By The Beachwood Freaky Dance Step Affairs Desk
The moonwalk or backslide is a dance technique that presents the illusion that the dancer is stepping forward while actually moving backward.
– Wikipedia

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Posted on June 29, 2009

By Matt Harness
Second of a two-part preview.
Five Bloodshot bands will take to the Illinois Lottery Taste Stage on Saturday for Bloodshot Records Day at the Taste of Chicago. One of them will be the Deadstring Brothers, playing their own brand of red-blooded rock and roll.
Beachwood Music caught up with guitarist and singer Kurt Marschke, a Detroit native, and asked about the band’s date in the Windy City and, as usual, touched on a few other topics, including the Motor City’s meltdown.
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Beachwood Music: Where’s the warm-up for Taste going down?
Kurt Marschke: Marshall, Michigan. In a little honky tonk place in the middle of nowhere with our friends, Whitey Morgan and the 78’s. They are an outlaw country band, straight up the real deal. We do a lot of gigs with them. They are our brother band in Michigan.

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Posted on June 26, 2009

By Matt Harness
First of a two-part preview.
Five Bloodshot bands will take to the Illinois Lottery Taste Stage on Saturday for Bloodshot Records Day at the Taste of Chicago. We asked label co-founders Nan Warshaw and Rob Miller for some insight. We’ll have more on Friday.
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Beachwood Music: How did you get involved with the Taste of Chicago? How did you manage to get your own stage?
Rob Miller: Beats me.
Nan Warshaw: We’ve often had one or two bands play at Taste of Chicago, but this year the festival manager at the Mayor’s Office of Special Events contacted us early on to discuss ideas. The good folks at the Chicago Music Commission helped initiate these discussions.
The city wanted to step up the caliber of the Taste stage and keep it local. They embraced the idea of giving five local labels a day each on the Taste stage. With Bloodshot celebrating our 15th anniversary this year we were able to make this one of our big anniversary kick-off shows. We also like that the Taste is free and open to all.

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Posted on June 25, 2009

By Matt Harness
In a little more than a week, five Bloodshot bands invade Grant Park and take over their own stage at the Taste of Chicago. We here at Beachwood Music decided to lick our lips early and asked Chicago treasure Dean Schlabowske to offer up a menu of his insights. The Logan Square resident plays guitar and sings in both Dollar Store and Waco Brothers, two of the bands that will shower suburbanites with their sweet sounds.
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Beachwood Music: “Schlabowske” sounds like one of SNL’s Super Fans. Where are you from?
Dean Schlabowske: Milwaukee, but I’ve lived in Chicago for 20 years. I’ve lived in the Logan Square/Humboldt Park area for four years. The whole other time I kicked around Bucktown, Wicker Park, Ukrainian Village. I lived in way too many apartments to remember. When I finally got around to buying a place, I had to move a little west.
The truly starving artists got pushed out of there, but I still own a business, the Cellar Rat, in Wicker Park. I’m still pleased with the nice mix of people. People talk like it’s another Lincoln Park. It’s not that quite homogenous yet.

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Posted on June 19, 2009

By Matt Harness
Ha Ha Tonka releases its second album, Novel Sounds of the Noveau South, on Tuesday on Bloodshot Records, so we here at the Bloodshot Briefing desk caught up with lead singer and guitarist Brian Roberts, who lives in Santa Barbara, by phone from Kansas City, where he and the boys were getting ready to hit the road.
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Beachwood Music: Buckle in the Bible Belt went over huge; some publications ranked in the top 20 for 2007. How is this album different, if not better, from your debut?
Brian Roberts: I don’t know if it’s that different, maybe more polished, maybe a slightly bigger sound, a bit more expansive.
We tie in some of the same themes as the first one but to the greater South. The first track is a thesis statement for the record, basically about empowering the individual. People have an inherent goodness.
Whether we succeed or not is up to the listener.

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Posted on June 12, 2009

By Don Jacobson
Dean Schlabowske’s new, Web-only, free-download album Deano Waco Meats the Purveyors is a pure example of artsy electric bluegrass and strangely disturbing gospel hollers. It also reminds us what the world is missing now that Austin’s The Meat Purveyors have all but closed up the butcher shop.

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Posted on June 10, 2009

By Don Jacobson
1. From the Department of Couldn’t Agree More.
Former Oasis guitarist Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs says the group should have broken up years ago, at its height in 1996.
According to music writer Rick Sky of the British entertainment news website Bangshowbiz, Bonehead, who co-founded Oasis with The Fabulous Gallagher Boys, says the group’s legendary shows at Knebworth in 1996 – which the BBC calls the crowning moment of Britpop – should have been the moment to go out on top.

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Posted on June 8, 2009

By Matt Harness
In case you don’t already know, Justin Townes Earle is the 27-year-old son of Steve Earle, the notable country musician/political activist who coincidentally recently released an album of Townes Van Zandt covers. Steve honored his friend and mentor by bestowing Townes’ name to Justin.
I caught up with Justin by phone as he was relaxing in a hotel room preparing for a show in Kent, Ohio. We chatted about his bad-boy days as a teenager in Rogers Park and what he would put on his jukebox, if he had one.
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Beachwood Music: Read where you moved from Nashville to Brooklyn not too long ago. Seems worlds apart. How is NYC treating you?
Justin Townes Earle: I live in Manhattan now. Alphabet City. Being an imagery-based and situational songwriter, you can only go so far in one place. Nashville ran its course, and I moved to New York. The possibilities are endless here. Nothing ever calms down, and nothing gets old. All Southern songwriters should live in New York.
And I happened to get a good deal on an apartment on the Lower East Side, which otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to afford. I’m still young, but I don’t go out to bars. When I was in Brooklyn, I never went to Willamsburg. Here, there’s no yee-haw at 2 a.m. in the hallways and no yee-haw at 2 a.m. outside. Everybody here’s been through that.
Beachwood Music: You lived in Chicago years ago. Where did you live, and what are your memories?

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Posted on June 5, 2009

By Steve Rhodes
The first time I saw Koko Taylor – indeed the first time I heard her – wasn’t here in Chicago but at a show in Tampa in the summer of 1990. I was working at a newspaper in nearby Lakeland at the time. My editor, in his inimitable minimal style, asked me one day: “Blues show. Tampa. Wannago?”
I did, and I was mesmerized. Koko and her band easily fell into that deep soul blues groove that can be so moving. Her rich and deeplly layered voice was one for the ages. That throaty growl! Like she had to clear her throat – but no, please don’t! She always had a crack band with her, and her passion never wavered.
Koko Taylor is gone. She left us with many gifts.
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1. My personal favorite: “I’d Rather Go Blind.”*

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Posted on June 4, 2009

By The Beachwood Critics Affairs Desk
Wilco’s new album, Wilco (The Album), is scheduled for a June 30 release but the reviews are already coming in. (You can hear the streams for yourself.)
Let’s take a look.
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Critic: Greg Kot, Tribune
Review: “Wilco Presents Nuanced Snapshots on Self-Titled Release.”
Verdict: “[A] mostly modest collection of sturdy songs.”
Song Descriptions:
– “”Deeper Down”: “[S]wathed in a lovely, chamber-pop arrangement augmented by harpsichord and sighing lap-steel guitar.”
– “You and I”: “[E]xplores a fragile bond, as voiced by Tweedy and guest vocalist Feist . . . sparse simplicity.”
– “Everlasting”: “[O]rchestral flourishes . . . surges with quiet conviction and finishes with a bird-song guitar solo that echoes the Duane Allman-led coda of Derek and the Dominoes’ “Layla.”

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Posted on June 2, 2009