody's pocket notebooks is cleverly re-created, actual size, in the back pages) — and the design is clever. By Thomas Conner
© Chicago Sun-Times Where you been? I haven't seen you for weeks You've been hanging out with all those Jesus freaks Oh, yeah, and I feel like giving in ... — Felt, "Ballad of the Band" Josh Caterer sits in a leather armchair at Uncommon Ground, trying to figure out how to drink his hot chocolate. He sat down not knowing what he wanted, ordered this drink on a whim, and now it's a bit more than he bargained for — a wide soup bowl of cinnamon-dusted, frothy hedonism (in any other context, I'd remark on how sinful it looks) and it's got no handle. Whipped cream is piled high and is deflating over the brim. To get what he wants, he's going to have to abandon a few expectations. But this is the prodigal son of Chicago rock, a wide-eyed searcher who broke up his band, the Smoking Popes, on the cusp of national stardom and chucked his rock records to find what he wanted in a newfound Christian faith. Now, seven years later — having searched and researched his soul, started a separate Christian band called Duvall and become a father of two — here he is slurping cocoa and matter-of-factly discussing how he's managed to compartmentalize his religious and rockin' ambitions well enough to return to the devil's music. He's revived the Popes, they're having a blast in practice, and they might write a new album. The reunion show this week at Metro — originally scheduled as a one-off, a test, a lark — sold out in 36 minutes, so now there's talk of a tour. He's blessed. He hefts the bowl with both hands and sinks his nose into the foam. "At the time," Josh says, wiping away the mustache, "the best way to respond to my decision to follow Christ was to quit the band. I did it with a sense of permanence. But my understanding of the faith has grown to the point where I can see how to encompass the Popes. On the one hand, I can do it without compromising my faith; on the other, I can do it without using the Popes as a platform for expressing my faith." So relax, kids. No altar calls at the rock show. Not that Josh didn't try that before the breakup. For the encores in '98, the band would return to play "I Know You Love Me," and Josh would discuss his newfound faith, a moment captured on the band's posthumous 2000 live album. You can almost hear the crowd shudder — not because they're necessarily a bunch of pagans but because suddenly Josh was Debby Boone, explaining that the "you" in "You Light Up My Life" was really Jesus and, well, few things can deflate a concert at a rock club near the witching hour quite like a little heartfelt evangelism. (Plus, the mind began to reel: Did the band's other perfectly romantic songs now have religious overtones? "You Spoke to Me"? "Let Them Die"? "Paul"? Had we been tricked?) "That went over better than you might expect, though," Josh says of his attempted homilies. "I never had anything thrown at me." • • • We hadn't been tricked, he assures. The songs are as secular and seductive as we thought they were. But as he became swept up in Christianity — a result of years of searching for spiritual significance, from Buddhism to the Bible — it became clear the Popes were not the platform to make that particular joyful noise. Because Josh had little to no religious upbringing, his new insights were overwhelming. He didn't know how to balance the new life with the old. All he could think to do was eliminate the old one. It was written. The guy who led a band with albums titled "Get Fired," "Born to Quit," "Destination Failure" and "The Party's Over" finally called it a day. "It was a process over about a year," says Eli Caterer, Josh's brother and the Popes' guitarist. (The band also includes another Caterer brother, Matt, on bass, and a new drummer, Rob Kellenberger.) "Josh had become born again, and we started talking about it in practices. We started bringing it up with him, and eventually he started saying, 'Yeah, yeah, I can't keep doing this.' Josh is the kind of guy who likes having one-on-one meetings with people, and that's how he told us he wanted out. That's also how he got the band back together." And he didn't just quit the band. He quit the life. He threw out his Zeppelin records. And the AC/DC, the Ramones, the Buzzcocks (which he describes with a phrase often ascribed to the Popes: "great melodic pop with a touch of melancholy") — all of it went into the bin. He stopped going to clubs. He switched off the TV. It's a typical response of brand-new Christians, he's found, but perhaps it's especially ironic in Josh's case. He had not just listened to rock records and shaken a fist or two in his time; he'd tried to emulate them — an act that carries its own particular messianic overtones. In "You Spoke to Me," from the Smoking Popes' second disc, "Destination Failure," Josh sings from the perspective of fans who see their music idols as golden gods: "I don't know if you actually saved my life — but you changed it, that's for sure." "That song's about being on tour with Jawbreaker and hearing the things people would say to Blake [Schwarzenbach, the singer] when they got to meet him," Josh says. "They said crazy things. With tears in their eyes, they'd be gushing about the importance of his music in their lives, how they wouldn't be here without him. I was so struck by that, by the way this music affected people. "My faith now has allowed me to sort of shift the importance I place on music and the lens I look at it through. Before, I think I saw music in some way like that — as some means to connect to something greater. There is that larger spiritual significance to making music, and music itself tends to have a religious quality, even if you're not an ordinarily religious person. But coming to know Christ, I understand that music can be used as a tool to worship and can help you in your religious experience — but maybe it's not that experience itself." That's the discovery that set him free, he says. He's not the messiah — and now that he believes who is, the pressure's off. The real one, in his mind, can worry about the saving of lives. Josh maybe can change a few. And he can work at music again for what it is, a means instead of an end. "The thing I want now is God," he says, finishing the hot chocolate and smacking his lips, "so music is finally something to be enjoyed." • • • In 1997, the Smoking Popes toured nationally as an opener for another act who regularly hears the praise of a fervent flock: Morrissey (who had gushed about "Born to Quit" that July on KROQ in Los Angeles: "I bought the album, and I just thought it was extraordinary — the most lovable thing I'd heard for years. I think he has a great voice. Are they big here?"). The Popes and Morrissey's new band were both units marrying driving, buzzsaw guitars to lyrics that are quite clever though often hastily judged by their surface melancholy. Josh, the Moz — one ticket, two tortured romantics. And both can croon cream into butter. When discussing his band's sound, Josh uses a surprising word: "loungey." It's surprising, given some of the breakneck tempos and the buzzsaw guitars. It also may have been a description surprising to fans until the band's last studio record, the prophetically titled "The Party's Over" — a collection of 10 pre-Beatles pop standards. That album, Josh says, despite being an intentional record contract buster for the band, was the zenith of one of the band's rollicking musical experiments. "I guess people thought the whole loungey thing we did was tongue-in-cheek," he says, cocking his head quizzically. "By the time we made that covers album, I guess they knew we were sincere. It took me a few years to be confident enough to attempt that vibrato. I started in punk bands in garages, basically yelling. When we recorded [our indie debut] 'Get Fired,' the last song I did vocals for was 'Let's Hear It for Love.' And, you know, when I'm alone or in the shower or something, I sing with an exaggerated vibrato. I thought, 'Let's lay down a track of me singing like that.' I did, and we laughed — but we thought it was cool enough to leave it." By the