Print Issue of June 8, 2017 (Volume 46, Number 35) by Chicago Reader

C H I C A G O ’ S F R E E W E E K LY | K I C K I N G A S S S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | J U N E 8 , 2 0 1 7

Why Chicago doesn’t have rent-controlled apartments 14

Who does Governor Rauner despise more: Mayor Rahm or Karen Lewis? 10

The Chicago Blues Festival refreshes itself The fest’s move to Millennium Park will improve its sound—and headliners Rhiannon Giddens, Ronnie Baker Brooks, and Rhymefest will make for deﬁantly unstodgy listening. By DAVID WHITEIS, BILL DAHL, AND LEOR GALIL 23

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EDITOR JAKE MALOOLEY DEPUTY EDITOR, NEWS ROBIN AMER CULTURE EDITOR TAL ROSENBERG DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS STEVE HEISLER, KATE SCHMIDT, KEVIN WARWICK, BRIANNA WELLEN SENIOR WRITER MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS MAYA DUKMASOVA, LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, AIMEE LEVITT, PETER MARGASAK, JULIA THIEL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI CONTRIBUTING WRITERS NOAH BERLATSKY, MATT DE LA PEÑA, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, DAN JAKES, BILL MEYER, MICHAEL MINER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, LEAH PICKETT, DMITRY SAMAROV, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS PORTER MCLEOD, EMILY WASIELEWSKI ---------------------------------------------------------------VICE PRESIDENT OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT NICKI STANULA VICE PRESIDENT OF NEW MEDIA GUADALUPE CARRANZA SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES FABIO CAVALIERI, ARIANA DIAZ, BRIDGET KANE MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER BRYAN BURDA DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA CLASSIFIEDS REPRESENTATIVE KRIS DODD

FEATURES

IN THIS ISSUE

4 Agenda Candide, Michael Che, the exhibit “Disco Demolition: The Night Disco Died,” Samantha Irby, Ken Loach’s ﬁlm I, Daniel Blake, and more recommended goings-on about town

CITY LIFE HOUSING

The secret history of Illinois’s rent control prohibition

How conservatives preempted rent control before the public was ready to talk about it BY MAYA DUKMASOVA 14

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21 Movies Wonder Woman, a new blockbuster vehicle for the venerable superhero, plays down her radical feminist roots. 8 Street View Takashi Murakami arrived at the MCA’s ArtEdge Gala with an octopus on his head. 8 Chicagoans How to make up for a dogless childhood? Kara Kapelnikova became a dog walker. 10 Joravsky | Politics As the elected school board bill moves toward Governor Rauner’s desk, he has to decide which adversary he’ll stick it to: Mayor Rahm or Karen Lewis. 12 Transportation Chicago’s extensive bike-friendly train network makes car-free camping a breeze.

ARTS & CULTURE

CHICAGO READER 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654 312-222-6920, CHICAGOREADER.COM

ON THE COVER: PHOTO OF RHIANNON GIDDENS BY JOHN PEETS

DUE TO A LAYOUT ERROR IN THE JUNE 1 ISSUE, A PORTION OF TONY ADLER’S REVIEW OF AMERICAN THEATER COMPANY’S T. DID NOT RUN. THE FULL REVIEW CAN BE FOUND AT CHICAGOREADER.COM/THEATER.

36 Shows of note Escort, Tool, Feist, and more recommendations 38 The Secret History of Chicago Music Seventies wizard rockers Bad Axe got a regular gig thanks to Rahm Emanuel’s mom.

FOOD & DRINK

42 Restaurant review: Curious “A Chef’s Playground” Tru vet Laurel Khan makes a bumpy return. 44 Bars Polished cocktail spot Deadbolt has replaced Helen’s TwoWay Lounge in Logan Square. 46 Jobs 46 Apartments & Spaces 47 Marketplace

READER (ISSN 1096-6919) IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY STM READER, LLC, 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

CLASSIFIEDS

17 Education & Lit Is Laura Kipnis’s new book an act of retaliation?

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magnifying glass on the seemingly small choices that can cause cataclysmic life transformations. 19 Lit Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Al Franken, Anne Elizabeth Moore, Scott Turow, and more highlights of the Printers Row Lit Fest 20 Visual Art A new Saul Steinberg exhibit at the Art Institute exempliﬁes the genius of the 20thcentury artist.

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MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

The Chicago Blues Festival refreshes itself

The fest’s move to Millennium Park will improve its sound— and headliners Rhiannon Giddens, Ronnie Baker Brooks, and Rhymefest will make for deﬁantly unstodgy listening. BY DAVID WHITEIS, BILL DAHL, AND LEOR GALIL 23

17 Theater Parade at Writers Theatre is a powerful—and surprisingly charming—musical about a rapemurder and a lynching. 18 Theater Bright Half Life puts a

48 Straight Dope Was the extent of the danger posed by Agent Orange ever oﬃcially determined? 49 Savage Love Dan clariﬁes: “Good, giving, and game” needs to be mutual—and there are limits. 50 Early Warnings Thurston Moore Group, Mountain Goats, Psychedelic Furs, 2 Chainz, Ying Yang Twins, and more upcoming shows 50 Gossip Wolf Bric-a-Brac Records celebrates four years, and more music news.

JUNE 8, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 3

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b ALL AGES

F circuitous tale implicating the roguish playwrights in a counterplot to save the Virgin Queen from Catholic terrorists. With so much grunting swordplay and pastiche soliloquizing, it’s a bit like a theme-park ride through the swashbuckling Elizabethan underground. But Peter Greenberg is a memorably gouty Robert Greene. —MAX MALLER Through 7/16: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 4 PM, Lifeline Theatre, 6912 N. Glenwood, 773-761-4477, lifelinetheatre.com, $40.

Golden Jubilee th

ANNIVERSARY just steps from the Dempster “L” stop est. 1967

Tue - Sat 10 - 6

847-475-8665

801 Dempster Evanston

Find hundreds of Readerrecommended restaurants, exclusive video features, and sign up for weekly news chicagoreader.com/ food. 4 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 8, 2017

Gidion’s Knot

THEATER

More at chicagoreader.com/ theater Candide Leonard Bernstein’s operetta—premiered in 1956 and R much revised over the decades—uses

a buoyant, quasi-classical score to illustrate Voltaire’s 1759 philosophical satire, about a naive young man whose optimistic ideals are shattered by the harsh realities of war, religious persecution, and the inﬁdelity of his lover, Cunegonde. Bernstein’s score—featuring lyrics by Richard Wilbur, Stephen Sondheim, John Latouche, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, and Bernstein himself—is a dazzling pastiche that evokes the work of Mozart, Oﬀenbach, Strauss (Johann and Richard), and Mahler. Director Rudy Hogenmiller’s staging for Music Theater Works (formerly Light Opera Works) is a triumph, striking a near-perfect balance between the score’s elegant exuberance and the pitch-black humor of the script (crafted by John Caird for a 1999 Royal National Theatre production). The excellent principals include Gary Alexander as the patter-singing narrator Voltaire, Ben Barker as Candide, and Cecilia Iole, who scores a home run with her coloratura aria “Glitter and Be Gay,” as Cunegonde. The choral singing is superb, and it’s a treat to hear Bernstein’s music played so well by a full orchestra under Roger L. Bingaman’s baton. —ALBERT WILLIAMS Through 6/11: Wed, Fri, and Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Cahn Auditorium, Northwestern University, 600 Emerson, Evanston, 847-467-4000, musictheaterworks.com, $34-$96.

