Smile Politely. Speak Directly. A Champaign-Urbana Culture Blog

Ricky McKinnie, drummer and vocalist for the Blind Boys, says, "Don't miss it when them boys are back in town." Stick around after the jump for more from McKinnie and Ben Jaffe of Preservation Hall.

The quintet, with (alphabetically) Collin A. Bullock on guitar and vocals, Aaron Gates on drums, Matt O'Neal on bass, Alex Resnick on guitar and Merry Thomas on lead vocals, chatted with Smile Politely out on the sidewalk after their gig about, among other things: their original plan to start a Dolly Parton cover band and how their current sound can be described as a bear fighting a lion. The results are after the jump.

Mercury Rev, the once-proclaimed "weirdest band on planet Rock," performed alongside local heroes HUM at the old Blind Pig in 1995, just after the major label signing spree that included almost half a dozen of bands calling Champaign their home. Since that time, the Rev have gone on to release one of the most important records in recent history, Deserter's Songs, as well as a handful of albums that haven't done much for them in the States, but have steadily increased their worth in Europe and Asia.

• a book of collages on Fantagraphics
• a periodical series
• an upcoming Steven Soderbergh musical
• two albums with his new band, Boston Spaceships, with Tommy Keene on guitar, including their debut, Brown Submarine, released on Pollard's label, GBV, Inc. in September

It's enough to make your head spin.

Pollard's not a prolific tourer, though, which is why it's important that you get your tickets early for his show next Thursday, October 9, at the Highdive. Doors open at 8 p.m., The High Strung open at 9, and tickets are only $15. With the exception of Champaign, it's strictly a big-city tour, so it's a tremendous opportunity to see a legend of indie rock without wasting time and gas traveling.

Guitarist/singer Rick Miller (he's the one with the skinny goatee) chatted with Smile Politely the other day about their music's pelvic component, Porter Wagoner, and why he doesn't like emo. For more goofy goodness, check out the interview after the jump.

Ashley Riley is a young, blonde lady whose instrument of choice is an acoustic guitar, so the comparisons to Jewel are ready-made and lazy, but she doesn't reject them. Just getting her feet wet in the regional music scene, Riley will be appearing on WEFT Sessions tonight at 10 p.m. on WEFT, 90.1 FM. Her debut CD, Last One Standing, was released last month and is available on her website and on iTunes.

Ashley was kind enough to answer some questions, and we'd like to call the results an "interview." This ground-breaking format is shared with you, the reader, after the jump.

Now, Friction has reassembled a new edition of the Pink Spiders, and they're touring to support their sophomore effort, Sweat It Out, released last week on Adrenaline. They've got their mojo back, and they're ready to turn audiences on to their brand of swaggering garage rock. The Pink Spiders are playing at the Independent Media Center in Urbana tonight at 6 p.m. JigGsaw, Trash City Rockers and The Signal open, and tickets are $10 for the all-ages show.

Click the jump to read an interview with Friction.

Smile Politely caught up with LoveLikeFire vocalist/keyboardist Ann Yu a couple of weeks ago as the band was traveling between Salt Lake City and Albuquerque. The interview is after the jump.

Bang on a Can is this Saturday, September 27 at the Krannert Center. The performance starts at noon and tickets are $16 for U of I students and $30 for the public.

The 2008-2009 Krannert Center season opens tonight with an in-lobby party featuring the Austin-based latin-infusion band, Grupo Fantasma. As has become tradition with Krannert opening weekend parties, the center transforms their generally peaceful hardwood lobby into an all-out dance party. Recent years have featured bands like North Mississippi Allstars (in conjunction with their bi-annual Wall2Wall Guitar Festival), and the Grammy-nominated band, Tiempo Libre.

The upcoming season will mirror efforts in the past to continue to diversify the eclectic nature of the Krannert programming that the community has come to expect in years past. Some highlights include K.D. Lang on October 14; Juan de Marco and the Afro-Cuban All Stars on March 18; Chick Corea and John McLaughlin on April 7; and Joshua Redman on May 2.

Information can be found at www.krannertcenter.com..

