Unassuming, a little bit awkward and slightly naive, “egotistical” is the last word that springs to mind when talking to 23-year-old singer and songwriter Tom Schraeder. “Ambitious” is much closer to the mark, followed closely by “wildly enthusiastic.”
With only one self-released, seven-song EP to his credit, Schraeder has not only been landing prestigious gigs at home in Chicago -- including last summer’s Lollapalooza festival -- he’s been regularly traveling to Los Angeles, New York and Austin. And he’s doing it with a nine-piece band that includes upright bass, drums, second guitar, keyboards, vibraphone, singing saw, banjo, cello and violin.
In fact, the spectacle of all these musicians tumbling out of the van is what gave Schraeder’s group its name. “I was getting a lot of guff from people saying, ‘Why do you need such a big band?’ and ‘Why do you have a singing saw? That’s just another mouth to feed on tour!’ I was like, ‘Well, yeah. But those songs aren’t the same without those instruments.’
“After a while, whenever anybody would question me about the size of the band, I’d say, ‘That’s just my ego.’ And then [bassist] Cornelius [Boon] said it as a joke in an interview, and it stuck. So now the name is officially Tom Schraeder & His Ego.”
Raised on Chicago’s Northwest side, Schraeder has been obsessed with music since the fifth grade, when Fred Papp, a friend of the family and a member of the local rock group the Renfields, kindled a spark by selling the budding musician a National guitar. “He was showing me Jimi Hendrix for the first time, and the Velvet Underground, and I was really into that music while all my friends were listening to the Butthole Surfers. So he brought over this guitar and made me pay him $10 a month -- I had to rake leaves and do whatever I could to pay him back -- and I started reading Guitar World magazine and all that.
“Somewhere along there, I learned how to play, and in going back and forth between classic rock and acoustic music and this college-rock stuff, I found Graham Parsons and Paul Westerberg and Wilco. And from then on I just wanted to get a little more edge to the music.”
The strength of tracks such as “The Whiskey Song,” “Porcelain Doll” and “An Easy Way to Cry” from “The Door, the Gutter, the Grave” is that they recall all of Schraeder’s varied influences without resorting to mere imitation, thanks to the sophisticated melodies and arrangements and the surprisingly insightful and world-weary lyrics. How does such a young songwriter come to be thinking about the weighty themes referenced in the disc’s title?
“That’s a fair question, but I think that for only being 23, I’ve experienced a lot -- or at least enough to have enough material for an EP,” Schraeder says, laughing. “This record sort of sums up a point in time up for me: I was in college and doing a lot of boozing, and I was trying to be that kind of songwriter who sings about boozing. For the first time, I was living with a girl, and there was all this anxiety: ‘Do I want to finish school? Do I want to be with this person? I want to do music, but I feel like I’m being held back…’
“I don’t want to be too dramatic and say I was in a depression, but I remember being locked inside the apartment for a month and a half and just feeling low, and that’s where a lot of those songs came from. Looking back, it wasn’t really that bad. Really, I was just growing up. Now, I suppose the next record will be much more about fearing what’s going to happen if music doesn’t work!”
Despite the unprecedented uncertainty in today’s music industry, Schraeder probably doesn’t have much cause for concern. Since its initial shows last summer, his group has been playing to bigger crowds whenever it’s taken the stage. And after selling out their record release party last November, Tom Schraeder & His Ego became the youngest band invited to play Schubas’ prestigious Monday-night “Practice Space” series.
Schraeder’s plans for the February residency are evidence of the many horizons he’d like to conquer, with strings-enhanced folk-rock set for this Monday; an acoustic hootenanny setting for Feb. 11; a preview of the songs he’s planning to record for his second release on Feb. 18 and a mixture of all of the above and more on Feb. 25.
“There are so many people trying to emulate Wilco these days that it’s hard to bring them up, and I don’t by any means want to be Wilco,” Schraeder says. “But more than anything, the thing I relate to in their music is the idea of taking a song in one direction one time, and then doing it in a completely different way the next -- just going into any style you can think of with the song until you find whatever it is that fits. If you’re talking about folk music or alternative country or whatever, I don’t think you should ever be afraid to do that and to try other styles.”