next album, "Born to Quit," which would become the band's debut for Capitol Records, Josh was pushing the loungey singing on every track. Josh was tapping into something he did get growing up: an appreciation of standards. When he started writing songs at age 11, he was doing so out of a fondness for ... "The Music Man." "Goodnight, my someone; goodnight, my love," he half-sings, half-reminisces. "You can play three chords under that. I was figuring those out on the guitar. Even at that age, I was beginning to appreciate the timeless quality of that music. I could recognize that that kind of songwriting had a substance that transcended musical trends. It's not just that Sinatra was a stylish guy that we still listen to his music. If the melody is strong enough, and the lyrical content has an emotional quality that can touch people in a meaningful way, then the songs sound good 10, 20 years later, regardless of the recording quality." • • • It's not been 10 years since the Popes wound down, but the band's following seems to have held steady, even grown. The Popes' strong melodies and emotional lyrics seem to be doing their job. "Being in Duvall, Josh and I were always surprised when young people would come to those shows because they didn't find the Popes until after we broke up," Eli says. "People were still finding out about us. The music was still out there doing its thing. It didn't just end when we unplugged it. The fan base is still growing. It seems to have a life of its own." "I could never tell how widespread it was. There's always that chance you're living in a bubble," Josh says. Then, noting the sold-out show at Metro, he says, "Well, now we know the bubble is at least big enough to contain 1,100 people." The Popes also played their part, however big or small, in influencing Chicago's current crop of pop-punks. The Popes' new bio quotes Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy, saying, "After Naked Raygun, Chicago was the Smoking Popes. They were the Alkaline Trio before Alkaline Trio; they were Fall Out Boy before Fall Out Boy." Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio adds: "The Smoking Popes were a good band that only wrote good songs. They have always been a big influence on Alkaline Trio and are a huge reason a lot of us started bands in the first place. I can't wait to see them again — I hope they play 'Brand New Hairstyle.'" Josh confirms that a tour is being planned, probably to support a new collection of the band's hits or some out-of-print material. And the Popes plan to try some new songs. But likely not in this week's show. "This show is really an attempt to reignite the flame we had going when we broke up," Josh says. "It shouldn't be hard to re-establish ourselves as the band eternally about to break." The Smoking Popes with Bella lea When: 11 p.m. Friday Where: Metro, 3710 N. Clark Tickets: Sold out Phone: (773) 549-0203 Duvall to Remain a Faith-Fueled Band After Josh Caterer found religion and dismantled the Smoking Popes, he wasn't done with music altogether. Instead of keeping the Popes around as a mouthpiece for his new spiritual notions, he formed a new combo for that purpose called Duvall. Duvall released two CDs, "Volume and Density" in 2003 and a Christmas record, "Oh Holy Night," in 2004, both on the Asian Man label. Now that the Popes are resurrected, Duvall will continue, though in what capacity or frequency Josh is not entirely sure. "When I was ready to come back to rock, I didn't want to start with the Popes," Josh says. "I wanted to express things I couldn't in the Popes. That's why I put Duvall together. I'll keep doing that. It'll be my outlet for that kind of expression." His brother Eli — a fellow Pope and a founding member of Duvall — thinks that's the best plan, even though in March, he left Duvall, for similar reasons (though opposite philosophies) that caused Josh to bail on the Popes. "Duvall had been riding this fence," Eli said. "Initially, Josh was ambiguous about his faith, then he realized he wanted to be more open about it. But we were still playing these secular shows. It was a conflict. Now he wants to be open and singing about faith and Jesus and stuff, which I totally support, but since I'm not actually a Christian, I felt like I couldn't do it, to be promoting beliefs I don't really believe in." Josh says he's waiting to see how the Popes revival shapes up before figuring out what his next move will be in Duvall. Born that way? Gay resorts, that is — a look into how rainbow travel destinations got their colors10/9/2005
By Thomas Conner
© Chicago Sun-Times Two weeks after his reconnaissance of the coast via helicopter, Artie is leading a meeting of six wealthy, gay developers, explaining the plan about to be hatched. They're going to turn the sleepy seaside town of Long Spit into a hot spot for gay and lesbian tourists — whether the residents of Long Spit agree to this transformation or not. "Setting couldn't be more perfect," he says, describing the town's protected beach, existing galleries and antique shops, quaint bed-and-breakfast inns and a huge hotel ripe for rehab. " 'Course, this sort of thing has never been done from a standing start. Guess we have to figure how to get it moving on all fronts at once." That's from the beginning of William Storandt's carefree novel The Summer They Came, and in the rest of his story the developers do get things moving on all fronts — through sneakiness and deception. Basically overnight the rainbow flags unfurl, and hilarity ensues. In reality, however, gay travel destinations have come out of the closet much more slowly, many of them building on century-old traditions as "artist colonies." But in recent decades, as gays and lesbians became more visible and empowered — and as businesses have developed an attraction to the plentiful gay dollar — they began openly marketing destinations as safe, fun getaways or party zones for the queer as folk and the L words. In the travel business, this is just good niche marketing: Gays and lesbians travel more than most people. According to a recent survey by the National Gay Newspaper Guild, seven out of 10 U.S. adults say they've traveled within the country during the last year, but those numbers jump to nine out of 10 for gays and lesbians. The survey found they fly more, too: U.S. adults claimed an average of 1.3 flights in the last year; gays and lesbians claimed an average of 2.9 flights. Few tourist destinations have gone untested by gay travelers, but certain spots are pinker than others. Historians are still offering competing theories as to how San Francisco and its infamous Castro district became the holy grail for gay travelers, pointing to everything from a West Coast libertarian tradition rooted in piracy and gambling to the simple fact that as a huge embarkation point for servicemen during World War II the city was occupied by, ahem, a lot of single and/or lonely men. From Provincetown, Mass., to Key West, Fla., and from Russian River, Calif., to Rehoboth Beach, Del. — the histories of gay-friendly towns often are similar. In almost every case, it began with an "artist colony." The artists came for waterside inspiration, invited celebrity friends and threw, as one Provincetown chronicler described, "socially lenient" parties. Years after the world wars, when the towns shouldered economic slumps, gays and lesbians usually were the ones who came back, bought depressed properties, rehabbed and renovated, and — often beginning around the dawn of the 1980s — opened the B&Bs. Gay business guilds formed, ads showed up in The Advocate (the national news magazine for gays and lesbians), and old-timers grumbled a bit about all the same-sex hand-holding on the beach — until the new sales tax receipts came in. From arty to party In the twin towns of Saugatuck and Douglas, Mich., directly across Lake Michigan, the summer they came was in 1910. That's when the Art Institute of Chicago established its Ox-Bow summer art school in the small lakeside town, says Mike Jones, one of three owners of The Dunes resort there. "That set everything in motion, really," Jones says of the town's gay life. "As a result of