Oxford Collapse plays a style of music that could be called “mature punk.” Now the term is relative, mind you; there’s youthful energy and exuberance bleeding through all of their material. They write and play the type of music that makes the listener not only want to party with the band, but maybe also herd some sheep. Their fourth studio album, Bits, was just released this past August by “indie” super label, Sup Pop.

Smile Politely was able to talk to Michael Pace, guitarist and vocalist, from Oxford Collapse by the powers of the internet. See what he has to say about Billy Joel, the Midwest and more after the jump.

Dan Deacon is to electronic music what Spencer Tunick is to nude portraits, which is to say a point of view that varies so drastically from the norm as to cause a stir. Thanks to an inherent feel for the absurd and a unique sense of humor, Deacon’s experimental music is way out there, orbiting the Earth on an asymmetrical bent. Featuring an explosion of semi-melodic, hyper-chaotic musical passages often anchored by a nonsensical spoken-sung chorus of gibberish, the music on Deacon’s 2007 full-length album Spiderman of the Rings is unlike anything you’ve heard of recent or vintage note. He is headlining The Canopy this Thursday evening.

Kirchen is performing as part of the Whip Music Series (tune in tomorrow for a profile of WWHP in Farmer City). I caught up with Kirchen earlier this week, between days one and two of a three-day gig at Oneida Casino in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The interview is after the jump.

For Great Justice consists of Matt (bass, vocals), Jess (guitar, vocals) and Keith (drums), and they've been playing together for almost two years. They participated in an email interview as a group, and the thoroughly enjoyable results are after the jump.

When I reached Stuart by phone, he was making last-minute preparations to set out on tour from his Austin, Texas, home. BSOJC had their first tour date in Oklahoma City last night, and Stuart was talking about "her," so the interview began thusly:

If your Saturday night is lacking some low-end punch, head on down to the Highdive and check out the two-bass, one-drummer assault of veteran Chicago rockers Dianogah. Doors open at 7 p.m., opening act Pinebender comes on at 8 p.m., and Dianogah takes the stage at 9 p.m. so they can finish up in time for DJ Tim Williams to spin at 10:30 p.m. The cover is just $7, so how can you lose?

After the jump, check out our interview with Dianogah bassist and singer Jay Ryan.

I first fell in love with the Cowboy Monkey two years ago when I went with a friend to see a random band that turned out to be quite an enticing act called Colourmusic. I have never seen a set quite like the one the band put on that night. I still have my “Colourmusic” pin featuring a unicorn as a reminder of the amazing show.

These words comprise the chorus of a song noted in the opening lines of Mark Twain’s short story “Punch Brothers, Punch.” Twain, within the story, recalls a time when he read the mentioned song in the columns of a newspaper. The rhythm of the words captivates Twain, and he is paralyzed by the catchy verses for days. He then passes the song to a friend and so on and so on. Oh, the pain of having a tune stuck in your head is certainly a familiar one.

Chris Thile, former vocalist and mandolin player for Nickel Creek, has certainly been guilty of placing infectious melodies in people’s minds. Nickel Creek’s beautiful and catchy bluegrass numbers were loved by anyone with a halfway decent taste in Americana music. It’s no surprise, then, that he’d have an affinity for this particular story about the power of music. Thile’s new group, The Punch Brothers, took their name from Twain’s tale, and they will be appearing tonight at The Canopy Club.

Check out the rest of the interview with Sunset Stallion after the jump.

The Avett Brothers will be at the Canopy Club on Sunday night. Justin Gordon opens the 9 p.m. show, and tickets are $16. Stick around after the jump and you'll hear from Scott Avett, singer and guitarist for the Avett Brothers.

Tuesday nights will have familiar face in downtown Champaign.

Douglas Layne, AKA DJ Delayney — the local promoter that founded PowerNSoul Productions, helps bring in Dance 2XS and hosts the now annual LightWorks Fashion Show — will be taking over the decks at Mike 'N Molly's on Tuesday nights from here on out.

According to Layne, "...it was kinda [sic] an impromptu thing...that turned out to be a really fun thing so we rolled with it. I'm kinda letting the night take it's own form..."