FACTS
Tom Schraeder & His Ego
8 p.m. Monday (with Brent Pulse and Wild Sweet Orange)
8 p.m. Feb. 11 (with Bailiff and Wild Sweet Orange)
8 p.m. Feb. 18 (with Absent Star and Wild Sweet Orange)
8 p.m. Feb. 25 (with Darren Spitzer and Le Concorde)
Schubas, 3159 N. Southport
$6 cover
(773) 525-2508
Regular readers know how much I hate the notion of advertising as a vehicle to introduce new music. On the other hand, as a listener myself, I hate even more those occasions when I catch a snippet of some song I love and I can't find out who did it. With that in mind, a reader just send me the following question.
Jim... By any chance do you know the name of the male (group (?) ) singer in the Ford SE commerial? It sounds great! Thanks in advance.
Here's a link to the tune.
Joe Pozzi
Joe: I used to have a great resource for answering questions like this, and a Web site called "What's That Called? Music from TV Commercials." Alas, when I tried to use it to find your answer, it's either down because of a momentary server malfunction, or it's close up shop for good. A newer site called AdTunes.com has so far been pretty useless to me, and it turned up nothing on your question. Nor did a general Google search. So this, too, I throw out to the readers.
Reader Elizabeth Allen-Smith recently sent the following email, looking for some help in choosing songs for a gig she's about to play.
Jim: I've listened to you and read your work for years and thought that if there was anyone who could help me it would have to be you - otherwise I may make some really bad choices!
Here's my problem: I am new to Freeport (one year as a new resident and small business - "Dragon Popcorn") and my business has been tapped repeatedly for not-for-profit events, etc.. (I am trying to make a good impression). One group (Relay For Life) is headed by a woman who heard me sing and asked me to perform "gratis" during their all night event. I have a strong voice and sing everything from country to heavy metal - I can do Grace Slick "with authority" as one person has told me. Please forgive me if this sounds like bragging - I just want you to understand my abilitiy so that you can offer advice if at all possible. I also love to cover Annie Lennox and Bonnie Raitt as well as Reba and K. D. Lang.
So - they want me to sing three to four songs. I have decided to do Etta James', "At Last" because that is my signature song and always brings a wonderful response, but for my other choices I wanted to do something appropriate for the setting - the fight against cancer. I am interested in doing something inspirational but I really don't want to do religious music. I would like to do something that would get the crowd involved but I can only think of "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing" (are you cringing?) or "From A Distance". I'd like to do a rock anthem but I can't think of anything!!! Additionally, country music out here would work just as well.
Please, please, please, can you help me? I'd gladly try bribery - I have over 50 types of gourmet popcorn...?! Any consideration would be HUGELY appreciated! -- Liz
Liz: First off, no bribery necessary!
Secondly, when you say strong female voice and inspirational, a couple of tunes pop into my head instantly: "Respect" and "Think" by Aretha Franklin, "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor, and, probably less appropriate for you on this occasion, "O Bondage, Up Yours!" by X-Ray Spex. Them's my choices, any way! But I'll throw it out on my blog, and let's see what else anybody else comes up with.
The Chicago Music Commission is talking a lot, but is it doing anything?
Five months after the release of its landmark study declaring Our Town “a music city in hiding,” the Chicago Music Commission presented its findings to the community that it hopes to represent during a panel discussion Thursday night at the Harris Theater in Millennium Park.
Conducted by the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago, there is no denying that the study is an impressive one: With hard, cold numbers, it proves that the music business in Chicago generates $1 billion a year and employs 53,000 people, ranking behind only New York and Los Angeles and dwarfing smaller but more celebrated music towns such as New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis and Austin.
Unfortunately, there also is no denying that the CMC has bungled the trumpeting of these findings at every step of the way.