that artists' colony, this town has always had a gay presence." "We were born this way," he adds about the town. On either side of the mouth of the Kalamazoo River, Saugatuck and Douglas actually were born as fur trading posts and lumber camps. But by the late 1880s, several passenger ships were leaving Navy Pier for the six-hour trip to Saugatuck-Douglas, making the area the perfect getaway for work-weary Chicagoans, many of whom strolled down the gangplanks and into the town's long-gone dockside dance hall, the Pavilion. Weekender cabins popped up soon after. "By then, Saugatuck already had a reputation as a kind of anything-goes community," said Larry Gammons, the original owner of The Dunes resort. "It was a real getaway. That is, people came here to let loose a little bit. It was like Las Vegas — what happened here stayed here. At least they hoped." Cynthia Marquard, of Chicago's Aqua Terra Travel and author of a travel column for Chicago's Windy City Times gay and lesbian weekly for more than 20 years, remembers going to Saugatuck "as a younger woman" in the 1970s with her partner Darlene. "It used to be terribly tacky," she says. "It was the meeting place between Chicago and Detroit. Gay guys would come over from Chicago on their motorcycles. They got every kind of crowd." Gammons and partner Carl Jennings, now semi-retired in Saugatuck and running Bentley's Antiques on Center Street, used to weekend in Saugatuck (which used to be referred to as "the Cape Cod of the Midwest") from their Grand Rapids home in the 1960s and '70s. He said they looked around one day — at all their gay friends in Saugatuck-Douglas, the boat parties they were having, the gay business people who would sigh during their Saugatuck weekends and say things like, "If only we could just live here" — and saw an opportunity. When a piece of property came available, they pounced. In 1981, they opened The Dunes, which is now the largest gay and lesbian resort in the Midwest. It's on 20 acres in Douglas, has dozens of rooms and its own complex of nightclubs. For gays and lesbians on vacation, it's party central. The transition wasn't easy, though. "There was a lot of resistance," Gammons says. "Even though this town was accustomed to a gay presence for all those years, all of a sudden here was this large property. Instead of 25 or 30 people at the Blue Temple [gay bar], there were a thousand at The Dunes. It was jarring to some folks." The arrival of The Dunes was a bit more public than some locals preferred. "There'd been ... let's call them eccentrics in this town for a long time, and that was fine," said a Saugatuck business owner who requested to remain anonymous. "When they opened The Dunes, though, it was a kind of public declaration — 'Here we are!' — and I think most people around here were a lot happier when it was an intriguing town secret rather than a tourist attraction." The very fact that in 2005 a story about gays and lesbians features a heterosexual requesting anonymity instead of the other way around, however, is itself an indicator of the sea change that's taken place in and around Saugatuck-Douglas. "Really, this is a surprising place for this kind of acceptance to happen," Jones says. "We're right in the middle of right-wing, hunting-lodge hell, but in Saugatuck-Douglas, people just seem to check their issues in the car. Part of that is because it's gays and lesbians who fixed up a lot of the town, and because our tourism helped fuel a lot of the tourism that keeps the town afloat." Felicia Fairchild, executive director of the Saugatuck-Douglas Convention and Visitors Bureau — which now markets the area as "The Art Coast of Michigan" — is quick to point out that gays and lesbians are a minority among Saugatuck's tourists: 15 percent to 20 percent. She is also, however, quick to credit their importance: "What we like about the gay travelers is that they are conservative, well-educated and they tend to promote the town well and remain quite loyal." Gammons himself tries not to overestimate the importance of his property, The Dunes. "People think that because there's a gay resort and a gay bar someplace, that all gay people will support it," he says. "The truth is that a lot of gay people travel to places with gay bars and gay resorts — not because they want to go to or stay at those places but because it means that the city itself is gay-friendly. They may end up staying at a quiet B&B and may never go to a bar, but the existence of gay establishments means they are more likely to be comfortable throughout the community, that they'll be accepted at the straight restaurants and other places. That's the side of gay tourism that I think most people don't think about, and that's what's been most important in the development of this little town." Best-laid plans Fortunately, Saugatuck's development has been comparatively slow. We say "fortunately" because that means the town is still somewhat of an affordable getaway. Elsewhere in America, the gentrification engendered by the initial wave of rehabbing gays and lesbians has created an ironic backlash. The same bohemians and gays who breathed new life into many sleepy tourist towns now can't afford to live there anymore. "It's shock what's happened in Key West," Gammons says. "The gay community there is almost gone now." And in a New York Times article a month ago, writer David Colman noted this about Provincetown: "A real estate boom has spread unease, pitting wealthy newcomers and developers against the townies, artists and free spirits who give the enclave its bohemian character and who now fear it is being gentrified out of existence." The growth of gay tourism in Key West was a bit more ... intentional, hearkening back to the boardroom in Storandt's novel. Marquard knew a former Chicagoan, the late Walt Malone, an ad man who helped capitalize on the gay tourists exploring Florida in the '80s. "He was part of a group who said, 'If we gather together a bunch of the guesthouse owners and we decide to make this a gay destination, it will become a gay destination.' " Key West didn't start as an official artists' colony, but it had its share of gay artists. Playwright Tennessee Williams moved to Key West because he enjoyed being able to swim year-round. The nearby naval base and its steady stream of single men didn't hurt, either. He lured like-minded pals, including writer Truman Capote, who bought houses and threw parties. Stephen K. Smith, a sales manager for the Monroe County Tourist Development Council, sees this as the foundation that Malone and others built upon with the Key West Business Guild. "It was a targeted effort," Smith says. "We bought space in the Advocate's old pink section, where all the co-op ads were, and started selling Key West as a gay destination. Daytona Beach had been a gay mecca in the early '70s, drawing a lot of the New York and D.C. crowds. The Parliament House had popped up in Orlando, with a drag bar and a dance floor. Then Marlin Beach [south of Miami] drew the Daytona crowd, and it just kept moving south." Smith works this gay and lesbian history into the trolley tour he has scripted, and he cites figures from his office of up to 625,000 gay and lesbian tourists visiting Key West every year. But even Smith reluctantly acknowledges the island's shifting fortunes — that gentrification, while good for the economy, has driven up prices on the island and moved the demographic of those tourists up the economic scale. Freedom rings At the end of curling Cape Cod, Provincetown has gone through several transformations since the Pilgrims landed there — from Yankee whaling town to Portuguese fishing village to bohemian artist enclave to, today, one of the world's most popular gay resorts. Surprisingly, each of those segments of society contributed to the "P-town" of today. Karen Krahulik, a former Duke University professor who starts as a Brown University dean in January, turned her dissertation on this subject into a book, Provincetown: From Pilgrim Landing to Gay Resort, published in June (NYU Press, $29.95). "The turning point in Provincetown was not so much in the '80s, when the real marketing began, but in the