GoodTimeTonight is a blog about Fiddles and Banjos and Guitars and Folk and Roots music and Country and the Blues and Americana and Chicago and the midwest and America.
Are the dog days of summer getting to you yet? Come sit in the air conditioned Grafton have a cool gumball head beer and hear some hot fiddle. This month our good friend
Maria McCullough and Friends will be performing 2 sets! Maria is a teacher at the Old Town School as well as a member of several hundred groups including the fiddle/banjo duo, Sleepy Lou (www.sleepylou.com). It’s Maria mania, and I’m on my own to open this month.
NOTE our different time this month! we are the second Wednesday of August.
Performing
Maria McCullough w/ Judy Higgins and Arielle Luckmann
AND
Maria McCullough w/ Yahví Pichardo
Wed August 10th, 9pm @ the Grafton Pub
Always Free!
Friends, it’s July already
Join us again the first Wednesday in of the month
Good Time Tonight @ the Grafton Pub
with very special guests, the infamous
ED HOLSTEIN
Ed is a wonderful singer and songwriter. From Sing Out: “Although Eddie Holstein has been a stalwart of the Chicago folk scene for more than 40 years, he’s probably as well known for his involvement in such fabled clubs as Somebody Else’s Troubles and Holstein’s – which he co-owned with his brothers Alan and the late Fred – as he is as a performer. ”
Ed is a great singer and a hilarious performer. Don’t miss this one!
Wed July 6th @ 9PM
THE GRAFTON PUB & GRILL
4530 N. Lincoln • Chicago •773.271.9000
Good Time Tonight Presents,
THE SECOND ANNUAL DOUG ESSE MEMORIAL
FIVE STRING BANJO CACOPHONY
Time
Wednesday, June 1 at 9:00pm – June 2 at 12:00am
Location
The Grafton Pub, 4530 N Lincoln Ave
Come on out to the Grafton pub the first week in june to celebrate the summer and the banjo. This month we are thrilled to present the Second Annual Doug Esse Memorial Five String Banjo Cacophny. A lot of great banjos, and performers and noise. This is going to be a good one!
Pickin by these folks and more!
Deborah Fausch
Stacy holzwarth
peggy browning
Jonas Friddle
Chris Gackenheimer
Jason McInnes
Ellen Shepard
Rich Kurowski
Suzanne Strom
Mark Dvorak
Dan Gasperut
Wedensday May 4th (Every First Wed!)
about 9:15 in the back!
It’s all folk music! Dan and Chris’ variety show rolls on. It pits performers from the roots of the traditional music scene against the new crowd of budding Chicago musicians.
Are you in the market for having your head blown?
Finally, the match up you never thought would happen. Corey Lyons from Chicago’s MILLIONS along with, from the Old Town School, my great friends from the Spontaneous Folk Ensemble.
Some of you may know my friend Corey Lyons from his most recent project, the hard rolling band MILLIONS or maybe from the organic melodies of OAO or the Smooth Sounds of THE JIZZ WHALERS. But I’ve just know him as Corey, one of the most creative individuals I’ve ever met, I’m super excited to have him as our guest this month. I’m totally excited to see what he’ll come up with.
Also, The Spontaneous Folk Ensemble is a long running class at Old Town School lead by Mark Dvorak. The group brings what they got every week to share and sing together. I’ve had the pleasure of sitting in this class this session. At the show this month we’ll have several of the class members perform some of their favorites, and maybe we’ll get the whole room a singing.
Hey Guess what? We’re going on the road..or up the road..well pretty close to my apartment anyway. The blog is starting a music series at the Grafton Pub. Our inagural show is Wednsday Feb 9th @ 9pm. The idea is to have a pair of guests each time and my band ‘Chris and Dan’ back them up. It should be a good old time.
I actually really can’t believe how well this one is coming together. We have some great guests and some amazing guests and bless their hearts for casting in with us. The first, Pamela Maurer of The Barehand Jug Band is a wonderful singer and player and percussionist. The Jug Band is one of my favorite bands right now; If you haven’t seen them I highly encourage it. They play old Jug Band standards as well as some unlikely contemporary songs. Plus the horn section makes the “Jug Band” label really seem too simple to describe range of these guys. The second, Jeremy Miller of Rambos is one of my favorite songwriters. You may know him from previous projects around Chicago like The Butchers Boy or with Joe Pug. His current band, Rambos, is really fun, loud and bluesy but my favorite is Jeremy by his lonesome.
I can’t wait, and neither should you!
Good Time Tonight’s Live Music! @ the Grafton Pub 4530 North Lincoln 9pm Free!
Mavis’ last album ‘Live Hope at the Hideout’ was recorded here in Chicago and is really great as well. I’m defiantly looking forward to this. Or as Mavis says about Jeff Tweedy, “ It’s so new to me to sing with different phrases. If I could write a song like that, nobody could say nothing to me, I would get the big head”
I’m going to Brooklyn! May 22-23 the Jalopy Theater’s Brooklyn Folk Festival is going on and it looks pretty good. I’ve been following the Down Home Radio Show’s podcasts for a while now and they always have something interesting going on at the theater. I’m looking forward to this. You should come too!
Here’s a recording of Studs Terkel interviewing the great chicago banjo picker Fleming Brown. Fleming sits with Studs as he explains and plays some songs. During this interview Fleming describes the song “Flag of Blue, White and Red” as an anti-union song he picked up around mines in southern Illinois. Fleming later admitted, in an interview in I Come For To Sing magazine, that he made this song up himself and passed it off as a found song. It was a pretty big admission at the time as Fleming was somewhat of a figurehead in the scene around that time. It’s interesting compared to someone like Bob Dylan’s, who’s made a carrear out of ”creative licence” with his past. I’ve been trying to dig this interview up in the Old Town School resource center; I’ll post it when I find it!
I picked up both of these albums this week and they are both worth checking out.
Drilling For Oil: Jonas Friddle
Jonas is an excellent banjo picker living in Chicago. He hosts a few jams bi-weekly around Chicago and I’ve seen him with his other band, The Barehand Jug Band, around town. This solo album is every bit as excellent as those other projects and more so. Jonas’s banjo and guitar picking style on this album reminds me of John Hartford’s, both minimal and full at the same time. Excellent dynamically and with a great rhythm that just carries you along through the whole album. My favorite records make me want to learn how to play them and this one is no exception.
Peter K. Siegel & Eli Smith: Twelve Tunes For Two Banjos
Eli is the host of the Down Home Radio Show so I had been following him for a while but I hadn’t picked up his album until now. This is a great album of clawhammer banjo duets. Peter and Eli compliment each other quite nicely, and this album is just great to listen to. As a clawhammer student myself it’s always great to get another reference to work from and here eli covers a lot of standards and some obscure things like “Ever See the Devil Uncle Joe?” which reminds me of Holy Modal Rounders version of the same. Also Peter’s voice sounds like kind of a folky Frank Zappa which I like.
The Pete Seeger documentary, The Power of Song will be shown for free this Sunday Feb 28 at 8pm. If you haven’t seen it, here’s a good chance. This was a very good film and I had to drive all the way to deerfield to see it last time. Check it out.
The Power of Song @ the Empty Bottle. Sunday, Feb 28th 8pm
