Sweet Home Chicago - 2/4/06

Cedar Rapids, IA - Even though the dateline is Cedar Rapids (actually, in the van on the way out of Cedar Rapids), the title has got to be about Chicago, since that was such a fun stop. Though short, it was action-packed, and the troupe all had a pretty good time in the big city.

The actual event at Daley College was almost anticlimactic in a way. We did two performances - R3 and Planet - in the space of about 9 hours. The venue itself was a little odd but still conducive to how we do our shows. It was sort of 3/4 of a circle, with a 3-foot wall all around the edge separating the audience from the actors. You sort of feel like you're in a small gladiator stadium, and when appealing to the audience you can stand right up to the wall and lean on it. Most of the attendees at the R3 matinee were either family or friends of cast members, or else people required to see the show from the college. Not very big. We did not get too much of a break between shows. The college itself is located a distance from DT Chicago, in the southwest corner of the state, in a rather industrial area. So there wasn't much to each beyond the Cajun Wok at the nearby mall. Who hasn't had their famous Bourbon Chicken? After a short walk through the mall (which had little but clothes and shoes), I returned to do the evening performance of Planet. That wall did give us a feeling of confinement, but the audience was much bigger and the show went well. One obstacle we had to overcome was the fact that the maintenance people did not seem to immediately grasp that a show was going on in the afternoon, and they really couldn't drill in the basement below us. We had to track down two separate workers on different projects whom we had to convince they needed to take a break. So much for the actual day of performance.

The big story, of course, was simply being in Chicago. We decided to leave Fairmont real early - 6AM - so as to get to Chicago Monday evening and have more time in the city. Many people had friends or family in the area, so during their time off they set out to hang with their respective friends. Andrew, who had lived in Chicago for some time, became something of the unofficial guide to Chicago, so when we got into town on Monday evening, I got on the CTA with him and Kevin and Olivia. He went off to visit some friends while Kevin Olivia and
I took a quick walking tour of downtown Chicago, passing by Union Station and crossing the Chicago River. The three of us went to Bergoff's, which is a famous Chicago institution serving German cuisine for about 107 years. It is closing the end of February, so I managed to talk Olivia and Kevin into eating there as sort of a "this is your only chance" opportunity. It was pretty good; creamed herring, bratwurst and knockwurst with sauerkraut for appetizers; sauerbraten for me, some pork dish for Olivia and a seafood medley for Kevin. I had a stein of their house bock as well. I enjoyed the meal, but I think Kevin and Olivia, both of whom are principally vegetarians, had a bit of trouble digesting afterwards. Or it could be the fact that they went ice skating in Millenium Park after dinner. I, however, took the train back to Lincoln Park, where the Days Inn was located, and ran into Sarah on the way into the motel. I accompanied her to dinner while trying to find a good music venue to go to. We decided to hook up with Daniel, who was having dinner at a small raw oyster bar close to the motel. We were not far from Halsted Street, and there are two blues bars down there, Blues Chicago and the Kingston Mines. We chose to go to the Blues Chicago band and settled in for two sets of music from Will Kent and the Gents, who play Monday nights with Bonnie Lee, the Sweetheart of the Blues. Will Kent was apparently not well enough to play, so the front guy was a kid named Guy who played a beautiful Fender hardbody and had a blues styling somewhat reminiscent of Dwayne Allman with a delta feeling. We heard a great mix of delta and Chicago blues, and the Bonnie Lee came up for a set. She was escorted from the back of the bar up to the stage by two young guys, helped up on to the stage, and ripped off three hot blues numbers. She must have been about 75 or so, and clearly had the run of the place. Been around for some time, I imagine. Then they called up a few guest artists. One young guy named Chico Banks was very hot, and then a few other middle-aged guys came up to play. Each one had a great styling for the blues, and I guess it's the tradition of jazz places to call up people in the house to play one or two numbers especially on weeknights like Monday and Tuesday. We got back to the motel about midnight to be in shape for the two shows on Tuesday.

Tuesday night it was back out for the evening. Andrew had been talking up the Chicago style of hot dogs for a week, promising a trip to a place called Sammy's down by Cabrini Park. But it turned out that there was a small place called Vienna Dogs right down the block from where we were, so instead of a long trip we walked over there and grabbed a couple of dogs from a guy who insults you the minute you walk through the door. He and his wife/girlfriend put on quite a show making the dogs, arguing and cursing each other in a funny way. I crammed down two chardogs with the works (except the hot peppers). Very good eating! Then we headed out to a local pub where the pints were $2. After spending some time and chatting with Andrew and his friends, Sarah, Daniel and I once again headed out for some blues. We started off at Blues Chicago, since we had free admission passes from the night before. It was already close to 1AM when we got there, so there was only a short set played. The headliner, Lindsey Alexander, had other people in the house start the set, again a nice mix of different blues players. They did, however, let some young kid at the end you must have been a guitar tech or something to play a song, and he was terrible. Bad end to the evening, as they closed at 1:30 and never let Lindsey play. So, after grabbing the rest the cake that was on the bar and eating a few pieces on the street, we decided to go over to Kingston Mines and see if anything was happening over there.