post-war era," Krahulik says. "This is when a group of town leaders attempted to get rid of the gay element in town" by adopting ordinances designed to shut down gay and drag bars, "and negotiating that struggle was pivotal in terms of Provincetown's success as a gay community. Some towns succeeded in those efforts, but in Provincetown that didn't happen ... The town debated back and forth, and in the end I don't want to say the gay community succeeded as much as I'd say that Provincetown succeeded as a community and became an accepting enclave. ... "Provincetown markets itself heavily as 'the landfall of freedom.' This, after all, is where acceptance and tolerance came ashore." During the last two decades, the same process of gentrification has swept across the cape, much of it spearheaded by gay and lesbian entrepreneurs and business people. And now that the town is rehabbed and renovated, the property values are through the roofs. "But now the average price for a single-family residence there is about $650,000. That tells you right there who can afford to live there," Krahulik says. And where's the next gay and lesbian hot spot? A cool place, actually. "Given the political climate here and there, I'm booking a lot of trips for gays and lesbians to Canada," Marquard says. "Everyone wants to go get married. And now they can." IF YOU GO Saugatuck-Douglas Just a 2-1/2-hour drive around the lake from Chicago, these twin towns are chiefly a summertime escape, but the fall foliage is turning around the harbor and along the beaches — and most shops and restaurants stick it out through the holidays. Gays and lesbians are, of course, welcome to stay at The Dunes, 333 Blue Star Highway in Douglas (269-857-1401, www.dunesresort.com). Rooms and cabins are available, and with a nightclub, bar and cabaret in the complex, you may never have to leave the place. Except to grab great grub at the Kalico Kitchen across the street, featuring fried catfish good enough to make a Southerner weep. The Belvedere Inn, 3656 63rd St. (269-857-5777, www.thebelvedereinn.com), is gay-owned, if not gay-marketed; it does a brisk business in weddings throughout the summer. Vacationers of every stripe will find this converted mansion on the edge of Saugatuck a rewarding respite — the friendly charm of a B&B, the amenities and style of a boutique hotel. Tea on the terrace (look at those gardens!) and dinner in the restaurant (one of the co-owners is the chef) make for one splendid evening. While strolling Saugatuck's shops and galleries, stop into the Pumpernickel's, 202 Butler (269-857-1196), for tasty and affordable sandwiches, brunch items and a glass of wine. For dinner, you might avoid the dark, foreboding seafood dives and sports bars in Saugatuck and cross the river to Douglas for the chic notions of Ameri-can cuisine at the Blue Moon Bar & Grille, 310 Blue Star Hwy. (269-857-8686), or the "comfortably upscale but never uptight" Copper Grille, 24 Center St. (269-857-7100), with a great patio and refreshing menu. By Thomas Conner
© Chicago Sun-Times When his music became popular again during the 1990s lounge-music revival, Juan Garcia Esquivel — known singularly and more exclamatory as Esquivel! — was fond of telling a favorite Chicago story. "There was a very influential columnist named Sig Sakowicz," Esquivel said. "He wrote an entertainment column, where he would critique everyone playing in town. Before we opened, he wrote in his column, 'Esquivel! ... Why?' He came to the show, and I showed him why. He came almost every night. The next week in his column, he wrote, 'Esquivel is so good, he deserves two exclamation points.'" In 1974, several years after Sakowicz had moved on, Esquivel landed a gig back here in Chicago — six months performing nightly at the La Margarita Mexican restaurant in Morton Grove. The age of the great bandleaders had long passed, and Esquivel's group was down to a combo of four musicians, two singers and himself on piano. The music, however, still had the zing! and the pow! and the wow! that earned him those exclamation points. While they were in Chi-town, the restaurant manager suggested they record a live album to help promote the gig. They did, and Bar/None Records recently reissued the session as a disc titled "The Sights and Sounds of Esquivel." (The original title was as windy as the city: "An Evening at La Margarita With Esquivel! and His Sounds.") The music wasn't captured live at La Magarita, though. Esquivel being a bit of a control freak — for good and ill — the songs were cut "live" in a studio in December of that year. "I've had this tape for years and years," said Yvonne DeBourbon-Rodriguez, Esquivel's widow (he died in 2002 after years of ill health after a fall) and one of the two vocalists in the band at La Margarita, in a recent interview. "This was done exactly as we would do the show, on one track with no overdubs. The only thing added was the applause. Juan was very, very particular when it came to recordings. I don't think he would have wanted to record in a nightclub. He never made any actual live recordings. This is it." Esquivel's meticulous detail in making his "space-age bachelor pad" music is one of the reasons his albums were lurking in hipsters' collections long before the '90s lounge-music fad and will remain there long after. Esquivel was a Latin bandleader in an era when "Latin bandleader" meant Ricky Ricardo. He was one of the first arrangers to make use of stereo recording, leading his slide guitarist or his drummer to pop in and out of the left or right speaker for lively, unpredictable effects. His music was aimed at the easy-listening market, but it wasn't always the easiest listening. His resurgence in the '90s was often heralded as "unlikely," but given the electronic music experiments taking place at the time around the world, it wasn't all that surprising. DeBourbon-Rodriguez saw the connection. "People still feel connected to this music. It's like Trekkies. It doesn't matter how old 'Star Trek' is, people will always be fascinated with it," she said. "You know, when his music became popular again in the '90s, he was absolutely delighted. He loved arranging — that was his forte. He played incredible piano, but he wasn't as interested in composing as he was in arranging. It was fascinating for him to see how he could make an old song dance to a new tune, or the challenge of bringing something alive that was in a dusty vault somewhere. All these young people and their remixing today — it's the same thing. That's why they love him." Esquivel loved performing his arrangements as well, which is why even into the '70s, he was accepting the gigs offered him — like playing dinner music in the Chicago 'burbs. But whether performing at the Hollywood Bowl or the early equivalents of Planet Hollywood, Esquivel was always as entertaining and unpredictable as his tunes. "He was a consummate performer," said DeBourbon-Rodriguez. "He looooved having an audience. He had a glow about him when he was onstage, and he loved having little jokes with the audience, double entendres. "We were performing in Puerto Rico one time. I'd had surgery and couldn't perform the dance routines. The crowd was calling out, 'La colora!' He couldn't figure out what that meant, though he spoke fluent Spanish. Finally, someone said, 'The redhead!' They wanted me to dance. He tried to explain why I couldn't, saying I'd had surgery. 'Want to know where she had it?' he asked the crowd. 'In Las Vegas!'" You can almost hear the rim shot. Things in Chicago remained pretty hot. Literally. "I think we experienced one of the mildest winters Chicago had ever had," she said. "I love snow. I live in California, where normally we don't have snow, but that year in Chicago, it was beautiful. I enjoyed the smell of it and walking in it. I'd been in Chicago in January, downtown with winds off the lake, and oh my God, my ears felt like they were burning off, but for some reason that winter was very mild, and we made such lovely friends with the musicians and their families." Several years ago, during the revival of his music, a movie about Esquivel's life was reported in the works. DeBourbon-Rodriguez said it's still "in the works" to her knowledge, with Alexander Payne ("Election," "Sideways") contracted to direct and John Leguizamo starring. In the meantime, DeBourbon-Rodriguez is still involved with music, working with husband and Latin jazz musician Bobby Rodriguez. The two recently finished a book, The ABC's of Latin Jazz. "We discuss Juan in the book," she said, "because of his contribution to arranging and because of the music he used. You know, he's not often thought of as a Latin music figure other than the fact that he was from Mexico. But he helped pioneer clave, that kind of rhythm. He was one of many musicians who were using native music styles at the time, but it wasn't identified as such then. It's just one of many ways he was a pioneer." By Thomas Conner
