She's Electric

11/24/09

Crying Over Lucinda Williams

“Motherless children have a hard time when their mother’s dead,” drawls a surprisingly chipper Lucinda Williams tonight at the Park West Theater. The venue is a bit of change for me and I almost miss the throng of drunken haircut hipsters and the bruises from their ill-placed Blackberries. A couple of Baby Boomers sway to the music as the woman of the pair sips daintily on a Heineken. Her first and last of the evening.In this world of six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon, I am proud to say that I am exactly one degree away from this amazing woman strutting the stage in purple leopard-print jeans. Picture it, Michigan, 1995. An angry young girl with an acoustic guitar and a dream meets a handsome older guitarist and producer with a past. I was that girl and the guitarist was...

Posted at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments: 0

11/17/09

Running with Nicole Atkins

Some voices elevate. Some voices resonate. And still others can make unwitting concert attendees break out into a cold sweat by sheer magnitude. Nicole Atkins has one such Richter-defying voice. It flexes the same strength-through-heartbreak muscle that made Patsy Cline go walking after midnight, rich and velvety, it hovers and soars like a living thing through the walls of the Subterranean tonight. One listen to “The Way It Is,” from her 2007 Columbia release Neptune City and you’ll know what I’m talking about.But writing good heartbreak songs takes a bit of hard living and tonight we reminisce about Atkins’ early days in New York City. “I was staying in my car a bunch,” she explains from a red leather booth in the corner that feels sort of...

Posted at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments: 1

11/10/09

Girl in a Coma

Girl in a Coma is running late tonight. With two back-to-back shows on opposite sides of town, it isn’t really that surprising. I park in front of a 7-Eleven and wait with a bunch of bored-looking cab drivers. We stare into the floor-to-ceiling windows of a condo across the street at a man clad in sweatpants. He drinks glass after glass of Tropicana Orange Juice. “Why is he drinking so much orange juice,” we collectively wonder. “And why, with a place like that, can’t he afford curtains?”My cell phone rings and I finally hustle into Rockhouse, where Phanie Diaz sorts through parts of her drum kit. “Hi, I’m Phanie,” she smiles. I tell her that I drum. It’s like telling Jeff Gordon, “Yeah, I like to take the old Chevy down...

Posted at 02:01 AM | Permalink | Comments: 0

11/03/09

Never Sick of Sarah

It’s one of those totally surreal moments in rock journalism. I’m in the basement of Chicago’s Rockhouse club with the five members of Sick of Sarah and we are discussing soup. “It’s enchilada but it looks like queso dip,” laments Abisha Uhl the dynamic lead singer of the Minneapolis rockers of her dinner. “We don’t always get to eat the greatest of things. But this shit? This is wrong.”“Tell us how you really feel,” deadpans cute-as-a-button drummer Brooke Svanes. I’ve been known to moonlight as a drummer occasionally and listening to some of the percussion fills on their self-titled debut makes me more than a little jealous of her talent with the sticks.Of course, cuteness has been a bit of a double-edged sword...

Posted at 01:12 PM | Permalink | Comments: 0

10/22/09

The Taking of Versailles

Tonight it’s raining and I’m sloshing through puddles on the way to Beat Kitchen in Chicago to check out This Is Versailles. I sit in my car outside of the venue and wait until a “cool time” to arrive, which I clock at being about fifteen minutes later than it is now. I’m never late. I’m nerd-early because I’m a journalist, and as veteran rock critic Lester Bangs tells young William Miller in the film Almost Famous, journalists are “uncool.”Even the hot lesbian ones.I sneak inside and lean against the grimy wall in a way that I hope makes me look thin. Onstage and running through a pretty intense soundcheck are three dudes and Caitlin Garibaldi. “That’s the kind of band that I wanted to be in,” she maintains....