Gidion’s Knot At ﬁrst Johnna R Adams’s two-hander, presented here by Eclectic Full Contact Theatre,

feels like a standard-issue message play: a parent and teacher confront each other over a student driven to suicide by his classmates. But as this intense, well-written story unfolds, we soon see Adams is after something much more complex and troubling than reminding us that bullying is bad. Instead, she strips away the veneer of civility, showing us what happens when two lonely, raw, damaged people clash and

clash again, each seeking to destroy the other—or at least to find someone else to blame for the tragic death. It helps that Michelle Annette and Julie Partyka feel so free to play so rough—by the end of the play the two look as shaken as the audience by what has unfolded before our eyes—and that director Katherine Siegel succeeds in making her production riveting but not histrionic. —JACK HELBIG Through 7/2: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Sat 6/17, 6/24, and 7/1, 2 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-935-6860, eclectic-theatre.com, $27, $17 students and seniors. Hair I’ll admit I lost heart when I saw the lobby display featuring two beanbag chairs, a lava lamp, and a peace poster. Having already ventured beyond my suburban comfort zone to see the “American tribal love-rock musical” in Arlington Heights, I took this cheesy evocation of the 60s as a bad sign. An audience member posed in front of it, a flower in her hair. But if she thought she was in for a night of hippie kitsch, she was mistaken. Instead, a fierce, fiercely talented cast showed us Hair’s blasphemy and rage along with its famous love. Director Lauren Rawitz undercuts the immediacy somewhat with her subtlety-starved take on the Vietnam war draft. She more than compensates, however, by opening up new sexual territory—particularly through the introduction of a trans character, given show-stealing life by Noah Spiegel-Blum. —TONY ADLER Through 7/1: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Metropolis Performing Arts Centre, 111 W. Campbell, Arlington Heights, 847-5772121, metropolisarts.com, $38. Her Majesty’s Will Shakespeare’s largely unknown personal life has long inspired novelists and playwrights of all stripes, and the only slightly less obscure career of Christopher Marlowe has attracted its share of attention too. Here, though, there is no scrap of gossip about them, no rumor too unfounded to be seized upon if it will make for a buddy-buddy comedy of espionage on the streets of 16th-century London. Adapted by Robert Kauzlaric from a 2013 novel by Chicago writer and theater artist David Blixt, this play spins a bizarre and

King Liz Liz Rico (Lanise Shelley) is a take-no-prisoners NBA agent on the cusp of assuming the reins of her company after 22 years of toil when she takes on troubled high school hoops phenom Freddie Luna (Eric Gerard) as a client and is forced to confront the cost of her relentless drive for success. While the underlying theme of Fernanda Coppel’s play about how difficult it is for a woman of color to make her way in the corporate world certainly rings true, much of the dialogue sounds like a recitation of stats and figures rather than human interactions. A lot of information is conveyed, often with urgency and at a high volume, but there are rarely any moments to empathize because these are archetypes rather than actual people. Chuck Smith directed. —DMITRY SAMAROV Through 7/16: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Windy City Playhouse, 3014 W. Irving Park, 312-3743196, windycityplayhouse.com, $25-$55. Ragtime So much goes right in Griffin Theatre Company’s warm, welcoming revival of Terrence McNally, Lynn Ahrens, and Stephen Flaherty’s 1998 musical adaptation of E. L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel—director Scott Weinstein’s staging is strong, his ensemble tight and energetic, and William Boles’s inspired scenic design pulls it all together—that it makes the flaws in the show all the more apparent. For one thing, the three stories lifted from Doctorow’s novel, each illustrating a pre-WWI American demographic (upper-middle-class white, urban African-American, and fresh-off-the-boat immigrant), aren’t equally interesting— Denzel Tsopnang is so powerful as the wronged black man, Coalhouse Walker, I kept wishing the whole musical was about him. To make matters worse, the

book and score aren’t well married; time and again the tunes slow the action and interfere with character development. —JACK HELBIG Through 7/16: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Den Theatre, 1329-1333 N. Milwaukee, 773-609-2336, thedentheatre.com, $39, $34 students, seniors, and military. Richard III This Fury Theatre proR duction is bold and demanding, timely and relevant. It’s also outdoors,

which means Shakespeare’s mammoth drama about one man’s insatiable desire for control and power can be enjoyed against the serene backdrop of nature. But of course any production of Shakespeare ultimately depends on the skill of the players tasked with speaking the lines, and here Nathan Agin’s portrayal of the seditious, scheming title character entices with wicked delight, as does a supporting cast that musters a sense of foreboding throughout—the play’s famous ghoulish encounters are all the better for it. Director Mark Dodge and ﬁght choreographer David Gonzalez engineered the superb ﬁght scenes, and there’s more than enough medieval steel to keep even the youngest audience members engaged well into the evening. —MATT DE LA PEÑA Through 6/17: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Indian Boundary Park, 2500 W. Lunt, 773-764-0338, furytheatre. org. F

DANCE

Summer Series Celebrate HubR bard Street’s 40th anniversary with historic performances such as Lou

Conte’s Georgia and Twyla Tharp’s The Golden Selection, among many others. 6/8-6/11: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph, 312-334-7777, hubbardstreetdance.com, $30-$102.

COMEDY

An Agreed Upon Set of Lies R One last chance to see this multidimensional sketch show by stal-

warts Chip Bagnall and Richard Kallus.

Richard III o FURY THEATRE

Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of June 8

Michael Che o PHIL PROVENCIO

deadbeat. The hour-long play follows him through a nightmarish inverted version of his day oﬀ as he scrambles to revive a nonexistent relationship with his estranged daughter, Reagan (Kayla Cole), by dragging her out of school for her 18th birthday. Missed cues and ﬂubbed transitions abounded, but on the whole this is a spirited take on the sordid aftermath of a teenage legend. —MAX MALLER Through 7/7: Fri 9 PM (no show 6/23), Under the Gun Theater, 956 W. Newport, 773-270-3440, undertheguntheater.com, $12.

Through 6/8: Thu 8:30 PM, Judy’s Beat Lounge, Second City Training Center, 230 W. North, second ﬂoor, 312-337-3992, $13. Break Out Comedy Festival R NBCUniversal and Second City come together for a weekend of come-

dy featuring Comedy Central’s Ramon Rivas, Community’s Danny Pudi, Pop Star: Never Stop Never Stopping’s Chris Redd, and many more. 6/8-6/10: Thu 7:30 PM; Fri 7:30 and 10 PM; Sat 7:30, 10 and 11:59 PM, Up Comedy Club, 230 W. North, 312-337-3992, upcomedyclub. com, $20.

Michael Che SNL’s Weekend Update coanchor ﬁnds comedy in the controversial with his thoughtprovoking stand-up. Sat 6/10, 10 PM, Thalia Hall, 1227 W. 18th, 312-526-3851, thaliahallchicago, $20-$25.

Improvised Jane Austen Every week a seasoned all-female comedy team uses audience suggestions to create a title for a show inspired by Austen’s classic works; what follows is a completely improvised hour-long production. A recent week’s title, Laughter and Lamb, resulted in countless laughs and many wandering lambs. Each cast member brought something memorable: Kate Parker’s effortless one-liners, Ana Silva’s endearing authenticity, and Stephanie Jones’s show-stealing performance as the Vicar, a lamb-herding, growly old man with a bizarre and boisterous laugh. The performance succeeds for many of the reasons Austen’s stories do. The English novelist used sarcasm and irony to find humor in her society; the current troupe takes advantage of this approach, finding comedy in 19th-century English cliches and Austen’s plot devices. What results is a whimsical homage to the illustrious author. —EMILY WASIELEWSKI Through 6/30: Fri 8 PM, McKaw Theater, 1439 W. Jarvis, 773-655-7197, improvisedjaneausten.com, $10.

