93XRT Presents the tandem releases of Nicholas Tremulis Orchestra's "Pinky" and Nicholas Tremulis' debut solo effort, "Little Big Songs" in a series of XRT free shows at two of Chicago's finest...

Pinky Party
Mondays at Schubas 9pm with special guests
June 30 Brad Peterson
July 7 Robbie Fulk,
July 14 Black and Blonde featuring Cliff Johnson of Off Broadway and Mimi Betinis from Pezband
July 21 Jon Langford & Skull Orchard

"An instant classic. Pinky is a fertile reminder of what made you love rock & roll in the first place." --John Farneda/WXRT Chicago

Little Big Songs Party
Thursdays at Hideout 6:30 pm with special guests
July 3 Ezra Furman
July 10 Deanna Davore
July 17 Gary Yerkins
July 24 Rick Rizzo

"I'm a sucker for the doomed singer-songwriter, and Little Big Songs slits its wrists with the best of them." --Lin Brehmer/WXRT Chicago

Nicholas Tremulis don't know small.

An orchestra, not a band. A five-year multi-artist, benefit concert series instead of a one-off.. A well-received collection of swampy, Robert Johnson inspired tunes recorded called "Napoleon", with performances playing with the likes of Los Lobos, The Neville Brothers and Steve Earle. Followed by the year-long digital download odyssey, "52 Reasons", where Nick penned and the band recorded a new tune every week for a year on internet label Reel to Reel.

Both new efforts come via Tremulis' imprint, 52 Reasons, inspired by the same. "Pinky" is the rip-rock yang to the story-telling yin of "Little Big Songs, Nick's first solo effort. The relentless rock & roll bravado that is "Pinky" couldn't be more a polar opposite to the silent and singular fury of "Little Big Songs". Even the ballads seem dangerous, ready to erupt at any moment.

Much of the material for "Little Big Songs" was conceived during Nick's marathon "52 Reasons" year. "A strange thing started to happen to me about a quarter of a year into that project. I began to dream songs while I was sleeping. I've always had wild dreams. The kind that can take more energy out of you than actually being awake. Only this time, they were coming with melodies and chords."

And "Pinky", the balls-out, straight ahead rocker?

"I guess after making a solo record I wanted to make something you couldn't possibly play by yourself. A real rock & roll album... that's the music that made me, man. It's what lives inside of me at every moment. It's why I'm alive. My oldest friends say this is the record I've been trying to make since I was fourteen years old!"

The seed was planted when Nick headed to Austin, to play with long time friend and collaborator Alejandro Escovedo, who at the time was writing for his forthcoming album, "Real Animal". "Alejandro suggested we might write some things together while I was out there for a few days. He said he wanted to make a real rock & roll record and for me to make a cd of all the music that got me hooked on it when I was a kid. The early, raw meat stuff of my childhood." So, Nick and his son hit the garage and started pouring through old albums and 45's. "It was a revelation! So wild and exotic! Without knowing it we both started playing air guitar!"

The perfect outlet and companion to Little Big Songs, a collection of folktales, the musical equivalent of the book "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" by James Agee, a book written about the small and honest lives of people living in the dustbowl during the great depression. Says Nick, "It's so easy these days to turn a single life into a fleeting Internet headline. These songs are all written about defining moments in an individual's life. They're short, just like the action they describe. I wanted them to feel as if they were in real time. Unfolding before your eyes. Fast and short... just like life."

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Cameron McGill & What Army - After being expelled from high school, he worked in bookshops for several years--a usual occupation for budding Chicago songwriters. His first album, Stories of The Knife and The Back (2004), describes a youth who leaves his mountain village to become a poet. The lush instrumentation and beautifully crafted melodies, belie its dark nature. Mostly focusing on personal admissions of guilt and failure, the album's characters struggle with coming to terms with mortality. All throughout, they simply try to find a friend and fall in love. This was followed by Street Ballads & Murderesques (2006), the tale of a schoolboy totally out of touch with his contemporaries, who flees through different cities after his escape from home. The collection of songs on Streets Ballads... takes pop music to the dark libraries of your old house, inhabits a stark and desperate corner of the mind, and simply tells a good story.