Instead of holding a press conference to announce these numbers last August -- bringing, say, Mavis Staples, Buddy Guy, Jeff Tweedy and Common to the former site of Chess Studios for the sort of event this news warranted -- the CMC exclusively leaked its report to the Tribune. As a result, it received hardly any other print, TV or radio coverage, though I did catch up with the study in my column a few weeks later.
* “To create an effective Music Office for Chicago.”
* “To function as a liaison between live performance venues and City agencies in matters of code and license compliance.”
* And “to strengthen and build upon the global branding of Chicago as a first-class music city for living, for tourism and for conventions as well as a premium destination for the professional business of creating music.”
The CMC isn’t going to accomplish any of that until it learns how to make itself heard, focusing its message and aggressively challenging a city government whose attitude about local music ranges from merely dismissive (failing to recognize landmarks such as Maxwell Street and for many years limiting music in Grant Park to embarrassing offerings like Blues Fest and Taste of Chicago) to downright obstructionist (with the draconian anti-rave ordinance and the confrontational assault on live music venues in the wake of E2).
None of this was really addressed before the 150 people who braved the cold to attend Thursday’s panel, though it was certainly hinted at.
After the study’s primary authors, Lawrence Rothfield, Dan Silver and Sarah Lee, presented their findings complete with Power Point slides, the session shifted to 90 minutes of moderated discussion with 20 members of the music community, including representatives from radio (Kenard Karter of WGCI 107.5-FM), performers’ rights organizations (Shawn Murphy of ASCAP and Gary Matts of the Chicago Federation of Musicians) and entertainment law and management (Rita Lee and Heather Nelson-Beverly).
Their litany of complaints was a familiar one:
* In other parts of the country, “people think [the] Chicago [music scene] is whack,” said Lee.
* “The outlets and the artists [here] aren’t being branded and exposed to the extent that they should be,” said Karter.
* One of the reasons that “Boeing came to Chicago is their CEO is a big opera fan,” yet the city still doesn’t recognize the importance of music here, said Matts.
* And the amazing diversity of music here is both a blessing and a curse, comprising a thriving community that’s hard to promote with one voice, according to pretty much everyone.
But by far the most revealing comments came from Jerry Mickelson, co-founder of Jam Productions, and Michael Yerke, talent booker with Live Nation and the House of Blues. Two of the most powerful and successful concert promoters in the United States, Mickelson and Yerke are cut-throat competitors who agree on almost nothing -- except the fact that the city continues to see live music as something to be tolerated at best and silenced at worst.
Mickelson noted that the city Web sites for the Department of Cultural Affairs and the Department of Tourism trumpet hardly any of the city's two dozen world-renowned rock, dance and jazz clubs, yet one page does tout the merits of the Admiral Theatre, “the world famous home of hundreds of beautiful showgirls totally nude.”
And when someone mentioned a city Business Affairs mentorship program and asked Yerke if he was involved, he noted that he’d never even heard of it, and the only times he’s ever contacted by city officials is on occasions such as a recent tussle about the House of Blues’ license to stay open until 4 a.m.
How did city officials respond?
“I don’t really know what you mean when you ask ‘Does the business community support the music industry?’” said Julie Burros of the Department of Cultural Affairs. “One of the things I’m trying to grapple with in this data [from the study]… is ‘What is the negative?’ What does the music community need? I just have no idea.”
Since the CMC isn’t making itself heard when expressing what the Chicago music community really needs, let me take a stab at it:
* City inspectors who, instead of viewing them as the enemy, work with venue owners to provide safe environments for live music.
* City departments that more readily open public spaces to musicians.
* City boosters who champion the scene’s past and present with everything from displays at the airports to banners along Michigan Avenue to guided tours of club land.
* City programmers who make the big free festivals world-class events instead of third-rate bills outshined by the average hay-seed state fair.
* And, perhaps most importantly, a city government that finally values music as a cultural and economic engine every bit as lucrative and important as sports and theater, two other pastimes that get much more than their fair share of money and attention.