Save Ferris: The Unoﬃcial Sequel to Ferris Bueller’s Day Oﬀ OK, so this play is hilarious. It does the pop-culture extension thing better than any number of face plants I’ve seen in that risky genre. But maybe it was inevitable—we all sort of knew what would happen after the mother of all ditch days. In Christian Missonak and Andrew Bentley’s spoof, Ferris (played by Missonak) has become a colossal

LIT & LECTURES

Chicago Alternative Comics R Expo For the sixth year this gathering (better known as CAKE)

celebrates local independent comics with a weekend of workshops, exhibitions, ﬁlm screenings, and panel discussions. This time around guests include Gabrielle Bell (Cecil and Jordan in New York), Kevin Budnik (Handbook), Emil Ferris (My Favorite Thing Is Monsters), and Ben Passmore (Your Black Friend). Sat 6/10-Sun 6/11: 11 AM-6 PM, Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted, 773-472-6469, cakechicago.com. Love on Trial On the 50th R anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the monumental Supreme Court case

surrounding interracial marriage, Kris Perry and Sandy Stier discuss their book Love on Trial: Our Supreme Court Fight for the Right to Marry. Mon 6/12, 6-8 PM, Seminary Co-op Bookstore, 5751 S. Woodlawn, 773-752-4381, semcoop.com.

Improvised Jane Austen o DAVID AUDINO Shrimp Boys Present: Seinfeld A nagging question persists in this lopsided show from comedy troupe the Shrimp Boys: What does any of it have to do with Seinfeld, whether we’re talking about the man or the TV series? A guess: like the inspiration of this bizarre tribute, it’s a show about nothing, as it were. But even a show about nothing needs some semblance of direction, and here there’s no logical thread to the zaniness. Instead, we get loud, frat-boy-style sketch comedy that’s then oddly interrupted by sets from two different stand-ups. That’s not to say the show isn’t funny in fits and starts—it’s just hard to know how everything fits, or even where it starts. —MATT DE LA PEÑA Through 6/29: Thu 10 PM, iO Theater, 1501 N. Kingsbury, ioimprov.com/ chicago, $5.

Printers Row Lit Fest The R largest literary event in the midwest, this festival features more

than 100 booksellers outside and 200 authors speaking indoors. Notable panelists include Senator Al Franken, Nick and Norah’s Inﬁnite Playlist author David Leviathan, and U.S. poet laureate Rita Dove. See page 19 for more. Sat 6/10-Sun 6/11: 10 AM-5:15 PM, Printers Row Lit Fest, Dearborn between Congress and Polk, 312-222-3986, chicagotribune.com/about/events/ printersrow, most events free, $50 festival pass.

For more of the best things to do every day of the week, go to chicagoreader. com/agenda.

MOVIES

More at chicagoreader.com/movies Family Life In this trite Chilean drama, a damaged and destructive man-child (Jorge Becker) reconnects with his bourgeois intellectual cousin (Cristián Carvajal), who impulsively asks him to house-sit while the cousin, his wife, and his daughter are vacationing. You know something is amiss when the protagonist hits on the wife (Blanca Lewin), and after the family have gone, he impersonates the cousin in order to woo a lower-class single mother (Gabriela Arancibia). Nudity and scenes of energetic lovemaking spice up the meager narrative but can’t make up for a ﬂat ending. Cristián Jiménez and Alicia Scherson directed. In Spanish with subtitles. —ANDREA GRONVALL 81 min. Fri 6/9, 8:15 PM; Sat 6/10, 7:45 PM; Sun 6/11, 5:15 PM; Mon 6/12, 6 PM; Tue 6/13 and Wed 6/14, 8:15 PM; and Thu 6/15, 8:30 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center

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I, Daniel Blake Writer-director R Ken Loach has been making movies about the British working class

since the mid-60s, and this masterful dramatic feature proves that even after all these years he can still work himself up into righteous, white-hot rage. Stand-up comedian Dave Johns plays the title character, a widowed Newcastle carpenter thrown out of work after suﬀering a heart attack on the job;

VISUAL ARTS Elmhurst History Museum Through photos and artifacts, “Disco Demolition: The Night Disco Died” tells the story of the infamous event, led by disc jockey Steve Dahl, during which thousands ﬂocked to Comiskey Park to see disco records destroyed in a ﬁery explosion. 6/9-10/8. Sun, Tue-Fri 1-5 PM; Sat 10 AM-5 PM. 120 E. Park Ave., Elmhurst, 630-833-1457, elmhursthistory.org. Fulton Market Kitchen “Bang! Gotcha Joe!,” this exhibition by CJ Hungerman and Dominic Sansone tackles gun culture and its victims, bigotry, and more as part of the 5x5 artist residency series. Fri 6/9, 5 PM-midnight. Mon-Fri 5 PM-2 AM, Sat 5 PM-3 AM. 311 N. Sangamon, 312-733-6900, fultonmarketkitchen.com.

It Comes at Night Samantha Irby The author R launches her much-anticipated book We Are Never Meeting in Real

Life, a collection of essays covering everything from navigating uncomfortable sexual encounters to scattering her estranged father’s ashes. Thu 6/8, 7-9:30 PM, Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark, 773-769-9299, womenandchildrenﬁrst.com, $20.

he’s recuperated and ready to get back, but a bureaucratic catch-22 makes him ineligible for rehire even as his support check runs out. Loach takes advantage of the star’s gift for gab as he grouses at one unfeeling desk jockey after another, but as in so many of the director’s other ﬁlms, salvation comes only in giving of oneself to others, as Daniel becomes the much-needed protector to a home- W

JUNE 8, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 5

AGENDA

B less single mother and her two children just arrived from London. Their story is one of poor people making day-to-day choices—some good, some bad, but almost all of them desperate. —J.R. JONES R, 100 min. Fri 6/9-Thu 6/15, 2:30, 5, 7:15, and 9:30 PM. Music Box

It Comes at Night Writer-director Trey Edward Shults (Krisha) delivers the most self-important American horror ﬁlm since A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Heavy on mood but light on ideas, this is the sort of movie that equates ambiguity and draggy pacing with seriousness. After a plague wipes out much of the earth’s human population, a family living in a secluded woodland home hoard their resources and arm themselves to the teeth. They take in a second family, and the characters develop a sense of camaraderie, but the interpersonal bonds are tenuous. Shults might have had something on his mind about Americans’ propensity for individualism and violence, but any viable theme is overwhelmed by the empty style. With Joel Edgerton and Carmen Ejogo. —BEN SACHS R, 97 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Crown

Village 18, River East 21 Megan Leavey Kate Mara R sets the tone for this gritty Iraq war drama, playing a young

burnout who flees her dead-end town and nagging divorced mom (Edie Falco) to join the marines. The military provides the young woman with discipline, though she finds purpose only after earning an assignment to train police dogs and shipping out to Ramadi with her German shepherd, Rex. Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite (Blackfish) renders the IED searches and combat scenes with nerve-racking realism, and her skillful postwar sequences show how the trauma of Leavey’s teen years resurfaces under the shroud of post-traumatic stress disorder. This is an affecting story about loyalty, sacrifice, and the forging of identity. With Ramón Rodríguez, Bradley Whitford, Tom Felton, and Common. —ANDREA GRONVALL PG-13, 116 min. Cicero Showplace 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings

My Cousin Rachel Daphne du Maurier’s gothic novel My Cousin Rachel tells the story of a young

6 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 8, 2017

English nobleman who, convinced that the death of his beloved guardian was engineered by the man’s new bride, plots his revenge against the woman, only to find himself falling in love with her once they meet. Writer-director Roger Michell (Notting Hill, Le Week-end) gives this material the Masterpiece Theatre treatment, with handsome production design and prim, technically precise performances. The film is too refined to be truly suspenseful, and the murder mystery feels academic. Rachel Weisz is characteristically fine as the wife, imbuing her character with charm and dark mystery, yet Michell provides no context for the performance—the film’s pleasures are strictly superficial. —BEN SACHS PG-13, 106 min. Landmark’s Centry Centre Past Life In this Israeli docudrama, set during the 1970s, an aspiring composer and her journalist sister investigate the World War II experiences of their secretive father, a Polish Jew who spent the war hiding from Nazis in a farmhouse cellar. Writer-director Avi Nesher has bitten off more than he can chew, covering not only the family mystery but also the sisters’ respective

career frustrations, the journalist’s struggle with splenetic cancer, and some business involving a German conductor whom the composer gets to know. Overstuﬀed and occasionally overwrought, the ﬁlm is engrossing nonetheless, with a satisfying pace as Nesher juggles the numerous narrative elements. He has nothing new to say about the family relationships of Holocaust survivors, but at least he doesn’t exploit the subject for cheap sentiment, as many similarly themed dramas have. In English and subtitled Hebrew, German, and Polish. —BEN SACHS 109 min. Fri 6/9, 2 and 6 PM; Sat 6/10, 7:45 PM; Sun 6/11, 3 PM; Mon 6/12, 8:15 PM; Tue 6/13, 6 PM; Wed 6/14, 8:15 PM; and Thu 6/15, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center

Megan Leavey

SPECIAL EVENTS

the story of a young woman who traveled to Haiti to ﬁnd her birth parents (Sat 6/10, 8 PM); The Luft Gangster, proﬁling a nonagenarian man who helped liberate Dachau but returned to racial oppression at home (Tue 6/13, 6:30 PM); and Mama Africa, a portrait of South African singer Miriam Makeba (Thu 6/15, 6:30 PM). For a full schedule visit facets.org. 60 min. Fri 6/9-Thu 6/15. Facets Cinematheque

Chicago African Diaspora International Film Festival The 15th annual festival of “black independent ﬁlms from around the world” collects more than a dozen features, including the documentaries Paris Noir, about African-American exiles in France during and after the world wars (Sat 6/10, 6 PM); Adopted ID,

Exodus Produced for the PBS series Frontline, this documentary by James Bluemel looks at the global refugee crisis, focusing on ﬁve parties as they journey across Europe, Asia, and Africa. 113 min. Tickets are $20, available in advance only at wcfor. brownpapertickets.com. Wed 6/14, 7:30 PM. Davis

Petty Biennial Film Program Part of the Petty Biennial art exhibit—“a response to classist views towards communities of color and marginalized art practices”—this program includes two short-ﬁlm collections, “Open TV Premieres” and “Another Spelling of Her Name.” Fri 6/9, 7 PM. Arts Incubator Summer Scares Terror in the Aisles presents another of its marathon schlock-fests. Screening this time around: the original Friday the 13th (1980), Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988), Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama (1988), and Return of the Living Dead (1985). Actor Ari Lehman, who played Jason in the ﬁrst movie, attends, as does actress Linnea Quigley, who appeared in the last three. Sat 6/10, 7 PM. Patio Theater v

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June 9 - 11 Chicago Blues Festival Millennium Park June 13 - August 29 (most Tuesdays)

Millennium Park Film Series Millennium Park July 5 - 9 Taste of Chicago Grant Park August 28 Fifth Star Honors Millennium Park

June 12 - August 21 (most Mondays & Thursdays)

Millennium Park Music Series Millennium Park June 23 - September 14 (Fridays-Sundays)

Chicago SummerDance Grant Park & more

LOOK FOR THE MOBY DICK WHALE TAIL HIDDEN ON A PAGE IN THE CHICAGO READER’S JUNE 8, 15 AND 22 ISSUES. SWEEPSTAKES RUNS JUNE 8–28. Visit CHICAGOREADER.COM/WIN, tell us the page number where the MOBY DICK WHALE TAIL is hidden, and enter for your chance to win. Enter two or more weeks during the sweepstakes for a chance to win the Grand Prize: a pair of tickets and a Lookingglass gift bag.

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JUNE 8, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 7

CITY LIFE Chicagoans

Street View

An octopus’s garden

o ISA GIALLORENZO

CHICAGO’S ART-WORLD ELITES descended on the Museum of Contemporary Art on June 3 for the annual ArtEdge Gala, this year celebrating the MCA’s 50th anniversary and the opening of the Takashi Murakami retrospective “The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg.” In addition to the typical gowns and suits, a number of attendees customized their outfits to match the Japanese artist’s cute and sinister psychedelic motifs. Murakami himself (pictured above) arrived sporting an appropriately flamboyant cephalopod-inspired ensemble. The soiree had no shortage of eye candy, including large light fixtures designed by the artist for the occasion, blue drinks decorated with dragon-fruit garnishes, and a performance by Janelle Monáe. —ISA GIALLORENZO See more Chicago street style on Giallorenzo’s blog chicagolooks.blogspot.com.

8 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 8, 2017

The dog walker Kara Kapelnikova, 28, owner of Dog Walker, Texas Ranger

WHEN I WAS A KID, I could never have dogs because my dad was allergic. But I had a tortoise, I had birds, I had ﬁsh, I had frogs. I had a bunny rabbit, and he lived to be almost ten. He seriously was very loyal to me, like I was his girlfriend, his bunny girlfriend. He hated my boyfriend; he thought he was in his territory. That bunny was my best friend in the whole world, and I still think about him every day. Later I had a hamster I found in my apartment complex’s Jacuzzi. I thought he was a leaf, but then I was like “Oh my gosh, it’s a hamster! I have to save him!” I got him out, and he was supercool. He wasn’t biting me or anything. He lived about a year and a half with me, which is a pretty long time for those little dudes. When he passed away, he was sitting in his food area, holding a piece of corn. He was happy. For a while, I didn’t have animals. But I’ve since settled in Chicago, I’m putting down roots. And one of my roots is, I have a dog who’s a rescue. Her name is Kedzie, after the street, and she’s a Great Pyrenees-labshepherd-husky mix. She thinks that she’s a very good doorbell. If anyone walks by or knocks on the door, she barks, and I’m like, “I can hear that too. I also have ears.” I love her. Two years ago, I started dog walking for a small company, and I loved that. I liked being outdoors. I liked being with the dogs. I really don’t