Rachel Ries lives in Chicago where she is currently looking for new, divine digs. The necessary things are light, a good kitchen, and freedom to make noise. And that about sums it up. And by "it", I mean It.

Rachel believes that songs are like mountains; steadily, stubbornly forcing their way upwards until air is diminished and all to be done is tumble - on down the other side and not minding one bit the fall. But she can't forget this: the strongest, fiercest ones are those you must strain & stop shuffling to hear. If you're lucky, the drums'll slap you upside the head when they clatter in.

Helping out with the upward clatter & tumble are Ariel Bolles, Nathaniel Braddock, Jason Toth and even Cameron McGill.

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Named after a small town located between their hometown and Fresno, California, Earlimart's dreamy and unconventional song writing resulted in many of comparisons to Elliot Smith and Sparklehorse. Favorites in the Los Angeles indie music scene, Earlimart have released a number of records and have toured successfully all over the country.

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Come check out the famed acoustic blues/ragtime rockers during our Tuesday night residency!

Chicagoist says this in their Pencil This In
Music: Still going strong after all these years, Devil in a Woodpile still draws crowds to the Hideout on a Tuesday night. Their approach to "old timey" music is sincere, and the trio of Rick "Cookin'" Sherry, Joel Paterson, and Tom Ray have amazing chops. This is perfect music to thaw out on a cold night. If you need further enticement, maybe $3 bottles of Newcastle are the perfect tonic.

Old School but never old. Juke Joint, Honky Tonk. Rollin' and Tumblin'.

Devil in a Woodpile are the longest continually performing Bloodshot recording artists in the ten years of Bloodshot's history. Come and celebrate with this venerable institution.

Devil in a Woodpile is still pushin' it every Tuesday night at the Hideout. Every week they rock a crowded bar with no mikes and no amps, transforming the indie music venue into a modern-day barrelhouse.

Tuesdays at the Hideout continue to be warm and intimate nights. I love looking around the back room seeing people talking and laughing. Some people just meet every Tuesday. Devil is in the front just playing away, and folks either listen and drink, or go to the back and conspire and make plans. A time of no particular age, somewhere between the 19th and 21st centuries. It could be 1934, 1974, or 2004. Candles on tables, dreams on minds.

"Every Tuesday night they set up shop right in the middle of the main room. No amps or mics, just balls and bravado. They play blues, ragtime, jazz, everything you could ever want. These are the kind of hangout buddies you can count on to bring the fucking hangout. There is no cover and the PBR is cheap, meaning you'll have plenty of cash to put in the band's tip jar." -Fran Magazine

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Closing out July in grand fashion - a Double Quartet Showdown that combines Mars Williams (saxophones), Jim Baker (keyboards), Brian Sandstrom (bass & electric guitar), and Steve Hunt (drums) with Jeb Bishop (trombone), Dave Rempis (saxophones), Kent Kessler (bass), and Michael Zerang (drums); two of Chicago’s most creative foursomes that work in the field of improvised music today. It was only logical that they meet on one stage to compare notes so to speak. Williams/Baker/Sandstrom/Hunt have been performing every Tuesday for over three years at Hotti Biscotti. In that time they have carved out a language that is extremely varied and flexible, as their record Extraordinary Popular Delusions (Okka Disk) demonstrates. Although Bishop/Rempis/Kessler/Zerang has not been together as long, they have quickly become one of the city’s most creative ensembles. This concert marks the last of their three monthly shows at The Hideout and it is sure to go down as one of the highlights of this year’s programming!

>>>>>DJ Sets: Mitch Cocanig presents In The Townships - The Music of The South African Expatriates

Tim said...
This is a residency that I have dreamed about for 10 years. Ken Vandermark, Mike Reed and friends are coming to the Hideout this Wednesday and every Wednesday forever. The Immediate Sound music series will bring guests from around town and around the world. Ken, Mike, and their friends will either be here at the Hideout, or curating the shows.

