Rock, Pop, Etc Search
312-923-2000Freakwater, Nora O'Connor
Mon., Jan. 21, 8 p.m.Rock, Pop, Etc
The music industry is notorious for chewing up artists and spitting them out—starting a band rates pretty low as a career decision. That’s why bands built on friendship, fun, and love of the craft often last the longest. Janet Bean and Catherine Irwin, who both grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, started singing together in their late teens for the joy of it—they’d break into song while, say, washing dishes—and in the late 80s they formed Freakwater. They haven’t released a new album since 2005 and both are active to varying degrees with solo projects, but they still come together every now and then, and this week they’ll perform in Chicago for the first time in more than seven years, supported by longtime bassist Dave Gay and guitarist Jim Elkington (Bean’s partner in the Horse’s Ha) and focusing on material from 1994’s Feels Like the Third Time. In all likelihood the distinctive weave of their voices, broken in after so many years like a favorite pair of jeans—Bean’s is refined, Irwin’s relatively coarse—will make it feel like no time at all has passed. Old friends just fall back into their groove. —Peter Margasak Nora O’Connor opens.
Backyard Cohort, Michael "Magoo" McGohan, Chris Buehrle, Dave Hamilton
Mon., Jan. 21, 8 p.m.Rock, Pop, Etc
Johnny Young, Michael Vallera, MT Coast, Double Morris
Tue., Jan. 22, 9:30 p.m.Rock, Pop, Etc
In the duo Cleared, multi-instrumentalist Michael Vallera launches surges of jagged guitar chords and looming electronic fog banks against Steven Hess’s unyielding drumbeats. In solo settings Vallera sticks to an electric guitar and pedals, but his music hardly sounds limited; without another player to establish a rhythm or set boundaries, he stirs up masses of sound that feel as big as weather systems. Tone and texture can vary drastically from one set to the next; I’ve heard him drone like a squadron of WW II bombers and swirl like he was auditioning for the Cocteau Twins, and on the upcoming EP Dead Suns (Nihilist) he lets fly with some shredding that sounds like someone fed steel girders into a lumber mill. —Bill Meyer Johnny Young headlines; Michael Vallera, MT Coast, and Double Morris open.
$8, free with RSVP at rsvp@emptybottle.com
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