“I had a bunny rabbit who was seriously very loyal to me, like I was his bunny girlfriend,” Kapelnikova says. o PORTER MCLEOD

mind picking up poop. You’ll meet other people walking their dogs. It’s just a fun experience you get to have hanging out with your little buds, you know? So when I moved to Logan Square, I decided I was going to start up my own dog-walking business here. I was trying to think of names, and my boyfriend was like, “Dog Walker, Texas Ranger,” and I started cracking up. It would be way cooler if I was from Texas, I guess. I have this dog I’m walking named Lucy—she’s a pit mix—and she’s this little love bug. I’ll put out food before I leave, and she makes the biggest burp. She has these little legs, so she needs help getting up the stairs. And then there’s Pippa; she’s a springer spaniel. Even if you get bad news that day, you just look at her face and you’re like, “Oh my

gosh. You! You!” She’s the sweetest little angel. And at the dog park, if she doesn’t like the other dogs, ’cause she’s super submissive, she’ll go under my legs. I kind of got burnt out on it, but animal activism used to be basically my full-time job. I did a lot of advocacy, educating people on industry practices. Not to pooh-pooh anyone who walks dogs and isn’t vegan, but to me personally, for my own personal integrity, I could not call myself an animal lover if I was still participating in their exploitation and harm. I don’t believe that people want to hurt animals; I feel that a lot of people don’t realize that it’s as easy as it is to do the right thing. The animals in the food industry have the same feelings and emotions as the animals we take care of in our homes. —AS TOLD TO ANNE FORD

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JUNE 8, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 9

CITY LIFE

Governor Bruce Rauner is caught between his foes, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and CTU president Karen Lewis. o; BRIAN JACKSON/SUN-TIMES MEDIA; RICH HEIN/SUN-TIMES MEDIA; SANTIAGO COVARRUBIAS/SUN-TIMES MEDIA

POLITICS

Public enemies

As the elected school board bill moves toward Governor Rauner’s desk, he has to decide which adversary he’ll stick it to: Mayor Rahm or Karen Lewis. By BEN JORAVSKY

s funny as it sounds, the future of an elected school board in Chicago may come down to who Illinois governor Bruce Rauner likes the least: Mayor Rahm or Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis. In Rahm’s first term it would’ve been preposterous to think the choice was even close. Rahm and Rauner were practically in the throes of a bromance. They’d shared vacations, bottles of expensive wine, business deals, and a contempt for teachers’ unions.

But now they’re nearing year two of their feud, which as far as I can tell is largely over Rahm’s refusal to join Rauner’s effort to bankrupt the Chicago Public Schools. For once, the mayor seems to be the grown-up in the room. The elected school board movement, on the other hand, has been led by Lewis and CTU for the last ﬁve or six years. They’re hoping an elected board will be an improvement over the appointed one that the mayor’s ﬁlled with rubber-stampers who’ve given him a free hand to drive the schools toward the bank-

ruptcy that Rauner seems eager to ﬁnish off. The mayor says he opposes an elected school board because he doesn’t want to “politicize” the schools. I think we can all agree that what he really means is he doesn’t want any other politicians to have a say in how the schools are run. I suspect Emanuel has up to 250 million real reasons for not dealing with an elected board. That’s roughly the dollar amount in property taxes that gets diverted each year from CPS to the mayor’s favorite slush fund:

the tax increment ﬁnancing program. As a not-so-insigniﬁcant example, consider a detail from a story written by Fran Spielman in the June 3 edition of the Sun-Times. Spielman’s piece is about the mayor’s proposal to turn over the old Michael Reese Hospital site, which the city owns, to developers. “The site needs ‘a ton’ of infrastructure work, officials said—including rebuilding Cottage Grove Avenue, putting in a new park, pedestrian connections to the lakefront and a Metra station at 31st Street,” Spielman

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Read Ben Joravsky’s columns throughout the week at chicagoreader.com.

writes. She goes on to mention that the project’s expected to cost “tens of millions,” which “is to be paid for out of tax-increment ﬁnancing.” That’s one line in a longer story. But it would be more than an afterthought if we had at least one or two independent-minded board members demanding a precise account of exactly how many TIF dollars the mayor plans to spend on the project—and reminding the mayor that TIF money has already been diverted from CPS. In other words, the elected board members could be the ﬁduciary watchdogs the system desperately needs. On the other hand, they could be rubber-stampers, like most of the members of the City Council. When you bring democracy to Chicago, you never can be sure exactly what you’re going to get. The current appointed board can be expected to remain silent about the Reese project, on top of all the other TIF-funded development deals the mayor’s got up his sleeves. So it was no surprise in a 2015 ref-

CITY LIFE erendum that an overwhelming majority of Chicagoans in 37 wards concluded that we might as well join the 21st century and have an elected board like all the other municipalities in the state. That brings us to the statehouse. An elected school board requires a new state law. So far Emanuel’s stymied the movement thanks to another of his old pals, state senate president John Cullerton. Last year, the house passed an elected school board bill only to see it die in the senate because Cullerton, doing Rahm’s bidding, didn’t bring it to a vote. This year, the house passed the bill by the overwhelming margin of 105 to nine (even Republicans voted for it). In the house bill proposed by state rep Rob Martwick, the Chicago Board of Education would be composed of 20 members elected in newly drawn districts. That body would be led by a president who would run citywide for a four-year term. The ﬁrst election would be in 2019. Last week, Emanuel hit the phones, pleading with state senators not to bring the bill

for a vote. But apparently he couldn’t find any Chicago-based senators to do his dirty work—at least not this time around. And so Cullerton had no choice but to bring the measure for a vote. Not that he didn’t try some funny stuff. For one thing, he did so after normal office hours on the night of May 31, when it was too late to attract much media attention. Thus he saved the mayor the humiliation of having to watch Lewis claim a victory on the ten o’clock news. Then Cullerton amended the bill to have 15 school board members (not 21) and to move the ﬁrst election to 2023. Amending the bill sends it back to the house, where it seems Cullerton presumed Martwick and his allies would insist on their original language, delaying passage for another year while the house and senate haggle over the language. Slick move, President Cullerton. Unfortunately for Rahm, Martwick’s not going to object to the bill even though he thinks his original version is better. “The senate bill is not perfect, but it’s pretty good,” Martwick tells me. “I’m just thrilled

an elected school board is happening.” Martwick’s going to ask that house speaker Michael Madigan “concur” on the senate bill. Basically, that means the house would vote on the senate bill as it stands when members return to Springfield at the end of the month. So it looks like, despite Rahm’s best efforts, the school board bill will reach Rauner’s desk sometime this summer. And that’s when the governor has to make his big decision. If he signs the bill, he really sticks it to Rahm, his new adversary. If he vetoes it, he sticks it to Lewis, his old adversary. Oh, which adversary shall a governor choose? Most statehouse observers I’ve talked to predict Rauner will sign the bill—if for no other reason than that its supporters have enough votes to override his veto. But I don’t know. Rauner signing a Karen Lewis bill? Man, I’ve got to see it to believe it. v

ß @joravben

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JUNE 8, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 11

CITY LIFE

Riding the Oak Savannah Trail to Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore o ANDREW ST. PAUL/OUT OUR FRONT DOOR

TRANSPORTATION

Bicycle camping—it’s in tents Chicago’s extensive, bike-friendly train network makes car-free camping a breeze. By JOHN GREENFIELD

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hate it when someone acknowledges that Chicago is a wonderful place for architecture, art, music, and food but whines that it’s too difficult to access outdoor adventure or natural beauty here. Sure, we’re not Denver or Seattle or even Minneapolis in that respect. But on top of living next to a watery wilderness in the form of Lake Michigan, we’ve got something many of our peer cities lack: easy access to car-free camping. Our wide-ranging and bicycle-friendly Metra commuter rail system offers multiple options for taking a train out to the exurbs and then pedaling a few miles to a forest preserve, natural area, or state park. (In contrast, in a recent op-ed in Seattle alt-weekly the Stranger, Chicago expat Dan Savage noted that while Chicago’s regional rail system is “functional, not perfect,” Seattle’s is almost nonexistent.)

