By Don Jacobson
What is the meaning of this strong connection between goats and bars in Chicago? I have detected new evidence of the curious goat/tavern karma here. As if one all-too-popular bar that fetishizes the animal isn’t way more than enough, now there’s another popular watering hole in town that’s sporting a thing for horned ruminants.
The big difference is this one features some pretty tasty roots music and hasn’t yet been turned into a Hollywood version of itself. And not only that, instead of that petting-zoo alcoholic creature that Billy Sianis brought for company to the 1945 World Series, the Charleston in Bucktown has a much more formidable rocky mountain goat as its icon. Stuffed, of course, and in prominent view of the unique, in-the-round stage the place has.
Goats and bars. The first one is pretty bad karma, I think, because it reminds us of being losers every time we’re about the reach the brass ring. So if that’s not good, isn’t it probably time for a goat that’s associated with Chicago’s alt-country scene – which to my way of thinking exudes some of the best karma the city has to offer – to take its place? I actually envy the Charleston goat, and would go so far as to say I want to be that goat, unlike the Cubs’ billy goat (which probably ended up getting served as faux cheez-borger down on Lower Michigan Ave.) That’s because the new goat gets to see some great music for free in what’s being talked about in several local publications as a laid-back, pretension-free music zone at Charleston and Hoyne in Bucktown. Assuming such a thing is indeed possible, it might be worth getting in early at its reportedly packed weekend shows.
It at least has a big fan in Perdita, mistress of Three Hours Past Midnight, who raves about the performance of Strobe Recording’s Jim Frazier there and admits the goat got the better of her:
I might start considering spending more time there. I like the ambience, and the smokelessness, and, of course, the goat. I mean, what sort of hardhearted asshole wouldn’t be charmed by half a stuffed goat in a paper hat and a feather boa? I mean, really.
And Frazier seems kind of typical for the place’s musical stylings. When he’s not busy running Strobe Recording on Division Street in Humboldt Park (engineering for such bands as Bakelite 78, Lucky 7s, Filisko & Noden), he’s playing a brand of sometimes-dreamy, pop-influenced acoustic country rock, including “‘Cause of You,” a Woody Guthrie-style lament wherein the hurtin’ line goes, “I’ll drink until I see double, and I’ll smoke till I turn blue, if they ask me just why I do it, I’ll tell them it’s all ’cause of you.” Yeah, it hurts, baby, but maybe not as much if it’s at a cool bar.
Frazier says he’s working on a John Prine tribute album at Strobe Recording that could include his frequent musical partner, Tim Menard, another Bucktown regular and member of the roots rock band Fallen Angels. These guys and their buddies seem to be the house band at Charleston. Looking at its calendar, coming up in August are such pickin’ bands as Hardscrabble, Blue Line Rider, and Honeysuckle Rose.
It gets me to thinking that maybe that drunken old goat downtown has made enough cheese for one lifetime.
Majors Junction Meet-Up
Majors Junction is a Chicago band whose stated goal is to get you to feel you’re stuck in some God-forsaken desert dive bar. It’s where they say they want their music to take you, a pensive locale whose name they share:
As you approach Majors Junction at sunset you can see the hazy desert stretch for miles in every direction; three U.S. Highways meet here where the neon beer lights glow under the pink sky. The absence of company is obvious, you are isolated here. It is a place where the laws of the old west are still alive, visitors are welcome but trouble is met with the barrel of a gun.
The only standing structure for 30 miles in every direction is this bar in the Nevada desert, you push open the doors to discover a place where weary travelers have sat for many a beer and whiskey. You hear the old juke box in the corner playing an old country waltz and the slot machines chiming in time. A lone bartender awaits his orders, leaning your way with his straight arms firmly placed where you can see them. The one patron sits at the end of the bar and glances at you for a moment through his glass and then squares back up to the bar.
With its population of two people and a dog named dog, Majors Junction symbolizes the stand-alone maverick qualities of the band that shares its name.
I like that this town has a dog named dog. And the bartender kind of sounds like the one from It’s a Wonderful Life, the mean bastard who threatens to kick the crap out of Jimmy Stewart when he’s so obviously harmless and confused (that just wasn’t right). Or maybe Moe the Bartender, the well-known floor hockey champion.
Anyway, once the members of the band Majors Junction (veterans Mike Mulcahy, Heather O’Brien, Benjamin Nusbaum, Colin Williams and newcomers Michael Scott Duplessis and Jay Septoski) made their way back from the lawless frontier in one piece, they started working on a new album tentatively called Confluence on North of Nashville Records. (Maybe that’s referring the confluence of those three U.S. highways to hell they mentioned.) The disc is likely to be another dose of the hard-edged western blues rock that evidenced on their first album, “A Desert Oasis.”
Posted on July 31, 2006