Kingston Mines is maybe the largest blues bar in Chicago, I believe, and might be reasonably categorized as a sort of blues tourist spot. I wasn't too eager to go in, but the cover was half-off so we said what the hell and headed in. What a strange, eclectic interior it turned out to be. The bar is actually small, lined with Christmas lights, but there are these long, narrow tables with chairs along them where everyone sits. The walls all have odd, colorful murals painted on them reflecting some aspect of blues culture. One of them was actually a map of "Blues COuntry," depicting the states where the blues are a predominant form of music. They have two performing stages, and the guy who was the evening's MC was a short, fat man dressed in a black suit, black shirt, black fedora and green tie. He had a voice which sounded like someone had stabbed him in the throat and he smoked a carton of cigarettes a day. He actually played one set on the electric piano as we walked in. It turned out that a Tuesday night is a very good night to go, because there are few tourists, a lot of locals, a good number of blues players in the house, and once again it was a shuttling of talents on and off the stage. We started with Dion Taylor, but we saw Lindsey Alexander walk in the joint and motioned to him to play, and he got in a song and dedicated it to his "out-of-town woman," who happened to be Sarah. Sarah went on to have a good time dancing and chatting with him, and she got an autographed CD from him by the end of the evening. The final act of the evening was a woman by the name of Joanna Connor, and she was absolutely out of sight. Her #2 guitar player was also pretty good, but this woman could move up and down a guitar fretboard like a seal on ice. She was slick, melodic and fast, and again her blues style was everything from straight-ahead Chicago to delta to rockabilly. I sat there for an hour in amazement watching her play. She was worth every penny of the cover price. She was the last act of the evening, and she played a full hour set. We closed the place down at 3:45 AM. Sarah and Daniel were feeling pretty good (I hadn't had too much to drink), and the walk and conversation on the way home was enervated and animated. I couldn't quite keep up with my younger sojourners, and packed it in by 4:30 AM. After all, Ii had to get up and be ready by noon to get out of town. But it had been some time since I closed down any bar (probably Ray Flynn's in Buffalo), so I figured I hadn't done too badly, and I had heard some great music. It was a good time in Chicago, and as far as I could tell everyone managed to have a good time in the city. There was much talk about how fun the city was, how different from New York, how much more friendly and open. Chicago may take the prize as the best stop on this leg. It was undoubtedly the best antidote we could have had to a boring week in dorms on Fairmont WV.

On Wednesday noon we left the big city and headed off to our next gig at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, IA. This is another one of what I've come to call a "season ticket" stop, a place where S2 has been for a number of years. We got in on Wednesday late afternoon, and we were housed in two separate locations. I was housed in the Clark Alumni House, a nice new building styled as an English Tudor home. It's a meeting house/guest house for the college. The group in the house were pretty much the members of The Oatcakes, which is the name those of us who are going to do a quick gig in Nashville this coming Monday morning have named ourselves. This allowed us to have a rehearsal Thursday afternoon. Essentially we are performing the score of Planet in costume for a collection of tour bus operators at their Nashville convention,representing the state of Virginia. So we're orchestrating some of the songs for just the five of us. It will be fun to go to Nashville (we're flying), but at the same time we're giving up a day off to do all the travel and playing. We're traveling on Superbowl Sunday, but I think we'll get in the game once we land in Nashville.

We did all three shows at Coe, Much Ado on Thursday evening and the other two on Friday. The theatre at Coe is a hexagon, which posed its own challenges. Also, part of the set for their production of Gypsy was in the theatre, but we set up the discovery space in front of it and other than simply being there it did not pose any real problems. Again, it was a theatre where the theatre was already in thrust form, with a steep rake in the house. All the shows were well received and went well. The vets had mentioned that former audiences had been sort of cold, but we found the opposite this time. We had good reactions from all three shows. The people were kind, the space was good, and it turned out I knew the tech director from my days back in Platteville. Randy Susevitch had been a music teacher at UW-P, and had changed careers and went into lighting design and tech direction, and was working at Coe. Small world. An audience member in Chicago also came up to me to ask me if I had worked in Wisconsin. Anyway, the Coe stay went well all around. There was a nice coffee shop right across from the college, and I spent some of my off time there. They served a French press coffee, which is unusual and very good. After the final show, some of us went to a party at the home of Alyssa's aunt Kathy, who lives in Cedar Rapids. The house was very nice, and they served us a fine white chili (chicken and navy beans) and a regular chili, with veggies and drinks. There was a pool table, foosball table, and one of the kids had a set of drums, which several people took a turn banging on, myself included. Greg, whose father was a drummer, really got into it. Daniel demonstrated his superiority at pool, and we had a very good time. SO many thanks to Alyssa's aunt and uncle for their generosity and hospitality.

Next stop - Fairmont MN at the Fairmont Opera House, with a performance of Planet. It's cold (particularly in the van, where I have to keep my feet off the floor to keep them from freezing), but it is not snowing, and there is in fact little snow cover on the ground. Could it be that we'll be lucky enough to get through this midwestern section without any snow? We've got Monmouth IL after this and then off to the south, through South Carolina and Florida. I'm actually enjoying being back in the Midwest. Iowa is one of my favorite states, and the Cedar Falls/Cedar Rapids/Waterloo/Iowa City region is a very nice area. It's progressive, the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa is in the area, with other small quality college like Coe. It's unquestionably winter time, with the land devoid of corn stalks. The sky is large, the sun has been shining, the sunsets are nice, the views are wide open, and the midwest certainly gives you that feeling of how large this country really is. Fairmont is not too far north of the MN-IA border, and we'll be in what they call Blue Earth country, which I think has to do with the small mounds in the area. It's a different and not altogether unappealing style of life and place to live. Slower pace, friendlier people. You just have to get used to the lack of trees and mountains.

Well, we've arrived in Fairmont and it's time to load in to the opera house. Signing off for now....TWL