We’re also the nation’s intercity rail hub. As Reader staff writer Julia Thiel reported in last week’s Road Trips issue, Amtrak and the South Shore Line train to South Bend recently became more bike friendly. Amtrak, which has allowed unboxed bikes on downstate Illinois routes for many years, introduced roll-on service on its Blue Water train to Port Huron, Michigan, in 2013. And last year the service installed bike racks on the Hiawatha line to Milwaukee and the Pere Marquette route to Grand Rapids. The South Shore Line, which had dragged its feet about accommodating bikes, finally piloted a bikes-on-board program in 2016. It’s not perfect—bikes aren’t allowed on most weekday trains, nor are they permitted on all of the weekend runs, and you’re only allowed take them on and off the train at a handful of the Indiana stations, the ones that are wheelchair accessible. But these new bikes-on-

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John Greenfield edits the transportation news website Streetsblog Chicago. ß @greenfieldjohn

POKER TOURNAMENT

round-trip charge to bring along an unboxed bike. The Saluki route, a roughly five-hour trip ending in Carbondale, is great for accessing the hilly southern tip of Illinois and the many picturesque state parks in the Shawnee National Forest. But the new roll-on service on Wisconsin and Michigan routes ($10 round-trip bike surcharge on the Hiawatha, $20 on the Blue Water and the Pere Marquette) opens up some intriguing new possibilities. For example, from Milwaukee’s Amtrak station it’s a 56-mile bike ride to Kohler-Andrae State Park near Sheboygan, one of my favorite camping spots in the Badger State, featuring miles of undulating lakeside boardwalk. Be sure to stop in the quaint, Cape Cod-like town of Port Washington to buy some locally smoked whitefish to enjoy by your campfire. The Blue Water route’s New Buffalo stop would be handy for accessing the beaches of Harbor Country as well as Warren Dunes State Park, 11 miles north along the coast, plus many inland campgrounds across the mitten-shaped lower Michigan peninsula. The Pere Marquette line has a stop at Holland, Michigan, the state’s tulip-growing capital, from which it’s just an eight-mile pedal to coastal Holland State Park, where I once watched one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen, a fireball sinking into Lake Michigan to the west. If you’re more ambitious, you could take a multiday bike ride 175 miles up the coast from Holland to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park, the gateway to the Manitou Islands. There’s not enough space here to enumerate all the car-free camping excursions I’ve taken from Chicago during my 28 years here. But a few other standbys are Metra’s Milwaukee District North line to Fox Lake and Chain O’ Lakes State Park; Amtrak’s Southwest Chief route to Mendota and Starved Rock State Park; and Metra’s UP-North line to Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Bong State Recreation Area— put that in your pipe and smoke it. Heck, some buddies and I once even rode Amtrak’s Empire Builder route for two days all the way to Montana for a backpacking trip in Glacier National Park. The West Glacier station is a just a hop, skip, and a jump from the park entrance. When you live in a rail-rich city like Chicago, the car-free camping possibilities are endless. v

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trains policies open up several more options for communing with nature while lessening your carbon footprint on the way there. The advantages of the train-and-bike combo as an urban escape strategy were obvious during a ridiculously easy camping excursion I took over Memorial Day weekend to Illinois Beach State Park, located just south of the Wisconsin border. Instead of joining the exodus on the Edens Expressway, I pedaled my touring bike, loaded with saddlebags and camping gear, a few minutes from my Uptown home to the Ravenswood station on Metra’s Union Paciﬁc North Line. After an hour or so of relaxing, reading, and snacking (you can also drink booze on the train if you like), I arrived in Zion, where it was only a couple of miles to the park. The whole trip took about an hour and 40 minutes—about the same as if I’d driven there in traffic, without all the stress. The park’s beach is pebbly, and it lies in the shadow of the defunct Zion Nuclear Power Plant, but the leafy campground is a peaceful place to hang out, and there are plenty of scenic hiking and biking trails as well an on-site resort hotel that would make a good destination for a romantic winter getaway. Backpacking is also an option for this trip, but it’s useful to have a bike to take a side excursion to the completely insane Gold Pyramid House, at 37921 Dilley’s Rd., in nearby Wadsworth. It’s a six-story replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza, guarded by a 40-foot-tall statue of the pharaoh Ramses II. Like Illinois Beach, the Indiana Dunes have also long been a popular destination for carfree camping, because the South Shore Line has stations within walking distance of campgrounds in both the state park and national lakeshore sections. But now that there’s the option of taking a bike with you instead of backpacking, it’s easier to get to various trailheads for epic hikes along the giant mountains of sand, or to make a run to cozy Shoreline Brewery, at 208 Wabash St. in Michigan City, Indiana. (Though note that you can’t exit the train with a bike at Beverly Shores, the closest stop to the Dunewood Campground, the nicer of the two sites, but must detrain at the Dune Park Station in Porter, then pedal a few miles east along the Calumet Trail, which parallels the tracks.) I’ve also used Amtrak’s bike-friendly intra-Illinois routes for countless downstate adventures. (I have the perimeter of the state tattooed on my left arm to commemorate my pedaling, in stages, the entire outline of the Land of Lincoln.) There’s a $20

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JUNE 8, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 13

FEATURE A stretch of houses on Damen Avenue o SAMUEL A. LOVE / FLICKR CREATIVE COMMONS

The secret history of Illinois’s rent control prohibition

How conservatives preempted rent control before the public was ready to talk about it By MAYA DUKMASOVA

n a drizzly day in early February, state representative Will Guzzardi stood in front of a group of housing activists and community organizers in Bronzeville to announce his new bill, which is just seven words long: “The Rent Control Preemption Act is repealed.” The act, he said, was passed in 1997 by state legislators in fear of “the bogeyman of rent control.” Days after the announcement, it became clear that the bogeyman is alive and well, as Guzzardi was inundated with a ﬂood of protest e-mails and calls ominously predicting that his bill would spell the end of development and rehab of the state’s housing stock. To be clear, Guzzardi’s bill would merely repeal the prohibition on rent control in the state, and wouldn’t establish any new rent control laws. Nevertheless, the Illinois Association of Realtors has called the bill “a threat to private property rights,” and shortly after its introduction mobilized members to contact Guzzardi and their own state reps to urge them not to pass the measure. The realtors’ lobby claimed that if the prohibition were repealed, property values would drop, investors would turn their backs on the state,

14 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 8, 2017

tax revenue would dwindle, slum conditions would proliferate, and government bureaucracy would mushroom out of control. Rent control in the United States has typically taken the form of municipal regulations that govern how quickly and how much rent on residential or commercial property can be raised. Contrary to the Illinois realtors’ description of rent control, these regulations haven’t taken the form of “caps” or rent ceilings since the 1940s. Rather, they typically peg rent prices to inflation and limit yearover-year increases on apartment rents to 2 or 3 percent while granting landlords the ability to pass on some of the costs of large rehab projects or maintenance expenses to their tenants when necessary. Variations on this type of rent regulation exist in New York, California, New Jersey, Maryland, and in Washington, D.C. Most other states, including Illinois, not only lack such rent control laws but have legislation explicitly prohibiting their passage. Illinois’s 1997 Rent Control Preemption Act states that no unit of local government can “enact, maintain, or enforce an ordinance or resolution that would have the effect of controlling the

amount of rent charged for leasing private residential or commercial property.” Curiously, identical language can be found in the rent control prohibition laws of Michigan, passed in 1988; South Dakota, passed in 1990; Arkansas, passed in 1993; Tennessee, passed in 1996; and others. And if you google that bit of text, one of the top results will be a link to a model law from the American Legislative Exchange Council—ALEC. Illinois’s Rent Control Preemption Act is a verbatim copy of this model law, which appeared in ALEC’s handbook for state legislators until 1995. As the affordable housing crisis deepens in Chicago, any movement to protect the city’s growing and increasingly cost-burdened renter population from unreasonable and/ or unexpected rent spikes will have to contend with the roadblock of the Rent Control Preemption Act, as it has the power to put even the city’s modest rental affordability protections in jeopardy. And strikingly, its history is a study of how corporations and special-interest groups combined forces to quietly win an ideological and policy battle two decades before the public was ready to have it.

