Tag: chicago

LISTEN: Fort Frances, “Desert Hotel”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Fort Frances
Hometown: Chicago, Ilinois
Song: “Desert Hotel”
Album: The Front Page of the Modern Age
Release Date: November 8, 2019

In Their Words: “California has been a constant theme in my songwriting, but I’ve tended to focus on the very last mile of the coast of The Golden State. ‘Desert Hotel’ steers away from the Pacific toward desolate, uninterrupted beauty. I wrote this song after my wife and I spent a couple of nights somewhere outside Joshua Tree, dreaming of sending a letter to the rest of the world that we planned to vanish into the sands of southern California. The song is rooted in escaping everything — the city lights, city speeds and city noises — and being someone new. — David McMillin, Fort Frances

Photo credit: Ehud Lazin

LISTEN: Jake La Botz, “Are We Saying Goodbye?”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Jake La Botz
Hometown: Chicago, Illinois
Song: “Are We Saying Goodbye?”
Album: They’re Coming For Me
Release Date: Oct 18, 2019
Label: Hi-Style Records

In Their Words: “I wrote this song around the time my mother was dying. I wasn’t consciously writing it about her, but later when I listened to it I realized it was mostly about her. I didn’t grow up with my mother and didn’t know her much until I was 9 years old. At that time we were both living in Detroit and I got know her a bit.” — Jake La Botz

LISTEN: Jonas Friddle, “Famous of Fires”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Jonas Friddle
Hometown: Chicago
Song: “Famous Of Fires”
Album: The Last Place to Go
Release Date: April 12, 2019

In Their Words: “Something I noticed moving from a small town to the city of Chicago at age 26 was how many people were surprised that I was already married. It was funny to me, because a lot of my friends from back home had already been married years earlier. With something like that everyone’s got to decide the right time for themselves. With ‘Famous of Fire’ I just wanted to give an encouragement to those who choose to go at it young and sort out the challenges together.” — Jonas Friddle

Photo credit: Kevin Viol

LISTEN: David Quinn, “Grassy Trails”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: David Quinn
Hometown: Chicago, Illinois
Song: “Grassy Trails”
Album: Wanderin’ Fool
Release Date: April 5, 2019

In Their Words: “‘Grassy Trails’ was a lot of fun to record. It was right in everyone’s wheelhouse stylistically. Dave Roe and Jimmy Lester really were the perfect guys for this track. They set the pace for the rhythm and Jon Estes came in and laid down some nice pedal steel. If you listen close, Jimmy Lester plays my favorite bell pattern in that second chorus. This song has taken a few different shapes since I wrote it but it is one I always play at every show. I know it’s cliché to say this but I have loved trains since I was a kid and always dreamt about riding the rails. I use to go out and sit next to the tracks when I was younger and just watch the trains go by up close. That’s really where the song came from. I grew up reading Jack Kerouac and other beat writers and hearing about their adventures on trains. Those stories always stuck with me and created a feeling I have been chasing ever since. It seemed fit to put it on this record, Wanderin’ Fool.” — David Quinn

Photo credit: Jess Myers

LISTEN: Michael McDermott, “Ne’er Do Well”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Michael McDermott
Hometown: Chicago, Illinois
Song: “Ne’er Do Well”
Album: Orphans
Release Date: February 8, 2019
Label: Pauper Sky Records

In Their Words: “The first time I heard the term ‘ne’er do well’ I must have been 8 or 9 years old. I heard it from my father describing his uncle who ended up dying on skid row in Chicago… That kind of stuck with me I guess. I became a sort of ne’er do well of my own, afflicted with drug and drink, who let his career go to hell and lived for the next fix and drink. Those are just external solutions for internal problems, and what they really need is love, faith, connection. I was always amazed that there was more real discussion about God and Jesus in crack houses than there was in the church I went to. One time in Wayne, New Jersey, I was checking into a hotel and they asked for my name, and I said ‘Ne’er Do Well.’ They asked me, ‘Can you spell that?’ and I just said, ‘Ne’er Do Well, it’s French.’ — Michael McDermott

