#evanston space

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Rose City Band & Powers/Rolin Duo Live Show Review: 7/28, Evanston SPACE

Rose City Band

BY JORDAN MAINZER

The title of Rose City Band's fifth album, Sol Y Sombra (Thrill Jockey), translates to "sun and shadow." Bandleader Ripley Johnson isn't hiding his intentions. "With Rose City Band, I'm generally trying to make uplifting music, good time music,” Johnson said in the lead-up to the record's January release. “This time I couldn't avoid the shadow being more of a presence." Within the band's formula, changes are usually fine-drawn; tempos slow, but not radically. On paper, nothing on Sol Y Sombra sounds out of the ordinary. Dig deeper, and it reveals itself to be a moodier affair, indeed. Johnson's guitar exudes melancholy on opener "Lights on the Way". "Such a funny thing, here in the darkness once again," he sings on "Rolling Gold". On a couple songs, he conquers the loneliness with love, music, and drugs. Yet, Sol Y Sombra ends with Johnson's ever-reliable car breaking down on the highway. "We're falling out, I know / In the way I go," he sings on plaintive album closer "The Walls". If 2020 career standout Summerlong was a blinders-on, chooglin' fest in a tumultuous summer, Sol Y Sombra faces the world head-on.

Rose City Band

On Monday at SPACE, Rose City Band applied the ethos of Sol Y Sombra to their back catalog. As much as they alternated between gentle, textured meandering ("In The Rain", "Dawn Patrol") and buoyant jamming ("Only Lonely", "Moonlight Highway), what stood out about their performance was how much it didn't wish to lull you into a groove. That is, even if the timbres didn't suggest somber feelings, they exemplified the band's newfound realism. Paul Hasenberg's keyboards practically screamed on the country chugging "Slow Burn". "Mariposa" chaotically journeyed from funk/soul/R&B into jazz-inflected quiet. And on "El Rio", Johnson--often subdued in his guitar solos--truly let it rip, pedal steel player Barry Walker Jr. riffing with one hand and sipping beer with the other (when he put down his tambourine).

Rose City Band

I found it fitting that, were you to come into Monday night concentrating on Sol Y Sombra's comparatively gloomy vibes, Johnson and company chose to further subvert your expectations, including tunes from the record that realize the sun rises after dusk. "Every soul parting turns to gold," Johnson sang on "Wheels", its "Free Fallin" rhythm and John Jeffrey's shuffling drums giving way to a fervent electric guitar solo. On the circular "Seeds of Light", Johnson offered additional pearls of wisdom: "Seeds of gold are forged in fires burning," and "in darkness lies a story," his guitar and Hasenberg's keys the omniscient narrators. While Rose City Band may never totally turn heel, their ability to stray from a blueprint has been on display this year.

Powers/Rolin Duo

Opening was the Powers/Rolin Duo, the aptly named group formed by hammered dulcimer player Jen Powers and guitarist Matthew Rolin. They represented an inspired touring partner for Rose City Band, occupying the space at the very experimental end of the jam band spectrum. Their compositions were shimmering, formless, and epic. After finishing one, Rolin remarked, "We're gonna play a different ditty now...or whatever that was." And after the Powers/Rolin Duo's galloping second song, RCB's Walker Jr. and Jeffrey joined them for a final tune. Walker Jr. and Jeffrey's presence was subtle as ever, never rising above a sour twang or off-kilter beats, respectively, letting Powers and Rolin control the moment. All in all, every musician on stage on Monday seemed to share a similar collaborative philosophy, their contributions both an opportunity for individual expression and a means to an end.

Powers/Rolin Duo

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Same Waves, Whitney Johnson & Lia Kohl Live Show Review: 2/5, Evanston SPACE

Same Waves (from left to right: Lindsay Anderson, Jim Gifford, Gros Pokossi, Wes Reno)

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Given that you can find almost anything online these days, it's refreshing to go to a show where you have no idea what sounds will emanate from the stage. Such is often the case with improvisational jazz or experimental music, but rarely with singer-songwriter material. Wednesday night at SPACE, both Same Waves (the project of L'Altra vocalist and keyboardist Lindsay Anderson) and longtime collaborators Whitney Johnson and Lia Kohl presented unreleased pieces, and in the case of Same Waves, a formally unannounced collection. How each act chose to go about with their showcase was different yet equally rewarding.

The last we heard of Same Waves was 2020's Designations: Dunes, a release billed to Same Waves + Hibernis. (Both were at one point described as Anderson's project with Hefty Records founder and soundscape artist John Hughes; I'm not sure whether Hughes is involved anymore with Same Waves.) So when Anderson entered with a totally different band--guitarist Wes Reno, fretless bassist Gros Pokossi, and drummer Jim Gifford--and placed a selection of books at the forefront, I knew we were in for something new. As it turns out, those books, which included works by British surrealist painter and novelist Leonora Carrington, as well as by Lewis Carroll--contextualize the latest from Same Waves, a three-part love story rock opera.