n the 1990s, rent control was a nonissue to the Illinois public. No city in the state had any type of rent regulation, and housing activists weren’t lobbying for any such measures, not even in Chicago. There were brief debates about rent control in the City Council during the late 1970s and ’80s, but they never went anywhere. The city’s only experiences with rent control were under federal mandates during World War II and for two years in the early 1970s, when Richard Nixon imposed wage and price controls on the entire country to stymie runaway inﬂation. While these experiences with federally imposed rent control didn’t generate any meaningful grassroots movement for local rent regulation, they deeply troubled conservatives. To them, Nixon’s move to control rents was a new betrayal by a Republican president who had unexpectedly created a variety of regulatory agencies including the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. All these forms of federal regulation represented government interference in the ability of the private sector to turn a proﬁt and an unwelcome intervention into free markets that could hurt America’s economy. And so in 1973, a conservative Illinois state senate staffer named Mark Rhoads created the Conservative Caucus of State Legislators to bring together like-minded lawmakers and ponder ways to push back against the growth of big government. If there was no hope of advancing a truly conservative agenda in Washington, perhaps they could have better luck with the states. The group’s name was soon changed to the American Legislative Exchange Council. In the following decades ALEC never lost sight of rent control, and while housing activists slept, ALEC was making sure the right people in government didn’t forget about it either. Though ALEC’s founders and initial members were conservative idealogues and midwestern state legislators, it became a powerful player in state lawmaking nationwide when it recruited corporations and special-interest groups to join and the likes of the ultraconservative political megadonor Koch brothers to bankroll their operations. ALEC isn’t a lobbying group for any particular company or association; rather, it hosts glitzy gatherings where its thousands of members from state governments (whose memberships run about $50 and are sometimes paid for with taxpayers’ money) and hundreds of members from the private sector (who pay up to $25,000 for

FEATURE

Senate president James “Pate” Philip, center, confers with house minority leader Lee Daniels, left, and another lawmaker during a special session in Springﬁeld in 1997. o SETH PERLMAN/AP PHOTO

memberships) can meet and create model legislation. In this way, an array of conservative causes ranging from abortion restriction to rolling back environmental regulations to fighting labor unions to rent control get pitched to state legislators or find sympathetic allies among moneyed special-interest leaders. Legislators leave ALEC gatherings with ideas for new laws to propose (and often draft texts of such laws) and also a thickened Rolodex of very wealthy potential donors. In recent years ALEC has been likened to a “dating service” for politicians. It’s hard to say whether every state that has a rent control preemption law got it from ALEC, but many of these laws were passed in the late 1980s and early to mid-1990s at a time when ALEC members such as the National Multifamily Housing Council and the National Association of Realtors (the second-highest spender on lobbying in the country) saw several threats to the unfettered freedom of their members to turn a proﬁt from their property: in 1985, Washington, D.C., passed its rent control law; in 1986 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that California’s rent regulations weren’t a violation of antitrust law and could therefore stand. Conservative lawmakers and real estate interests networking through ALEC thus acted to prevent the spread of rent control laws elsewhere. And the climate in many state legislatures was ripe for easy passage of anti-

regulation laws. In Illinois’s General Assembly, both houses were under Republican control. “If we were ever going to do something on rent control, that was the time to do it,” says Greg St. Aubin, who’s been the chief Springfield lobbyist for Illinois realtors for 30 years. “It was like: You should really consider preempting the possibility of local governments doing this before it’s a big issue, because otherwise it’s going to be harder to fight.” St. Aubin doesn’t recall the language of the Illinois bill coming from ALEC, and claims it was his group that drafted the legislation. But the senate president in 1995, when the bill was first introduced, was James “Pate” Philip, and the speaker of the house was Lee Daniels— both Republican ALEC members. The realtors recruited downstate and suburban sponsors in the senate and house, but they weren’t nearly as important in the passage of the legislation as Philip and Daniels. “It never would have passed with Chicago Democrats in charge of the process,” St. Aubin says. The bill passed the senate without debate, but was voted down in the house after outspoken opposition from Democratic representatives Jan Schakowsky and Louis Lang. “There is not a single group lobbying in favor of rent control,” Schakowsky argued on the house floor, “and yet at the behest of all those in the business of building housing, [sponsor Ron Stephens] has decided to bring before us a bill that has no relationship to any

real-life situation.” In conclusion, she called the “silly bill” a “completely useless piece of legislation.” Lang argued against the bill because it would take power away from local governments. He pointed out Republicans’ inconsistency in pushing for local control on some issues but not others. “Are we going to pick and choose issues to have local control?” he asked. “Why should we, in Springﬁeld, tell my village or yours . . . what to do about housing in their local community? It’s silliness. This is a bad bill, a bad idea.” The bill “certainly smelled like something being done at the behest of conservatives,” Schakowsky told the Reader recently, recalling the debate. “I guess ALEC was looking ahead. . . . They wanted to prevent the spread of a progressive idea.” In 1997, Illinois senate sponsor Tom Walsh reintroduced the bill, which sailed through the vote a second time. This time there was no debate in the house. Sponsor Chuck Hartke, a Democrat from rural Effingham County, told his colleagues that “the state of Illinois should keep its hands off of private business and allow them to place whatever rent they would like on their commercial apartments and properties.” Though the house was by then back under Michael Madigan’s control, the bill passed and was signed into law by Governor Jim Edgar in August 1997. Hartke, who’s now a lobbyist, has no recollection of backing the proposal. “I can’t imagine why I would have introduced the bill,” he said in a recent phone conversation. “Maybe I was doing a favor to someone.” Though the Reader reached out to every member of ALEC’s public relations team, no one responded to e-mails or voice mails.

esistance to rent regulation is largely ideological, though it’s often presented by conservatives in practical and “common sense” terms. Real estate special-interest groups are ultimately against rent control because it presents a roadblock to their members’ ability to freely profit from property ownership. But usually representatives of these groups justify their arguments by referring to a consensus among economists that rent control is a bad idea: an oft-cited 1990 poll by the American Economic Review found that 93 percent of economists opposed rent control. For most economists rent control amounts to an interference in a market’s supply of housing. Because proﬁt is seen as the leading

incentive for people to create and maintain rental housing, and rent control limits proﬁt, the imposition of rent control will logically lead to a diminished supply of housing, the argument goes, and more people will wind up without the housing they need. Studies have also suggested that in places with rent control, the overall quality and supply of affordable rental housing has diminished, though these studies often don’t account for other factors that could contribute to these conditions.

