Sammy please come home!

Will someone please tell Eddie Van Halen to get Michael Anthony back in the band?! To send positive energy to our heroes in VH as they prepare for their "tour," Pearl and I will be including a cover of "Ice Cream Man" in our set at the Montrose. I would try to include a tune from the Sammy era, but my voice can't drive 55 like the Red Rocker. Cabo wabo, people!

Upcoming shows! Psychedelic Short Punks!

If you visit our My Space page, you'll get more details on several of our upcoming shows. We're very happy to be playing with several other excellent Chicago bands in the coming months, including the Sam Saunders Machine, The Lusties, Phil Angotti, and Sweetish. We'll also be recording a show for the Chicago Acoustic Underground podcast on March 15th, which I guess will be our Ides of March/Julius Caesar tribute show. I will post more details on this excellent Chicago music show as we get closer to the date. If you can't stop by to see us Saturday, February 24th at the Montrose or Friday, March 2nd at Fizz, you can catch me making weird drone noises on my Reverend Flatroc Tuesday, February 27th as part of the Plastic Crimewave Vision Celestial Guitarkestra at the Empty Bottle. According to the Chicago Reader and Time Out Chicago, Plastic Crimewave has gathered around 50 musicians, mostly guitarists, to create a Glenn Branca/Sun Ra-like drone in the key of E major for 30 minutes. As many of my current and former bandmates will tell you, I can drone with the best of them (my students might say the same thing), so expect lots of alternate tunings and echoes courtesy of my home-made SHAZAM! delay box. Let's see if we can invoke the spirit of Syd Barrett and the Gods of the Norse Winds at the same time!

New CD soon!

Pearl and I are about half-way finished with our second album. So far we have basic tracks for five songs, including "Good All Over," "Jukebox Baby," "Waves," "Magic Box" and "(Take Me Home) Joey Ramone." We are still deciding on the tracks for the rest of the album, but it will probably include a new version of "Cover Band," "I Wanna Live," "Come On," "Footsteps," and possibly "Northern Spy" or "Lost Bird." This second CD is much closer to our current live sound than the first album we recorded last summer...so far there are no bass tracks and more keyboards courtesy of the our Casio. We've also been experimenting with samples courtesy of the Boss RC-2 Loop Station. The version we've done of "Magic Box" is built almost entirely of guitar, feedback, and cello loops triggered by the Loop Station. The new CD sounds very high tech, but in many ways it is more simple and direct than the songs we finished last summer. Pearl is making sure my Eno tendencies do not take over...!