Oh, yeah: It would also be nice if Richard M. Daley just once deigned to attend one of these events and speak directly to the music community that is part of his constituency. I’ve been covering the pop music beat for the Sun-Times since 1992, and not once have I heard a single public utterance by our mayor about one of the richest resources in the world and the pride -- at least for many of us -- of the city that he’s represented since 1989.
Time Out Chicago weighs the impact of blogging on traditional print criticism and cultural journalism in a package of stories this week, including this article and this roundtable discussion featuring several local critics (this writer included) from a number of different beats, including music, food, film and books.
For a brief moment in the late ’90s, as the alternative-rock movement waned and the major labels turned toward “the next big thing,” it seemed as if techno DJs such as Moby, the Aphex Twin and the Orb might become the “new rock stars,” making a very different kind of music but delivering live shows every bit as exciting as anything in rock ’n’ roll.
Alas, electronic dance music never really broke out of the underground, and the next wave of musicians weren’t very good showmen: There simply isn’t much excitement to be had in watching someone sitting in front of a lap top. But a new wave of electronic heroes is tossing that up once again, with Girl Talk, a.k.a. Dan Gillis, performing with the energy of Iggy Pop, and Dan Deacon continuing a tradition of mind-bending psychedelic-rock shows that can be traced back through the Orb to Pink Floyd.
“The idea of creating ‘a show’ was both a natural expression of who I was and something that I strove for,” Deacon says. “When I started seeing bands as a kid, the ones that put on a show were the ones I liked the most, and I think that made an impression.
“When I first started, I was playing spaces that had very limited resources. Sometimes there wouldn’t be a PA, and I’d be running the sound through a bass amp, or there wouldn’t be any lights, so I’d have to bring my own small lights. That meant I had to come up with a performance that fit within those limitations.”
Indeed, Deacon made his first few tours traveling by Greyhound bus, carefully packing his allotted two suitcases to haul as much gear as he could while meeting the transit company’s weight requirements.
“Now that the performances are growing, it’s fun to see how those limitations have moved, but it’s also daunting, because there are no so many avenues to explore. Ultimate Reality is the first time I’m touring with a full PA, our own huge projection screen and two full drum kits” -- not to mention the visual backdrop of the impressionistic film that gives the tour its name, directed by Deacon’s friend, Jimmy Joe Roche, and newly available on DVD.
Leading members of Baltimore’s Wham City collective of underground artists, Deacon and Roche have been friends since college in the early’90s, when Deacon studied electro-acoustic composition and computer music in the Conservatory of Music at the State University of New York at Purchase. With last year’s “Spiderman of the Rings” album, Deacon delivered the underground blockbuster that cheeky title promised, and he nearly stole the show at last summer’s Pitchfork Music Festival. But for Ultimate Reality, he’s upped the ante.
The tour started with a long composition that seemed to cry out for a multi-media presentation. “The piece is focused around maximalism and intensity,” Deacon says, “and I think the only way to perceive that is in the live setting, when you’re in a completely dark room and the screen is massive and the two live drummers are blasting and the sound is coming out of two full PA systems. I was going for a hypnotic drone, but using none-drone elements. I think a lot of people associate drone music with long, sustained tones and very slow rhythms, and this is exactly the opposite: It’s very fast, but that pulse sort of becomes a drone.
“The only way this was going to work was if there was live drums, and Kevin [O’Meare], who’s in Video Hippos, and Jeremy [Hyman], who’s in Pony Tail -- two close friends who are awesome drummers -- said they’d do it. We were just rehearsing at my house, with the drummers set up and all of my stuff spread out, when Jimmy came in and said, ‘What the hell are you guys doing? I heard it all the way down the block!’ I told him I’d written this long piece, and he said, ‘I want to make the video for it!’
“So he got to work, and at some point he was like, ‘It’s going to be all Arnold Schwarzenegger footage,’” Deacon continues. “I was a little hesitant -- I thought it would be too campy, because the piece of music was very serious -- but when I saw the way he did it, it was very… I don’t want to say spiritual, but it was my no means jokey, and it was very full-on.”