The night, which is currently nameless, will focus on "a lot of funk and old soul. Some jazz, some new soul, splash of reggae, dash of soulful hip hop. I also play a lot of original hip hop samples. By that I mean, the original tracks that have been used as samples to create some classic hip hop tracks (usually funk, soul & jazz tracks). This is my "new" direction... (it) has refreshed my love of music..."

Two New York’s infamous five boroughs (Queens and The Bronx), well-known for producing some of hip-hop’s hall of fame artists, are getting ready to let loose two of their finest into the wild of their Illinois fan base. On Saturday, September 30, the Canopy Club will play host to one of the biggest hip-hop big ticket bills in recent memory, as Nas and Talib Kweli make their way into Champaign-Urbana.

Independently, these two artists account for some of the most critically acclaimed albums and lyrical works of modern hip-hop. Kweli, as part of the original lineup on Rawkus Records, was part of several pivotal hip-hop groups, including Reflection Eternal with DJ Hi-Tek, and Black Star with Brooklyn-native Mos Def. Since premiering with underground hip-hop hall of famers Mood in 1997, Kweli’s blunt-edged, conscious, black empowerment brand of hip-hop, combined with a sentence-cramming delivery have played into some of the most notable hip-hop tunes, translating into both underground and commercial appeal.

Bartman, who normally performs as a three-piece with drummer Aaron Kavelman and multi-instrumentalist Erik Christian Juhl, will be stripped down to a duo on-air, as Kavelman is unavailable for the evening. "It'll be pleasantly surprising what Erik and I can do with limited space and instruments," Bartman noted of their in-studio gig. "We're used to smaller stages, and we
find ways to make the clutter of instruments work."

(Ed. Note — Full Disclosure: A founding member of Smile Politely also produces Pygmalion Music Festival.)

As the golden autumn months set in, there is no better time for Champaign-Urbana indie rockers and music lovers to unanimously come together to celebrate some of the finest musicians C-U has to offer. The host: Pygmalion Music Festival. While the official music dates are set from September 17–20, four bands hand picked by Nicodemus Agency will set launch to the festival with pre-shows each Friday until the initial show hits on Wednesday, September 17, which includes a striking lineup leading to Elsinore's set at the Canopy. Though the pre-gaming will have to be done on your own time and on your own vicinity, this year's pre-partying will be hosted by Urban Outfitters with special guests, Headlights, tomorrow at 6 p.m.

After the jump, check out an interview with Tea Leaf Green guitarist and vocalist Josh Clark.

Trot on down to Cowboy Monkey tonight to check out three local acts: Scurvine, The Chemicals, and Krukid rock the restaurant/club that’s getting its feet wet again with live bands. After closing its doors for a few months earlier this year to remake/remodel, the Cowboy Monkey re-emerged with a new menu and music in the evening provided by disc jockeys.

The tour started in San Francisco and is making its way across the country to Washington D.C. where Greenpeace will be presenting to Congress stories of how Americans are doing their part to fight global warming — and encouraging Congress to do the same. If you would like to share what you have done on the global-warming front, Greenpeace will be collecting stories during the concert on Friday.

Where the gawd-love-it is Anniversary Plaza?

After a quick Google search, I discovered that Anniversary Plaza is somewhere by the Illini Union. And while I am not totally sure where, my guess is that if you show up in the vicinity tonight at around 6 p.m., you'll be led to it based on the extremely intricate and terrifically fantastic math-rock indie-esque-type music coming from somewhere around there.

So Many Dynamos will make the three hour trek from St. Louis today to perform for us, and they do so on the brink of what is bound to be some level of success: their last studio sessions were tended to by one Chris Walla of Death Cab For Cutie, whose own band will be performing at Assembly Hall on October 12.

Jesse Johnson, who sings and plays guitar and harmonica for Post Historic, traded emails with me, and the resulting interview is after the jump.

Ready to hit the road for an extended tour after a summer playing festival dates, Backyard Tire Fire will play the first of several record release shows around the Midwest tonight at the Highdive. Doors open at 9 p.m. with Golden Quality and Tractor Kings opening, and admission is $7 for the 19 and over show.