Indie folk-pop band Sweet Hello formed in 2002 around the core of singers/songwriters Laura Doherty and Cat Edgerton. Their first CD Well of Wishes was released in 2004 with John Abbey on bass, Jason Toth on drums and Kerry Sheehan on accordion and piano. With their sophomore release, The Pause and the Rest, Sweet Hello has come into their own. Trading lead vocals, the pair strikes a unique balance of dark and light, weaving textured harmonies throughout their songs. The Pause and the Rest brings back the band from the duo's first recording, plus a few additional artists, including Aerin Tedesco and Andrea Bunch (Congress of Starlings) on backing vocals, Larry Beers on drums, David Sims on percussion, plus electric guitarists John Spiegel and Gregg Ostrom. Both records were produced by John Abbey.

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Come check out the famed acoustic blues/ragtime rockers during our Tuesday night residency!

"It's no wonder that Devil in a Woodpile draw a crowd each Tuesday at the Hideout, where they've been playing country blues for years; they've fine-tuned a rustic romp that's hard to beat without actually heading for the hills. Between rhythms tapped out on washboard, nimbly finger-picked guitar, a rumbling bounce of the upright bass, and vocals that swing from a gentle growl to a warm-blooded howl, the venerable Chicago outfit has genial, unassuming charm and talent in spades. The Hideout's usual drink specials only sweeten the deal" --Karsten Lund, flavorpill.com

Chicagoist says this in their Pencil This In
Music: Still going strong after all these years, Devil in a Woodpile still draws crowds to the Hideout on a Tuesday night. Their approach to "old timey" music is sincere, and the trio of Rick "Cookin'" Sherry, Joel Paterson, and Tom Ray have amazing chops. This is perfect music to thaw out on a cold night. If you need further enticement, maybe $3 bottles of Newcastle are the perfect tonic.

Old School but never old. Juke Joint, Honky Tonk. Rollin' and Tumblin'.

Devil in a Woodpile are the longest continually performing Bloodshot recording artists in the ten years of Bloodshot's history. Come and celebrate with this venerable institution.

Devil in a Woodpile is still pushin' it every Tuesday night at the Hideout. Every week they rock a crowded bar with no mikes and no amps, transforming the indie music venue into a modern-day barrelhouse.

Tuesdays at the Hideout continue to be warm and intimate nights. I love looking around the back room seeing people talking and laughing. Some people just meet every Tuesday. Devil is in the front just playing away, and folks either listen and drink, or go to the back and conspire and make plans. A time of no particular age, somewhere between the 19th and 21st centuries. It could be 1934, 1974, or 2004. Candles on tables, dreams on minds.

"Every Tuesday night they set up shop right in the middle of the main room. No amps or mics, just balls and bravado. They play blues, ragtime, jazz, everything you could ever want. These are the kind of hangout buddies you can count on to bring the fucking hangout. There is no cover and the PBR is cheap, meaning you'll have plenty of cash to put in the band's tip jar." -Fran Magazine

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Tim said...
This is a residency that I have dreamed about for 10 years. Ken Vandermark, Mike Reed and friends are coming to the Hideout this Wednesday and every Wednesday forever. The Immediate Sound music series will bring guests from around town and around the world. Ken, Mike, and their friends will either be here at the Hideout, or curating the shows.

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It is a voice that demands attention without rattling the cage - soft, seductive, bearing the flickering, genteel ghost of a Southern drawl. You lean into it to get closer, to catch the drift, and quickly discover that this aural voice functions as something of a stealth vehicle for a substantial writer’s voice that’s lean, elegant and - above all - utterly devoid of pretense.

On the sublime ‘Remember the Sun’ (One Little Indian Records), Pieta Brown continues to ride the upward arc begun with her eponymous debut in 2002 and subsequently extended by 2005’s critically acclaimed ‘In the Cool’.

To Brown’s credit, each stop along the way has revealed dazzling growth in artistic maturity and vocal and instrumental command, as well as a palpable expansion in her ability to utilize the studio and her musical cohorts to bring her concepts to fruition.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.....

The daughter of two preachers' kids, Brown spent her childhood in Iowa and Alabama amidst a broken but very musical family. In her bare-bones bohemian upbringing in Iowa there was no electricity or running water. There, Pieta was exposed to traditional and rural folk music through her father, two-time Grammy nominee Greg Brown. Later, while spending time in Birmingham, AL with her full-time working mother, Pieta drew on all these influences and began writing poetry.

After leaving home, Pieta lived a rambling lifestyle that found her wandering from the sprawling American Southwest to the teeming megapolis of the Northeast. Each locale left its mark on her musical makeup, accounting for an artist who brings together the unvarnished humility of Loretta Lynn, the frank, modern rock punch of P.J. Harvey, the country sass and poetry of Neko Case, the urbane sophistication of Norah Jones or Rickie Lee Jones, and the soulful Southern grit of Bobbie Gentry, and - coloring it all - a deep abiding saturation in folk and blues that’s beyond her years.