© Chicago Sun-Times Rufus Wainwright is a good son. He was shopping leisurely in New York's West Village, chatting with the Sun-Times about his second summer tour with fellow piano man Ben Folds, and trying to find something nice for his mom in advance of their upcoming trip to Venice, Italy. "You know, a tiara, or a nice set of diamonds," Wainwright said. "I'm being a beautiful gay son and dressing my mother like the queen of England." He's gay and he's recovering from drug addiction, but Wainwright knows something about family values. Consider his family: dad Loudon Wainwright III, a patron saint of intelligent, personal folk music among the NPR crowd; mother Kate McGarrigle, mother superior of traditional folk singing in Canada (the couple divorced), and sister Martha Wainwright, a constant companion and backup singer to Rufus through most of his career thus far, who recently launched her own career with a song about Loudon (lovingly titled "Bloody Mother F——— A———"). While Martha explained to the Sun-Times earlier this year how daunting it was to step forward from this family with her own musical expression, Rufus has never had such hesitation. "I definitely was always expected and encouraged to be a songwriter from a very young age," said Rufus, who grew up with McGarrigle in Montreal. "But really it's because, as a child, I thought I was Judy Garland. And when I started out, I was a little nuts. I thought I was a classic, legendary superstar when only 10 people knew who I was. I feel in some ways that my confidence is misinterpreted as arrogance, which is understandable. But I've also always thought that false modesty is evil." Celebrity, however, is always in the mind of the beholder. For instance, Rufus remembers when, as a young boy, he realized for the first time that his dad was "someone." "[Loudon] is really good friends with [filmmaker] Christopher Guest," he said. "It really struck me when we went to his house once in London — and suddenly Jamie Lee Curtis opened the door. I'd just seen 'Trading Places,' and I was amazed at, well, just how big her breasts were in person. And that's when I thought: Hey, Dad's got it going on." The Wainwright family often backs one another up on recordings and concerts. Martha's been with Rufus since his 1998 self-titled debut, and both of them grew up singing with their mother and aunt (Anna McGarrigle); Rufus has covered his dad ("One Man Guy" on "Poses," and others in concert), and Martha dueted with him ("Father-Daughter Dialogue" on 1995's "Grown Man"). Loudon, though, has made a career of writing intensely personal — but still accessible and inviting — folk songs about his failed marriage ("Your Mother and I"), raising the kids ("Five Years Old," "Rufus Is a Tit Man," etc.) and his parents (his father was longtime Life magazine columnist Loudon Wainwright II, and Loudon's last disc, 2001's "The Last Man on Earth," was about the death of his mother). "Everything's been fair game in our family," Rufus says. He adds that, given his own penchant for speaking naked truths in song, this is what makes the tour with Ben Folds work so well: "[Ben and I] are not afraid to open our hearts and reveal the inner workings of a man. It can dangerous but intensely rewarding — I hope on both ends." Folds, in a separate interview earlier this summer, acknowledged the same risk in baring one's soul. His new album, "Songs for Silverman," includes a delicate song about his daughter, "Gracie." "Everything I write is personal, really," Folds said. "Even when I'm sarcastic, it's quite personal. And on this record, from the production to the singing to the performances, I got it really honest. To the modern ear, it seems soft. When you hear it against other things, it seems vulnerable. Lyrically and musically, though, this is more subtle. And, yes, it's asking a lot of someone who's used to being hit over the head with bright neon to listen to this." Folds learned many lessons about getting personal without self-flagellating by working with, of all people, William Shatner. Last year, Folds produced and co-wrote several songs for Shatner's "Has Been" CD, a collection of intimate spoken-word narratives, commentaries and contemplations by the "Star Trek" star. The experience was unexpectedly liberating. "I found in the process that as I would push him to follow his first instincts about what to say and what to express that I would sometimes wonder, 'Would I go that far?' But the results we got were inspiring. "It's hard to explain," he says. "Sometimes I would be watching this classic guy performing and realizing that there's not a damn thing he can do about being William Shatner. You turn on the tape, and you get William Shatner. And you could've approached that as if it were something to get over, but that wouldn't have been honest. I wanted him to be exactly who he is, and I eventually realized I had to go for that same honesty and feeling in my own album." Wainwright hopes to take a similar stripped-down approach to his next recording. After this summer's tour, he'll return to Europe for more touring, and he's planning to start the followup to his last two discs, "Want One" (2003) and "Want Two" (2004). "It will be very, very different from the usual Rufus — not my usual voluptuous and grandiose view of the world," he said. "I want to get more streamlined. I feel like [Alfred] Hitchcock after making 'Vertigo' and 'To Catch a Thief,' his big Hollywood films. All of a sudden he made 'Psycho,' And then we knew where he really was coming from, you know?" RUFUS WAINWRIGHT AND BEN FOLDS with Ben Lee When: 8 p.m. Wednesday Where: Ravinia Festival, Lake-Cook and Green Bay roads, Highland Park Tickets: Sold out By Thomas Conner
© Chicago Sun-Times Slah-oan! Slah-oan! The stage was set and the natives were restless. The chant started slowly. At first it was in perfect harmony with the song playing over the PA, almost as if it were a backing track. But the song ended and the chant continued — as if this were a European soccer match or a Morrissey concert. Next, darkness, shadows ambled into position, then a snare drum rolled and everything just exploded. Sloan is the Canadian Fab Four, a powerhouse quartet that writes well and rocks hard. Fifteen years into a career of sorts, and here they were Thursday night back in Chicago celebrating an unusually refreshing look backward — the release of "A Sides Win," an astonishingly solid singles collection reaching back to 1992. Back then, Geffen Records was trying to turn them into Sonic Youth when all they really wanted to be was Cheap Trick. (From the stage on Thursday, bassist Chris Murphy referred to Robin Zander "the best singer in America.") Fortunately, they became much more — without, thus far, anything resembling "The Flame" (shudder) — and turned the Beatles' fully cocked "Revolver" rock 'n' roll legacy into an experience more fun, more clever and more honest than every band in the mid-'90s "power-pop revival" put together and turned up to 11. Thursday's show at the Double Door — where they last played, they kept reminding us, years ago when they opened for Jale (who? exactly) — was an unapologetic romp through the greatest hits. Given the band's exuberance and the fans' unwavering devotion — Slah-oan! Slah-oan! ... it kept going throughout the show — it was an approach that never seemed calculated to sell the latest record. They