Immediate Sound
in Bob Mehr's Reader The Meter

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Pinebender is a rock band from Chicago, Illinois. In autumn of 1997, Matt Clark, Chris Hansen, and Stephen Howard got together to manufacture a series of songs that Hansen had written. Cast in a second-floor bedroom at Stephen's parents' Wilmette, Illinois, home, the music revolved around crawling tempos and loud, soaring guitars.

After relocating the gear to a proper rehearsal spot within city limits, the band set its sights on recording. They booked studio time at Electrical Audio Recording in February 1998. The songs recorded during that session, engineered by Greg Norman, would become the Too Good To Be True EP, an apt title for the long-shelved effort recorded for a fleeing phantom of a record label. The band's first show was played in a backroom bar of a taqueria on Milwaukee Avenue on April Fool's Day. An important lesson was learned that night: earplugs must be recommended to audiences. They played many more shows at local venues such as the Empty Bottle and the now-closed-and-much-missed Lounge Ax.

"Violens... make hallucinatory, '60s inspired pop records akin to Of Montreal imagining kicking it with the Zombies and Joe Meek back in the day. We're releasing their first RCRD LBL single today, the bouncy "Violent Sensation Descends". We've been listening to it all morning and we feel as if a void has been filled." -RCRD LBL.COM

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Brighton, MA is a band from Chicago IL, which could at first glance seem confusing. Taken from front-man Matthew Kerstein's birth place, the name evokes an idea of a home, perhaps one that you can never go back to, even as the four band members build their own home within the name. This is a fundamental element in Kerstein's layered lyrics steeped in a history that remembers the past, only in as much as it informs the present. Following their debut EP in 2007, Amateur Lovers marks their first full-length record and a step forward in the evolution of the band. Kerstein, guitarist Jim Tuerk, bassist Devon Bryant and drummer Sam Koentopp continue to craft Kerstein's songs, adding warm arrangements and finding ways to make each twist and turn feel natural and familiar. From the buttery summer of "Your Sweet Time" to the hissing winter of "The Flood", from the insistent soul glam of "Underground" and the exuberant evolution walk-through in "Eskimos", the band stretch themselves to the edge to find out what can be built to last. With an ear in the past, the band continues to write and work in Chicago, maintaining a clear vision of their own brand of rock and roll.

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Get your craziest dancing shoes on & come out to shake out & break out!

Chicago's indie rock dance party for five years running!

political awareness + good music = dance party

Not Just a Homage to a Great Talking Heads Song...

Life During Wartime started as an idea in the fall of 2002. Chris (Bald Eagle), enraged by the government's turn to more conservative legislation and imperialistic entanglements, wanted to heighten people's political awareness here in Chicago. Bald Eagle also wanted to change the way music was currently being appreciated in the hipster circuit. The Chicago scene had become overrun with snobby fickle indie rockers who refused to smile, refused to dance, and refused to like a band after they got popular. Whatever happened to getting down at a show and shaking your ass? Bald Eagle started djing at some shows around Chicago and then the wheels began to turn in his head.

political awareness + good music = dance party.

It was at this time that Chess (Mother Hubbard) was recruited by the Metro to spin for a few punk rock acoustic nights in Smartbar at the end of 2002 and the first couple months of 2003. Known for her fondness of beer, dancing, trash talking into the microphone, and general public display of making an ass of herself, Mother Hubbard found djing to be the exact outlet that she needed to have fun and play music she loved.

In January 2003, Bald Eagle approached Mother Hubbard with the idea of joining forces and Life During Wartime was born. A dance party with good music for people who love to dance, but don't like "dance" music or meat market nightclubs. To have people gather at a party and have fun, while at the same time promoting political awareness to a large group of young people who are hungry for a change. Bald Eagle brought the new wave, 80s, and indie rock to the table and handled all the booking, while Mother Hubbard brought the electro, punk, and hiphop and handled all the design, merch, and web site production.

After a few months together they got a residency going at the Hideout and they have been going strong ever since, playing anywhere from one to four shows a month, either together or separately, hosting dance parties, showcases, and opening for bands around Chicago.

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