Join us for a special evening as home recording pioneer Linda Smith teams up with
musician and songwriter Nancy Andrews for a rare live performance. Linda and Nancy
will play songs from their collaborative album A Passing Cloud along with a selection of
material from Linda’s series of reissued works on Captured Tracks. Also performing is
Nervous Boy, the solo debut of Dave Trumfio (Pulsars, Mekons), along with an
opening set by founding Mekon and Hideout luminary minstrel Jon Langford.
A pioneer of the home recording movement, Linda Smith’s work with four-track
production in the late ’80s found her at the beginning of a movement that would set the
pace for decades of indie rock that followed. Her early approach to bedroom pop was
revisited on the 2021 Captured Tracks compilation Till Another Time: 1988-1996, a
collection that helped bestow rightful critical acclaim to the ahead-of-her-time artist.
Shortly after the release of the retrospective, Smith teamed with old friend and
collaborator Nancy Andrews, rekindling the creative partnership the two had begun in
the early ’80s, for the set of new songs that made up their 2023 album A Passing Cloud.
The following year, the reissue series continued, with Nothing Else Matters (1995) and I
So Liked Spring (1996) each showcasing the mesmerizing charm of Smith’s
songwriting, often compared to the likes of the Velvet Underground and Laurie
Anderson. What unites these artists’ work above all is an avant-garde sensibility, and as
such, Smith’s catalog continues to resonate with new listeners nearly 30 years later.
Making his Chicago solo debut as Nervous Boy is Windy City expat turned Los
Angeleno Dave Trumfio (Pulsars, Mekons). Trumfio started his DIY/indie music journey
with cassette recorders and early home consumer multitracks in his parent’s basement
in the early ’80s. Releasing cassettes of his self-recorded music lead him to a lifelong
career as a producer/recorder of likeminded artists such as Built To Spill, Wilco, Stuart
Moxham (Young Marble Giants), and the legendary punk rock collective The Mekons,
with whom he now serves as bassist and resident recorder among other roles.
Following the recent reissue of the long-lost debut album by his late-90s band Pulsars,
Nervous Boy showcases Trumfio’s songwriting while leaning heavily on his DIY roots.
This show is his first solo performance in Chicago and will feature entirely unreleased
new music.
Joining the festivities to kick off the night is a man familiar to Hideout audiences – Jon
Langford, the musician and artist best known as a founding member of the punk band
The Mekons, the post-punk group The Three Johns, and the alternative country
ensembles The Waco Brothers and Pine Valley Cosmonauts.