played the hits (in Canada, where their second album was voted the greatest disc of all time, yes, they have hits) because they are, indeed, great songs. No one in the crowd cried out for obscure album tracks. Many clapped along long before they were asked to (each incidence of which somehow, at least through these rose-colored lenses, was utterly free of the usual cliches). Every song elicited whoops and cheers and wild movement by the kind of geeky rock fans who are not prone to grace in such contexts. It was easy to imagine the Double Door as the UIC Pavilion. Here's a band that missed the era that would have embraced it with arena arms. Opening with "Losing California," with guitarist Patrick Pentland craning his neck to accommodate a mike stand too tall for him, Sloan crashed through its A-list, covering nearly all of the greatest-hits package — a maniacal "Money City Maniacs," a stomping "She Says What She Means," closing with the frenetic, two-minute rush of "The Good in Everyone." Sloan didn't begin its career quite as rawk as it's become, an evolution that was obvious when, after blasting through a half dozen breathless scorchers, they were a bit too out of breath to handle the delicate harmonies of one of their first singles, "Coax Me." And when everyone but Pentland switched instruments so that drummer Andrew Scott could play guitar and sing a couple of his songs — all four members write and sing, like Teenage Fanclub — his slow, carefully colored dirge-ballad was an interesting and, admittedly, welcome island in the testosterone flood. Those who claim that rock is dead simply don't understand the compartmentalized playing field of 21st century popular culture. It ain't dead, it's just been put into its place. But that doesn't mean it's any less thrilling when you dive in. Just listen to the fans spilling out of the Double Door, still chanting. Slah-oan! Slah-oan! Sloan at the Double Door By Thomas Conner
© Chicago Sun-Times "Legends of Jazz: the Jazz Masters" ★★ 9 tonight on WTTW-Channel 11 The producers of "Legends of Jazz: The Jazz Masters" claim that their hourlong special — airing tonight and heralding a new half-hour series, "Legends of Jazz With Ramsey Lewis," starting in January — is the first jazz show on network television in 40 years. The last one was the syndicated "Jazz Scene U.S.A.," hosted by Chicago's own soul-jazz master, the late Oscar Brown Jr. This new incarnation follows a similar interviews-and-performances format, and while it's wonderful and important to have a jazz showcase back on the public airwaves, this first "Legends of Jazz" outing looks as if its primary audience will be people old enough to remember "Jazz Scene U.S.A." "Legends of Jazz: The Jazz Masters" airs on PBS — and it's very PBS. It's reserved, stately and moving at the pace of peanut butter. Chicago-based jazz figurehead Ramsey Lewis hosts (and also will host the 13-episode series), leading soft-toned conversations with the guests, and is so genteel and pleasant as to almost disappear. The special spotlights five pillars in the jazz community, each of them a current or previous recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts' Jazz Masters award: vocalist Nancy Wilson, saxophone player James Moody, singer Jon Hendricks, Latin jazz player Paquito D'Rivera and Newport Jazz Festival founder George Wein. Each is the primary focus of conversation breaks between stellar performances from Wilson (an amazing reading of "God Bless the Child"), Moody, Hendricks and Rivera, and each of those conversations, while containing the occasional amusing story or fascinating tidbit (Moody's recollections are pretty interesting), still feels like having dinner with grandparents. And that particular generational perspective is a valid point here, chiefly because after nearly an hour of remembering the good old days, "Legends of Jazz" tries to end on a positive, life-affirming note for jazz music by trotting out — squeeze Grandma's hand here — an actual young person! Who sings a jazz standard! And likes it! Renee Olstead sings "Taking a Chance on Love," and yes, she's an amazing talent — a high school sophomore, star of the CBS sitcom "Still Standing," and a sinusy voice like Diane Schuur's. But a young girl singing old songs is hardly the salvation of jazz. A prop for its nostalgia, maybe, but if, as Moody says, shows like this will help "keep jazz alive," "Legends" should try to include today's more energetic expressions of jazz (try the Necks, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, heck, even Jamie Cullum). Otherwise, the youth they say is so important to the music's future will forever view jazz as a musty old PBS relic. By Thomas Conner
© Chicago Sun-Times Loudon Wainwright III has made a career of family albums. For nearly four decades, the singer-songwriter has churned out sometimes bitter, sometimes brutal, often hilarious folk songs about his marriage to Canadian singer Kate McGarrigle and their two children: Gen-X piano man Rufus Wainwright and emerging talent Martha Wainwright. Everyone has had his or her moment, willingly or not, in Loudon's spotlight — songs about his and Kate's divorce, songs about explaining it to the kids, songs about family vacations, songs about his own parents, even "Rufus Is a Tit Man," a song about watching young Rufus breastfeed (and only slightly ironic, given that his son, now an acclaimed composer, turned out to be gay). Loudon and Martha even sang a duet, "Father/Daughter Dialogue," on one of Loudon's '90s discs, in which they addressed the irresistible peril of making dirty laundry tuneful and rhymed. But turnabout, as they say, is fair play. So thought Martha, anyway, when she wrote and recorded her first single, "BMFA." It's not actually called by that acronym; we couldn't print the full title in a wholesome, family newspaper. The first two words are "Bloody Mother," and the other two are the popular "Deadwood" f-word adjective and an anatomical noun. And it's directed at her dad. "My father's made a career out of singing about family members — some kind, some not so kind. So we Wainwrights have carte blanche to return the favor," Martha said recently from a tour stop in Bristol, England. "I think he understands. He's never said anything about it outright. It's not designed to hurt his feelings. It's just a funny thing to say about somebody. I didn't intend to say those four words when I was writing it. They just came out, and I thought it was hilarious, quite frankly. Mostly young women seem to identify with it, not necessarily about their dads — but everyone has that person they want to say that about in their lives." That title, and her insistent repetition of it toward the end of her acoustic-driven wail, earned her self-titled debut disc a parental-advisory sticker, a rare badge for a folk singer, when it was released last month. "We live in such conservative times," she said with a sigh. Martha, 28, has been active in the Wainwright family way since childhood — singing with her mother from an early age and backing up Rufus since his successful debut in the late '90s — but for years, she resisted the temptations and requests to record her own debut. "In a way, I wasn't champing at the bit to make a record," she said. "There was so much pressure to make a good first record in a family like mine. So there was definitely a conscious delay." Plus, about the time she started thinking seriously about her own music, Rufus' career took off. As his performance schedule thickened, he brought Martha along to sing backup. Their duets, often on French chansons, were the highlight of many concerts. But while the steady work helped spread her name around, it also hampered Martha's own ambitions, ambivalent though they sometimes were. "I got to live vicariously through my brother, the experiences he had as an up-and-coming artist. I wouldn't say that it satisfied my want of those experiences, but I got exposed to it. It taught me the amount of work required if you want to succeed," she said. "It taught me to sing better, too. Rufus wrote parts for me that were very unnatural and different." This is when Martha began discussing her