Anderson

Before the band played a note, Anderson took the time to tell the story of the work and why she wrote it. The plot itself is simple enough: an "old, disillusioned" Alice goes back to Wonderland, falls in love with a Prince Charming-type character who turns into a wolf, and Alice escapes. The inspiration behind the story gave it extra weight. Anderson admitted to the crowd last night that she's "never not written a love song," something she used to think of as a shortcoming but now embraces. After all, isn't the phenomenon of love and why we seek it out the greatest existential question? Anderson was inspired by Carrington's life, starting with Carrington first witnessing the paintings of German surrealist Max Ernst and declaring that she was in love with him, having never even met Ernst. Of course, Carrington eventually did meet Ernst in London, Ernst separated from his wife, and Carrington and Ernst began a love affair and artistic collaboration. After Ernst was arrested twice--first by the French for being an illegal alien, then by the Gestapo for his degenerate art--he fled to the United States with the help of Peggy Guggenheim, who he would marry and remain married to for a few years. A heartbroken, devastated, and anxious Carrington was admitted into an asylum and treated with shock therapy and barbiturates. She was released from the asylum to be sent to a sanitorium in South Africa and managed to escape while on her journey, in Portugal. With the help of Mexican poet and journalist Renato Leduc and a convenience marriage to him, Carrington ended up in Mexico, where she would have a hugely fruitful and influential career up until her death in 2011, at the age of 94.

It's easy to see why anyone with a penchant for storytelling would be inspired by Carrington's life. Anderson, specifically, though, crafted a tale around universal artistic themes: the power and seduction of love, finding and exploring a muse, taking stock of and cultivating your own agency. The songs themselves were certainly fervent, and their instrumental arrangements appropriately expansive and epic. Reno's licks were the emotive heartbeat, bluesy and distorted. Pokossi's bass was the wiry, slinky backbone, keeping it all together. Gifford's drums crashed to dramatic flair. Of course, theater was sometimes the point; when performing "The Wolf", Anderson donned a fur vest. At the center were her vocals, themselves an instrument, traveling alongside the band whether she was cooing or wailing. During a solo encore, on the piano, Anderson performed a faithful cover of the Tori Amos classic "Winter". It was a fitting choice: Amos's narrator, like Carrington, like Anderson's Alice, mourns the betrayal of love and an absence of imagination. Finding them again within yourself is something worth celebrating.

Lia Kohl & Whitney Johnson

Johnson and Kohl, meanwhile, announced their first album together on the very morning of the show. Their live collaboration started in 2018 and has blossomed into the upcoming For Translucence (Drag City), improvised compositions for Johnson's viola, Kohl's cello, synthesizer, field recordings, and radio and sine waves. If the first single, an excerpt of "73|74", and what I heard last night (purportedly part the composition, part further improvisation) was any indication, their creative partnership continues to combine Johnson's explorations of the relationship between sound, mind, and body with Kohl's examinations of found sound, perception, and memory. The two started out on synth--Johnson, the APR Odyssey, Kohl, the Teenage Engineering OP-1--before picking up their strings. The echo created by Kohl dropping her bow on her strings, letting the bounce reverberate, contrasted Johnson's deliberate strokes, and they carried on sometimes in tandem, sometimes in conflict. Considering that each song on For Translucence consists of two improvisations superimposed over one another, and is named after the respective octaves to which the instruments are tuned, it's appropriate that the mixture occupies a space between shared language and chance. The result, on Wednesday, was rich with layers.

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Live Report: Kiefer Sutherland, Max Gomez @ The Troubadour

Live Report: Kiefer Sutherland ( @RealKiefer ) @MaxGomez_ at @TheTroubadour Iconic actor shows his musical talents and country/western stylings #livemusic #country #western

Artists: Kiefer Sutherland, Max Gomez

Venue: The Troubadour

Date: December 18, 2019

Back when I lived in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago, one of my favorite things to do was to find a night that I had free and buy tickets for whomever was playing at the local music venue, SPACE. It didn’t matter to me if I knew who they were, or if I’d ever heard any of their music before – it was usually a…

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August in Evanston

Evanston Space has just announced their headliners for the Big Evanston Block Party.  It’s Guided By Voices on the 25th and on the 26th The Old 97′s.  And it’s FREE!

See you there!

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Justine Townes Earl: Tickets - Christine K.

“Thanks Justin Townes Earle and Tunespeak for a fantastic show Evanston Space!”

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// BANNERS at Evanston The Space on February 17, 2017 //

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Aoife + the band hit the road this Wednesday in Minneapolis, and they don’t stop until two hometown shows in Aoife’s original hometown of Boston and her current hometown of New York City. 

Tickets are going fast, don’t wait to get yours HERE.

MAR 30 | Minneapolis | The Cedar Cultural Center  MAR 31 | Stoughton, WI | Stoughton Opera House  APR 01 | Evanston, IL | Evanston SPACE  APR 02 | Indianapolis | The Hi-Fi  APR 03 | Cincinnati | 20th Century Theater  APR 05 | Charlottesville, VA | The Southern APR 06 | Annapolis, MD | Rams Head  APR 07 | Vienna, VA | The Barns at Wolf Trap  APR 08 | Norfolk, VA | North Shore Point  APR 09 | Wilmington, DE | The Grand Opera House  APR 11 | Northampton, MA | The Parlor Room  APR 12 | Portland, ME | One Longfellow Square  APR 13 | Boston | The Sinclair  APR 14 | New York City | The Bowery Ballroom