“Schwarzenegger I think stands for this whole kind of cultural American mythology that we grew up with,” Roche says. “Me and Dan are 26, and we grew up with ‘Conan the Barbarian’ and ‘Predator,’ all these weird movies. As we became teenagers, his narrative grew with us -- the whole spectrum of destruction and conspiracy theories and control. The piece is about recontextualization -- taking this grand Schwarzenegger narrative and making it our own.”
Roche and Deacon believe that their Schwarzenegger images are protected by fair use, since the actor has crossed into the realm of politics as the governor of California. I any event, Roche says he believes that “they’ve been transformed and manipulated enough” in the swirling psychedelic pastiche to forestall any legal threats.
Isn’t this a bit ironic, I ask Deacon, given that he’s railed against Greyhound’s unauthorized use of his own image in magazine ads touting how easy it is to traverse America’s musical underground via its buses? “That’s a fair question, but I think it’s very, very different,” the musician says, laughing. “I know what we did is not proper and legal, but I think it’s different than using something to advertise for some huge company.”
As for the inevitable question of whether electronic dance musicians may finally become the new rock stars, Deacon is taking it all in stride. “I try not to think about it, because things like that can drive you crazy, and getting more popular is a double-edged sword, because I don’t want it to change the way I do my work.
“At times, I wish I could go back to playing small house shows. But at other times, I can’t wait to play even larger spaces so I can have crazy lasers shooting all over the place. I guess I’m just very excited about where I am at this moment.”
FACTS
Ultimate Reality, Dan Deacon (solo set) and Jason Ajemian’s “Playing You to Sleep” 9 p.m. Friday
Lakeshore Theater, 3175 N. Broadway
$8
(773) 472-3492
Girl Talk, Dan Deacon (solo set), Lord of the Yum Yum Two shows, 7:15 and 11:30 p.m. Saturday
Metro, 3730 N. Clark St.
Sold-out
(773) 549-4140
In addition to providing some much-needed perspective on the harsh realities of life in Iran for the average struggling family, the new animated film "Persepolis" is a poignant reminder of the power of music.
No, after my "Juno" experience, I'm not shifting beats into the world of film criticism. But I went to see the film adaptation of Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel at the Landmark Century Cinema yesterday with my wife and 11-year-old daughter, and all of us were touched by this simple but powerful movie.
One of the running themes is the forbidden allure of Western pop music in a world buttoned down tight by Islamic radicalism. The lines between genres may be a bit blurry for young Marjane, who sports a Michael Jackson button while scrawling "Punk Is Not Ded" on the back of her jean jacket. But all of those sounds, together with the black market Iron Maiden cassette that she risks life and liberty to buy on the street, represent freedom, life and truth in a way that we jaded Americans with a universe of music one mouse click away have long since come to take for granted.
Watch a trailer for the film, which nicely illustrates what I'm talking about, here. The dialog is in French, and the trailer lacks the subtitles provided in theaters. But the message comes through loud and clear.
"Run to the Hills" might not be on the top of my list for a Desert Island disc. But tell me the last time you've air-guitared with the passion and fury Iron Maiden prompts in our young heroine.
Um, teach, did you miss the 100 or so emails in the last week (averaging, I'd say, 60 con/40 pro) that I've posted here?
And listen, it don't get much hotter than Roger Ebert accusing you of being out of touch. But we've traded a couple of emails this week, and while neither of us has changed the other's mind, I don't think that my critical hero is really too mad at me.
Since he first made a major impact on the hip-hop scene in 1998, rapping beside Mos Def in the duo Black Star, Brooklyn MC Talib Kweli has been known as “a rapper’s rapper,” universally praised for his rapid-fire delivery and complex, socially conscious rhymes. “If skills sold, truth be told/I’d probably be, lyrically, Talib Kweli,” none other than Jay-Z, the bestselling rapper of all time, rhymed on “The Black Album.”