voice, both literally and figuratively, as the major cause for her late bloom. The Wainwright family is crowded with distinctive physical and lyrical voices — Kate's measured control and traditional dignity, Loudon's tongue-in-cheek wit and naked admissions, Rufus' warm murmuring and allusions of grandeur — so Martha had intense competition before she even left the house. Before stepping out with the family name on her product, she wanted to make sure listeners would hear the Martha more than the Wainwright. "I've always had a very defined singing voice," she said in a sandy speaking tone, just faintly hoarse. "The cigarettes don't help. Or maybe they do. You can usually pick me out of a chorus. ... So I always had this voice, and the interest in the songs I was writing. I've written basically the same way since I was 18. In the last six years, living a full life in New York City and on the road with Rufus, I think I've gotten better. The way I do it didn't change much at heart, it just got better. And I realized this might really be what I want to do, where maybe before I wasn't sure. I always felt this was handed to me as the youngest, and I think once I felt secure in my voice, I made the time to let it be heard." There were moments when she wasn't sure about this career choice, certainly. She studied French theater in school and thought that perhaps the best way to distance herself from the Wainwright musical legacy was to pursue something other than music. But in the end, she said, music felt the most natural, and she caved in to the destiny of her DNA. "I mean, there was a time when that was how I was going to rebel — by not being a musician," she said. "That would have hurt the family most, I think. When people ask about 'BMFA,' they say, 'How could you write such a thing?' But in our family, the real way to hurt someone would be to not write the song about it. That's the particular Wainwright dynamic, I guess." Given that song's particular invective, does she get along with Dad? "That's a good question, actually," she said. "We've always had a lot of similarities. We both see that, I think. We recognize each other in each other. And, really, that's a good feeling. It causes problems sometimes, but there are not many people on the planet you have that with. We like to spend time together, taking long walks or out on the sailboat. We're able to take our mind off the music and just sort of live." Martha Wainwright When: 9 p.m. Tuesday Where: Schubas, 3159 N. Southport Tickets: $10 Phone: (312) 559-1212 'Enterprise' lands with thud after four years as the weakest link in the 'Star Trek' chain5/12/2005
By Thomas Conner
© Chicago Sun-Times 'Star Trek: Enterprise' ★1/2 When: 8 p.m. Friday, WPWR-Channel 50 Starring: Scott Bakula, Connor Trinneer, Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Jolene Blalock, Jeffrey Combs When "Star Trek: Enterprise" debuted four years ago as the fifth prime-time incarnation of the venerable sci-fi franchise, trouble was evident in the first few minutes: The opening theme was a Diane Warren song. The blockbuster songwriter — who's penned huge hits for Celene Dion, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Michael Botlon, even (shudder) Milli Vanilli — wrote "Faith of the Heart," which plays over the opening credits along with images of humankind's various achievements in exploration, from the H.M.S. Enterprise to the international space station to the starship Enterprise. The lyrics are typical Warren treacle, full of horrid cliches and vague hopes, promising "a change in the wind" and a chorus questioning "where my heart will take me," whatever that means. And that's exactly what doomed "Enterprise" three seasons earlier than its "Trek" predecessors ("The Next Generation," "Voyager" and "Deep Space Nine"): We were never offered anything for our hearts — or even our heads — to have faith in. That shortcoming remains crystalline-entity clear in the series finale of UPN's "Enterprise," airing in a two-part episode beginning at 8 p.m. Friday on WPWR-Channel 50. While other "Trek" franchises have ended with poignant, grand gestures, "Enterprise" wraps up with a whimper as one character — resurrected from another series — attempts to rediscover his own "faith of the heart." Recognizing that none of the characters in "Enterprise" were ever interesting enough to carry such a weighty episode on their own (a fault of the show's indecisive writing, not of the actors' genuinely engaging performances), franchise curators Rick Berman and Brannon Braga jettison their creation by bringing back a couple of reliable "Trek" heavyweights. The "Enterprise" finale focuses on a dilemma faced by Cmdr. William Riker (the stalwart and sensitive Jonathan Frakes) during a particular episode of "The Next Generation." As he struggles with a decision — he's questioning who to place his faith in — he seeks the usually useless counsel of Troi (Marina Sirtis) and uses the holodeck (a virtual-reality playpen that's been indispensable throughout the franchise) to investigate what happened when the first Enterprise crew wrapped up its service. Premise was brotherhood In typical time-bending fashion, this last "Enterprise" event takes place six years in the future, as Earth prepares to join 18 other planets in an alliance called the United Federation of Planets. This Space Age telescoping of the United Nations was series creator Gene Rodenberry's institutionalized notion of universal (literally) brotherhood. It was the source of the core values for each series, namely the "prime directive" (basically: don't speak to another species unless spoken to). "Enterprise" was supposed to be laying the foundation for that great achievement, making a case for how and why humanity established itself as the hub of intergalactic peace and harmony. Four years of "Enterprise," however, have only shown us a bunch of sleekly uniformed humans covering their own butts. Midway through the series, the story line suddenly shifted radically, a painfully obvious reaction to plummeting ratings and UPN execs crying, "Give us an enemy! We need a Borg! Pander! Pander!" (This was also about the time they added rock guitars to Warren's opening theme, giving a mild edge to the sappy tune.) In the first season, there was a nebulous, uncertain threat from a time-traveling shadow figure with a spooky deep voice who only appeared occasionally; by the third season the time-traveling was completely abandoned (whither the Suliban?) for a protracted battle against a faraway species called the Xindi who were — for some reason, never quite clear — building a Death Star-type weapon, which they intended to schlepp halfway across the galaxy in order to obliterate Earth. An entire season-and-a-half was wasted on this save-the-planet cliche, the conclusion of which was almost entirely implied — and then the Xindi were never mentioned again. It's as if Mr. Nielsen himself were producing the scripts. They're only human Mixed in there was the occasional comic relief (John Billingsley as Dr. Phlox has been an underappreciated treasure) and the inevitable, laughably subdued sexual tension (Braga's trademark distracting influence). We humans bickered with the Vulcans, debated with the Xindi and argued with the Andorians. Our motives always seemed more selfish than selfless. So it's no surprise that this finale fast-forwards several years to the historic moment of unity. We're to assume that eventually the Enterprise crew tapped into some altruism and leadership, and that humanity became worthy of founding the grand and glorious Federation. Add to this failure the natural incongruity of a prequel made more than 30 years and countless special-effects advancements after its origin, and it's really no wonder the audience boldly went. George Lucas has struggled with this same quandary in his "Star Wars" prequels. It's asking a lot of any audience to look at the stunning effects of recent "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" productions and reconcile them with the cardboard sets and bad blue screens of the originals. Really, I mean, look at that fancy, techno-savvy bridge on "Enterprise" — they went from that to the featureless set James T. Kirk stalked in the '60s? That's a lot of disbelief to suspend. "Enterprise" tries to be arch with several in-jokes throughout this episode — "Here's to the next generation," Capt. Archer (Scott Bakula) salutes over a glass of scotch — but even those can't overcome the purely pointless plot. The Andorian Shran returns (he's not dead, after all, but don't expect a satisfying explanation), and he needs the crew's help to save his daughter, who's been kidnapped by ... no one in particular. So that's the last mission of the first starship Enterprise: getting all Kojak on some nameless space thugs. One of the Enterprise crew dies, too — in the most anticlimactic and dramatically pointless death in the history of the franchise. It's a deflation of, not a triumphant conclusion to, the series and the bandwagon — for a while, anyway. In the end, of course, Riker learns to have faith in the right person (we've already seen it play out in "The Next Generation"), but the first Enterprise crew scatters with little evidence of where their hearts will take them. So much for boldness in going. By Thomas Conner
