coming up at SPACE...

I'll be visiting the already-venerable Evanston club on October 15, with a one-of-a-kind show that I'm very excited about. One reason it's a little out of the ordinary is that I'll be doing my own songs, and, crazy as this is, it's gotten so that I mainly perform my album material out of town anymore, only focusing hard on it when I'm promoting a new release at Old Town School or Fitzgeralds. The weekly lab at Hideout, the end-of-year revues at Fitzgeralds, the SPACE collaborations with Jenny Scheinman and Redd Volkaert -- it's been a blast, but the pendulum has swung too far, folks. Its overdue that I'm ending the Hideout residency and the Fitzgeralds series, because I need to be presenting my own work. It's the thing that I'm supposed to be doing! The rest is a fun distraction -- okay, tons of fun.

So at SPACE I'll be playing, in near-equal proportion, stuff from Upland Stories, music from my old records, and new/unrecorded songs. But that's only the half of it; why I'm especially keen on the SPACE play is the players. Duke Levine has long been a friend and an object of admiration for me; but because he lives in Boston, I seldom get to play with him, and never in my hometown. On the 15th we'll fix that. If you've never experienced him through his records -- his grace and fluidity, his majestic tone, and his speed -- then get ready to be dazzled. (And if you've seen him only at his longtime gig with Peter Wolf, you still probably don't know his scope.)

And check out the rest of the roster: Nora O'Connor, Scott Ligon (you don't get to see Scotty play B3 enough!), Todd Phillips, and Alex Hall. Here's a fantastic, heavy-thinking sextet that's never played together before and in all likelihood never shall afterward, and I'm fairly delirious to see what shape my songs will take in their hands. It's 2/3rds sold out at this point so I wanted to do the town crier thing.