But it wasn’t until last year’s “Ear Drum,” his third bona fide solo album, that Kweli finally scored a Top 10 hit of his own. “Yeah, they say I’m back, but I ain’t go nowhere though!” the 32-year-old artist rapped. “Been here the whole time/Where you been? You back!/Matter fact, apologize!”
The roster of guests on “Ear Drum” is ample testament to the wide range of artists who’ve acknowledged Kweli’s talents, with producers including Chicagoan Kanye West and the Black Eyed Peas’ Will.i.am, musical guests Norah Jones and Justin Timberlake and much-buzzed underground heroes Madlib and Jean Grae. But Kweli says he didn’t set out to expand his audience by recruiting stars or crafting a more accessible sound.
“Going into the studio is always about the actual songs for me. I just wrote these songs over the period of about a year, but I also had a lot of other things going on. We put out a bunch of mix tapes, so I was constantly recording stuff. The album wound up being the songs I was most excited about.”
As in the past, “Ear Drum” has its share of politics and positivity. “More rap songs that stress a purpose/Less misogyny and less curses,” Kweli promises on “More or Less,” while on “Say Something,” he also vows to “speak to the people like Barack Obama.” (“From the moment he stepped on the national platform, he’s had a better shot than any black man before him at the nomination, but he’s also running a very impressive campaign,” Kweli says of the Illinois senator and presidential candidate.)
Yet this son of college professors and one-time owner of an Afrocentric bookstore is hardly a humorless preacher: Witness Kweli’s lighthearted take on the Dirty South sound in “Country Cousins,” or his back and forth with West on “In the Mood,” which praise the merits of “real women” like Tooty from “The Facts of Life” over an unforgettably catchy melody from jazz vibraphone player Roy Ayers.
In fact, Kweli says that one of his goals with “Eardrum” was to challenge people’s preconceptions about his subject matter as well as his sound, especially when it comes to the way he uses music.
“You know, musically, I’ve worked with some of the best in the business, from Madlib to Kanye, and from Pharell [Williams] to Just Blaze. But the lyrics end up being the focus of what I do. A lot of people talk about the lyrics and they either forget or never notice the musical choices. But I think that the reason why they hear the lyrics are because of the musical choices. There are a lot of dope rappers and a lot of people who have intelligent lyrics, but not all of them sound good. So I wanted to concentrate on crafting an album that shows people exactly what I do with music -- to make something really musical, but which still had the content.”
As the father of two, the former Talib Greene has made it clear that he hopes to have a long career as a rapper. “I want to have a career and feed my family forever,” he’s said. But he isn’t overly concerned about the chaos the digital revolution is wreaking upon the recording industry.
“My last two studio albums have been available on the internet months before they came out, and in the case of ‘Eardrum,’ it probably helped. Music at this point is free, like grabbing a firefly out of the sky. So where is my money to be made? Is it from branding myself, marketing and promoting myself? Like Cee-Lo [Green] said a few records ago, it’s about selling soul. Selling music has been secondary for a long time.”
To this end, Kweli says he values live performance now more than ever, and after his current tour in support of “Ear Drum,” he’s planning to follow in Cee-Lo’s footsteps with a genre-blurring band in the mode of Gnarls Barkley, sharing vocal duties with R&B singer Res. This group, Idle Warship, will be “more upbeat club music.” But Kweli doesn’t plan on abandoning more socially conscious music any time soon.
“It’s easy for a progressive audience to think that at the root of their problems with music is some sort of conspiracy: The industry doesn’t want me to sell ’cause I’m conscious,” he told the Toronto Star. “But I don’t think it’s as simple as that. You have to create the sort of situation you want for yourself.”
FACTS
Talib Kweli
House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn
9 p.m. Saturday (with Bo and Logik; sold-out)
9 p.m. Sunday (with Pugsly Adams and the Bridge)
Tickets $21.50 in advance; $23 at the door
(312) 923-2000