© Chicago Sun-Times When New Order finished playing "Transmission" — a quirky song by New Order's doomed, post-punk predecessor, Joy Division — singer Bernard Sumner hissed and said, "Enough of that rock s---! We want you to start dancing!" And, true to the band's hits-heavy set, they launched into "True Faith" as if it were a brand-new nightclub sensation. Like most of the set Tuesday night at the Aragon Ballroom, these were songs they seemed obliged to play. God forbid a New Order concert should pass without "True Faith," "Bizarre Love Triangle" and the requisite Joy Division chestnut. But during "Transmission," something happened that makes New Order shows still worth seeing after (gulp) a quarter of a century. This band — a British outfit we sometimes know more from dance floors and John Hughes movie soundtracks — actually rocked. Sumner matched the songs' quaint but deceptively foreboding mood with uncharacteristic growling and gurgling (it's a bit low for his range), while bassist Peter Hook barked and shrieked randomly. And for a few minutes, the New Order experience was about pogoing and pumping fists rather than twirling and dancing. Post-punk, indeed. Tuesday's energetic show was spiced with such moments. Given that the band's live incarnation is a genuine guitar-bass-drums-vocals quartet, the occasional use of pre-recorded synthesizers and beats seemed surprisingly intrusive. The best songs were those that allowed guitarist Phil Cunningham to cut loose ("Regret," "Crystal") and let Hook show off his chiming namesake hooks in soloing poses at the edge of the stage (nearly every song, but especially the new "Hey Now What You Doing" and the opener, "Love Vigilantes"). Hook was manic, and once again he proved to be an invaluable asset in the band's attack — something not said about many bass players. Looking like a bedraggled Alan Rickman, Hook prowled the spotlight all night, plucking out the alarmingly simple bass melodies that make New Order, like so many of the British bands from that early '80s era, sound as good in concert and on the dance floor as it does in the car or on an iPod. Sometimes he's providing the groove, sometimes he's taking the melody, often he's doing both. Again, this magic peaked during a Joy Division song, the classic "Love Will Tear Us Apart." It had its typically lumbering moments, but when Hook stopped bellowing indecipherably, dropped the melody and started grinding into his black bass next to drummer Stephen Morris' explosive kit, the two sparked some crackling fire, which Hook tamed to the end with an absurd but wildly cheered one-note solo back at stage's edge. Sumner introduced all the songs — no suspense, no pretensions — cracked jokes and thanked Chicago for waiting 12 years since the band's last local show. And, really, it's that down-to-earth attitude that makes New Order still so engaging at this late date. The band didn't break new ground, by any means, but it rocked — no extended remix required. New Order at the Aragon Ballroom By Thomas Conner
© Chicago Sun-Times Woody Guthrie & Lead Belly "Folkways: The Original Vision — Songs of Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly" (Smithsonian Folkways) ★★★★ In several years of studying the life and legacy of American folk troubadour Woody Guthrie, I've learned one nearly constant truth: Hardly anyone first hears Woody from Woody. They hear his songs performed by Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, The Clash, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Wilco, etc. — and then they go hunting the Guthrie greatest-hits for a taste of the headwaters. Same with Lead Belly, a Guthrie peer who also suffers from lack of name recognition despite the number of artists who have reinterpreted his music. That's why this expanded reissue of this 17-year old collection of both folk songwriters' "hits" is refreshing at this juncture. Not only has Guthrie's cachet increased in the last decade (the founding of the Woody Guthrie Archives, the annual hootenanny of the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival, etc.) but the six extra songs added to this edition remind us of the solidity of Lead Belly's influence of blues and rock, as well. New to this set is his "Gallis Pole," made famous by Led Zeppelin, and "In the Pines," covered by Nirvana. The punk, the blues, some of the rock and a lot of the country out there today — much of it started with these two brave friends. The history is always worth hearing. And wouldn't it be cool to have some scratchy old 78s on your iPod? By Thomas Conner
© Chicago Sun-Times Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion "Exploration" (New West) ★★★1/2 Is Lucinda Williams a tad too Texas for you? Do you quickly weary of Gillian Welch's dour, morphine-soaked songbook? Has Natalie Merchant gone a bit too far "out there" for your taste? Bring it on home with Sarah Lee Guthrie and her husband, Johnny Irion. On their latest and best collaboration, the duo sews up pop, protest, folk and fun into neat little packages that are AAA — Americana, alt-country, aw-shucks — without suffering authenticity or intellect. With this couple's pedigree, there's no need for posing: Sarah Lee is the granddaughter of Woody Guthrie (by way of daddy Arlo); Irion counts John Steinbeck among his ancestors. You couldn't arrange a more dynastic pairing than that, and you could almost forgive someone with those bloodlines for resting on laurels. Both of these singer-songwriters, however, have shown dogged determination to craft their own identifiable personalities. Together they are an arresting harmony — sometimes delicate, sometimes raucous, always purposeful and focused. On "Exploration" (deftly produced by Jayhawk Gary Louris), Sarah Lee effortlessly saunters through songs of love, personal convictions and reverence for nature. She harmonizes with a knowing lilt through Irion's golly-gee love ballad "In Lieu of Flowers" and warbles defiantly through her own well-armed "Cease Fire." Her voice is strong and piercing without being harsh, as if she were Victoria Williams reined-in and trained. She has the urge to ramble and take it easy ("Mornin's Over," "Holdin' Back"); Irion has the urge to cut loose and rock ("Gervais"). When they come together on a cover of Pete Seeger's "Dr. King," they make a serious subject even more profound by making it a knee-slapper. It's a wonderful mixture of social awareness and rollicking fun — tailor-made for a "Sesame Street" appearance (Woody would be so proud) and indicative of their combustible chemistry together. Proof that the occasional alt-country combo can "keep it real," too. |
Thomas Conner
These online "clips" reproduce a self-selection of my journalism (music etc) during the last 20+ years. It's a lotta stuff, but it only scratches the surface. I do not currently possess the time or resources to digitize the whole body of work. These posts are simply a bunch of pretty great days at the office. Archives
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