Photo credit: Tony Piccirillo

LISTEN: On Big Shoulders, “Heavy Traffic Ahead”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: On Big Shoulders, executive producer: Matt Brown
Hometown: Chicago, Illinois
Song: “Heavy Traffic Ahead”
Album: On Big Shoulders
Release Date: November 2, 2018
Label: Allograph Records

In Their Words: “Each On Big Shoulders track has a Chicago connection. We performed new songs from contemporary Chicago songwriters and covered older artists who recorded or lived here, ranging from The Delmore Brothers and Barbara Carr to Wilco and Bill Monroe. ‘Heavy Traffic Ahead’ is the first track. For that Monroe tune, we may have dialed up the ‘blue’ and dialed back the ‘grass.’ You’ll hear Steve Dawson on rhythm guitar and lead vocals, Brian Wilkie on lead guitar, Aaron Smith on bass, and Gerald Dowd on drums.

Produced by Art Satherley, head of country and blues A&R for Columbia Records, Bill Monroe’s recording of ‘Heavy Traffic Ahead’ was made just after 8:00 p.m. on Monday, September 16, 1946, in the WBBM-CBS studio in Chicago’s Wrigley Building. Though not released until 1949, it was the first song cut at this famous session featuring Monroe on mandolin and lead vocals, Lester Flatt on guitar, Earl Scruggs on banjo, Chubby Wise on fiddle, and Howard Watts on bass. The other two songs they recorded that night were ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’ and ‘Toy Heart.’

On Big Shoulders features eleven of my favorite Chicago musicians: Steve Dawson, Brian Wilkie, Aaron Smith, Gerald Dowd, Elise Bergman, Gia Margaret, Keely Vasquez, Liam Davis, Anna & Evan Jacobson, and Liz Chidester. We recorded with engineer Shane Hendrickson at I.V. Lab Studios. Liam Davis co-produced, edited, and mixed the record.” — Matt Brown

Photo credit: Tim Brown

LISTEN: I See Hawks in L.A., ‘My Parka Saved Me’

Posted on by Editor

Artist: I See Hawks in L.A.
Hometown: Los Angeles, California
Song: “My Parka Saved Me”
Album: Live and Never Learn
Release Date: June 29, 2018

In Their Words: “A doo-wop ballad literally based upon our drummer Victoria’s true story about a car crash in the dead of Chicago winter on the banks of Lake Michigan; with narrative and a happy ending. One day in rehearsal, Rob just started playing along and singing her narration as she told the story. Then Paul and Paul chimed in with back up vocals and it felt like we had something unique right there. It’s pretty much just as we created it in that moment in the rehearsal studio.” —Paul Lacques, I See Hawks in L.A.

Photo credit: Melissa Shane

BGS 5+5: Michael McDermott

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Michael McDermott
Hometown: Chicago, IL
Latest Album: Out From Under
Personal Nicknames: Mickey, Murph, Big Dog

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Bob Dylan. It all starts and ends with Zimmy. He’s the greatest.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

Cabaret Metro, Chicago, 1996. The building was moving from people jumping when we opened with “Bells.”

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

I meditate. It centers me, and focuses me.

As you travel around the world, what is the overriding sense you get of the people?

I’m in Oslo as I type this, so I think besides language and clothing, it’s that there are beautiful people everywhere; that we have cultivated that beauty in different ways and some people were never allowed to cultivate it, but it’s there; that the land we come from is only the window dressing of that which lies beneath; and that the loudest people in any airport in the world are undoubtedly American.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

No matter what befalls you, no matter how many times they knock you down, in the words of Jimmy V, “Never ever give up.”

STREAM: Heather Styka, ‘North’

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Heather Styka
Hometown: Chicago, IL
Album: North
Release Date: May 18, 2018

In Their Words: “I was moving back to Chicago while touring a ton, and the 2016 election had created such a bizarre, divisive climate. I was lost. I wrote this album to ask, ‘What now?’ and also to answer that question, as an individual and a citizen. We had so much fun recording with the Sentimentals that the album evolved into this semi-political, tearjerker dance party.” — Heather Styka