Posted at 06:20 PM | Permalink | Comments: 1

	11/24/09 Crying Over Lucinda Williams “Motherless children have a hard time when their mother’s dead,” drawls a surprisingly chipper Lucinda Williams tonight at the Park West Theater. The venue is a bit of change for me and I almost miss the throng of drunken haircut hipsters and the bruises from their ill-placed Blackberries. A couple of Baby Boomers sway to the music as the woman of the pair sips daintily on a Heineken. Her first and last of the evening.In this world of six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon, I am proud to say that I am exactly one degree away from this amazing woman strutting the stage in purple leopard-print jeans. Picture it, Michigan, 1995. An angry young girl with an acoustic guitar and a dream meets a handsome older guitarist and producer with a past. I was that girl and the guitarist was... Posted at 12:16 PM \| Permalink \| Comments: 0
	11/17/09 Running with Nicole Atkins Some voices elevate. Some voices resonate. And still others can make unwitting concert attendees break out into a cold sweat by sheer magnitude. Nicole Atkins has one such Richter-defying voice. It flexes the same strength-through-heartbreak muscle that made Patsy Cline go walking after midnight, rich and velvety, it hovers and soars like a living thing through the walls of the Subterranean tonight. One listen to “The Way It Is,” from her 2007 Columbia release Neptune City and you’ll know what I’m talking about.But writing good heartbreak songs takes a bit of hard living and tonight we reminisce about Atkins’ early days in New York City. “I was staying in my car a bunch,” she explains from a red leather booth in the corner that feels sort of... Posted at 12:59 PM \| Permalink \| Comments: 1
	11/10/09 Girl in a Coma Girl in a Coma is running late tonight. With two back-to-back shows on opposite sides of town, it isn’t really that surprising. I park in front of a 7-Eleven and wait with a bunch of bored-looking cab drivers. We stare into the floor-to-ceiling windows of a condo across the street at a man clad in sweatpants. He drinks glass after glass of Tropicana Orange Juice. “Why is he drinking so much orange juice,” we collectively wonder. “And why, with a place like that, can’t he afford curtains?”My cell phone rings and I finally hustle into Rockhouse, where Phanie Diaz sorts through parts of her drum kit. “Hi, I’m Phanie,” she smiles. I tell her that I drum. It’s like telling Jeff Gordon, “Yeah, I like to take the old Chevy down... Posted at 02:01 AM \| Permalink \| Comments: 0
	11/03/09 Never Sick of Sarah It’s one of those totally surreal moments in rock journalism. I’m in the basement of Chicago’s Rockhouse club with the five members of Sick of Sarah and we are discussing soup. “It’s enchilada but it looks like queso dip,” laments Abisha Uhl the dynamic lead singer of the Minneapolis rockers of her dinner. “We don’t always get to eat the greatest of things. But this shit? This is wrong.”“Tell us how you really feel,” deadpans cute-as-a-button drummer Brooke Svanes. I’ve been known to moonlight as a drummer occasionally and listening to some of the percussion fills on their self-titled debut makes me more than a little jealous of her talent with the sticks.Of course, cuteness has been a bit of a double-edged sword... Posted at 01:12 PM \| Permalink \| Comments: 0
	10/22/09 The Taking of Versailles Tonight it’s raining and I’m sloshing through puddles on the way to Beat Kitchen in Chicago to check out This Is Versailles. I sit in my car outside of the venue and wait until a “cool time” to arrive, which I clock at being about fifteen minutes later than it is now. I’m never late. I’m nerd-early because I’m a journalist, and as veteran rock critic Lester Bangs tells young William Miller in the film Almost Famous, journalists are “uncool.”Even the hot lesbian ones.I sneak inside and lean against the grimy wall in a way that I hope makes me look thin. Onstage and running through a pretty intense soundcheck are three dudes and Caitlin Garibaldi. “That’s the kind of band that I wanted to be in,” she maintains.... Posted at 06:20 PM \| Permalink \| Comments: 1

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