By the time she hit her early 20s, Brown had already gained a local reputation as a gifted performer and it wasn't too long before she came to the attention of Lucinda Williams' guitarist and bandleader Bo Ramsey. He subsequently co-produced ‘In The Cool’ in 2005 - a release that was named one of the year's best by Amazon.com and a number of newspapers across America. It also broke the Top 20 of the Americana Music Association radio chart and the Top 30 on the AAA radio chart.

‘Remember The Sun’ finds Brown writing and recording on a deeper level altogether. Recorded and mixed by Tom Tucker (Jonny Lang, Lucinda Williams, Prince) in Minneapolis, the album boasts a stellar, flexible core group featuring Pieta singing and playing acoustic and electric guitars, piano and Wurlitzer piano, with Bo Ramsey providing his trademark array of riveting guitar soundscapes, world-class session ace Chad Cromwell (Neil Young, Mark Knopfler) on drums/percussion, Jon Penner on bass, Ricky Peterson (Prince, John Mayer) on B-3 organ and keyboards, and David Mansfield (Alpha Band, Rolling Thunder Review) on violin and viola. Pieta handled production chores with some help from Ramsey and Grammy Award-winning executive producer Chris Goldsmith (Blind Boys of Alabama/Ben Harper/Charlie Musselwhite).

At the top of her estimable game and in full control of the proceedings, Brown leads this crew through a masterful set of illuminating songs. Take “In My Mind I Was Talking To Loretta,” perhaps the most personal song she’s ever written. “I had gone for a drive out in the country one day last year,” Brown recalls, “and I saw this cloud of birds landing in a field and it made me flash on when I grew up. We lived outside of town in a little shack when I was a little girl, and one day my dad took me to the movies to see Coal Miner’s Daughter.

”I was really affected by the movie because I was young and we didn’t have running water and we used the wood stove for heat, so I related to this lady [Loretta Lynn]. And from that time on, through my teenage years and to this day, Loretta’s been a big inspiration - both as a person and as a songwriter.”

Ordinary folks would’ve just seen birds in a field.

“Innocent Blue” seeks to cut through a delusional world fog, “Rollin’ Down the Track” is an easy-going, countrified ramble with a disturbing undercurrent, and the itchy, insistent “Sonic Boom,” the rockin’-est track in Pieta’s young career, looks to shake things up and break a few windows. “West Monroe” offers harrowing, ˜wrong side of the tracks” misadventure as a comment on an America gone wrong. From there, Pieta offers a deceptively simple ditty with a Randy Newman vibe entitled “Song For A Friend,” then drops the hammer all the way down on the grungy blues rant, “Not Scared.” “Are You Free?” is swampy and haunting, , “Hey Run” dresses panic up in loping country-rock duds, then “Worlds Within Worlds” offers an intimate, time-tripping interior shot before Brown closes with the beautiful, trancelike benediction of the title track.

Ambitious, elegantly mapped-out and artfully realized, ‘Remember the Sun’ is yet another high-water mark in Pieta Brown’s mercurial, fascinating career, but fine as it is, don’t look for her to fall into cruise control anytime soon.

”It feels like I figured out how to make a real record,” she says with some sense of wonder, “and so now I have some inner place to operate from. Making a record is always some kind of chase...but maybe I got a little closer?”

Pieta’s eagerness to expand the scope of her musical palette has led to fruitful (and ongoing) collaborations with such notable and disparate artists as Calexico, The Pines, The Diplomats of Solid Sound, Iris Dement and her father. “Long before I ever put a record out there for somebody else to hear, my aim was to be a great artist, and that’s what I’ll always be going after. All my life, I’ve been close to writing and music and all kinds of art...and that closeness continues to drive me.”

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Returning as resident Pantomime Dame, Jon Langford as Mrs. Ahab, the fearsome uni-ped and Ship's Cook of the Beagle. Starring Tim Tuten as Charles Darwin (evolution in reverse), Mike Bulington as Sir Joseph Bonkers, Callie Roach as Finchy and Derek Erdman as Beaky (the ship's cabin boys), Gnat Ward as the gender-ambiguous harpoonist Queenqueg and Amy Lombardi as Captain Blight. Also welcoming back Janet Bean as Hanoi Janet and other Hideout regulars doubling as grimy, scurvy-ridden sailors and overly-festive dinosaurs. Directed under duress by Sally Timms.

A pantomime is a traditional British Christmas play. Originally silent productions, the pantomimes are a mix of fairy stories, folk tales and much loved cartoons, which encourage audience participation. The audience becomes very involved in the performance, with lots of hissing and booing of the villain and cheering for the hero. Some pantomimes include a song for the audience to join in with, and others invite children up on stage to chat to one of the performers. In pantomimes the male roles are often played by women and female roles by men.

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