“It was like: You should really consider preempting the possibility of local governments doing this before it’s a big issue, because otherwise it’s going to be harder to fight.” —Greg St. Aubin, chief Springfield lobbyist for Illinois realtors

Despite the apparent consensus among economists, this perspective isn’t universal. “It’s become almost a textbook cliche: in any intro econ class you learn about why rent control is a bad idea,” says J.W. Mason, an economics professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “I don’t think that’s justiﬁed and legitimate.” Providing affordable housing is just one aspect of rent control, Mason says, but that’s not its only function. The other is providing an opportunity for a neighborhood’s long-term residents to remain in place. “Not all rights are property rights,” as Mason puts it, and a tenant’s interests in remaining in a neighborhood are no less legitimate than the landlord’s interests in reaping maximum proﬁts from his or her property. “That’s an ethical point that most normal people, though perhaps not most economists, would agree with,” Mason says. Long-term neighborhood residents often contribute to the rise of property values, J

JUNE 8, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 15

FEATURE

State representative Will Guzzardi has proposed a bill that would repeal the Rent Control Preemption Act. o TIM BOYLE/FOR SUN-TIMES MEDIA

“Not all rights are property rights. That’s an ethical point that most normal people, though perhaps not most economists, would agree with.”

ne of the most vocal supporters of Guzzardi’s bill is the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, precisely due to these realities in south-side neighborhoods. “Rental costs have continued to increase while household incomes have stagnated,” says KOCO’s executive director, Jawanza Malone. Many of the people he works with are seniors on ﬁxed incomes or working families who make too much to qualify for housing subsidies, yet have too little in savings to protect against unexpected expenses and spikes in rent. “When half your income is going to housing expenses, that leaves very little money for education or health-care costs,” Malone adds. “We have to recognize the huge burden that rent places on families who already aren’t owning a lot of money.” And while the Rent Control Preemption Act prevents any meaningful local conversations about rent control, it’s now also proving to be a threat to Chicago’s modest affordable housing protections.

—Economist J.W. Mason

what Judge Mitchell is doing with his case out of a sense of wanting to be consistent,” says Frank Avellone of the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing, who helped represent the plaintiff. “It could influence the decisions of other judges in other cases. There are a handful of other cases in the circuit court right now with the exact same issues.” And though it appears that no one in Chicago has yet ventured an argument in court that the city’s Affordable Requirements Ordinance—which stipulates that developers must reserve 25 percent of newly constructed housing units in certain types of developments as affordable housing or pay a fine—is a form of rent control, such arguments have successfully been made in Tennessee. Repealing the Rent Control Preemption Act wouldn’t be tantamount to instituting rent control. Rather, Guzzardi says, it would return power to local governments to consider the possibility of some form of rent regulation. For now, his bill is stuck in the house’s Rules Committee, and no companion bill has yet been introduced in the senate. He thinks it will take time to convince legislators to give the repeal serious consideration, as real estate interests hold powerful sway over many elected officials in Springfield. But since 1995, the share of Illinois’s legislators who belong to ALEC has fallen, and that could perhaps present an opportunity. “When I introduced this bill, I told the advocates that this is not gonna happen this year, that this will be a multiyear fight and we need to use this bill as an organizing tool to educate voters and legislators,” Guzzardi says. “It will be an uphill battle, but I believe it’s a battle we need to fight.” v

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from predatory landlords who know their tenant base doesn’t have a lot of options. These neighborhoods already tend to be a far cry from the idealistic economics textbook vision of housing markets running smoothly on supply and demand. “Poor tenants who don’t have a lot of ability to go to court and defend themselves [against evictions] and on whom the stress of moving is very disruptive are very vulnerable to predatory landlords,” Mason says. “The abstract models that economists like to use completely ignore these realities.”

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continued from 15 he adds, by investing in a neighborhood’s businesses and institutions, so it makes sense that they would also have the right to reap the benefits. “There’s an actual economic argument that says when the value of housing in a neighborhood goes up, a major reason is because of the people who are already living there,” Mason says. “They should get some beneﬁt from that and not be displaced.” Furthermore, landlords often cash in on rising market rents through no effort of their own, especially if they weren’t the ones who built the building. This is why property in gentrifying neighborhoods tends to be a great investment. Guzzardi sees repeal of the Rent Control Preemption Act as not only the return of control over this issue to local governments but as a first step toward a potential discussion on how to protect long-term, low-income residents in his Logan Square district who are “being kicked out of their homes because of what’s happening with rent prices in the neighborhood,” he says. Indeed, at least one study suggests that rent control in New York has actually protected low-income communities in gentrifying neighborhoods. Another study conducted after the end of rent control in Massachusetts found that evictions, which severely destabilize communities, became much more common as deregulated apartment rents rose precipitously and once-diverse communities became wealthier and whiter. Mason points out that for very low-income neighborhoods that aren’t gentrifying, rent regulation could be a way to protect renters

In a recent Cook County circuit court case, the law was used to challenge a provision of the Keep Chicago Renting Ordinance, which states that when a property goes through foreclosure and there are renters living inside, the new owner has to either pay $10,600 for the tenants’ moving costs or offer them an extension of the lease with an increase in rent of no more than 2 percent, if any. The defendants’ attorneys in Rivera v. The Bank of New York Mellon and Bayview Loan Servicing argued that the 2 percent rent-increase limit was a form of rent control—and judge Raymond Mitchell agreed. The plaintiff’s attorneys haven’t decided whether to appeal the case to a higher court, so this interpretation isn’t yet legal precedent in Illinois. But the circuit court judge’s decision sets an example for other judges considering similar claims in Cook County. “The courts are always trying to be consistent, and so some of the other judges that have KCRO cases in front of them are very curious

ARTS & CULTURE

EDUCATION & LIT

Kipnis during her appearance at the Chicago Humanities Festival o BEN GONZALES

Payback writer?

By DEANNA ISAACS

he folks at the Chicago Humanities Festival couldn’t have known, when they booked author Laura Kipnis for a May 24 event at the Studebaker Theater, just how topical her subject would be. They’d have expected controversy. Kipnis’s new book, Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus (published in April), promised a blistering critique of Title IX procedures, contemporary feminism, and the sexual climate on American campuses. But they had to be surprised by the extra frisson of the lawsuit ﬁled against Kipnis and the publisher, HarperCollins, the week before the event. The suit claims, among other things, that the book was an act of retaliation. Unwanted Advances focuses on several sexual harassment investigations at Northwestern University, where Kipnis, a cultural critic, teaches in the Department of Radio/ Television/Film. The original target of the investigations was another Northwestern faculty member, star philosophy professor Peter Ludlow (who has since resigned). Kipnis wrote an essay about Ludlow’s situation for the Chronicle of Higher Education and promptly became a Title IX target herself, charged, she says, with creating a hostile en-

vironment by publishing the piece. Ludlow’s investigations stemmed from relationships he had with two Northwestern students. The more notorious of the two was a single outing with a 19-year-old freshman who wound up spending the night with him in his bed. She claimed later that the then-55-yearold professor had forced her to get drunk and groped her. It’s not this professor-as-frat-boy story that’s at issue, however—it’s a three-monthor-so-long relationship Ludlow had with a 25-year-old graduate student Kipnis refers to by a pseudonym in Unwanted Advances. In the lawsuit, the student is Jane Doe. She also happens to be one of two students who filed the Title IX complaints against Kipnis. Onstage at the Studebaker, Kipnis deflected questions about the case. “When you’re being sued, if you talk about it, you can get sued some more,” she said. If it was a source of stress it didn’t show. But the issues raised by it are feeding new buzz and broadening the controversy. Did Kipnis and her publisher, as the lawsuit charges, invade Jane Doe’s privacy, defame her, misrepresent facts, and intentionally inflict emotional distress on her? Did they do this by referring to a previous relationship

she’d allegedly had with a married professor? By publishing some of the (according to Kipnis’s count) 2,000 often affectionate e-mails between Doe and Ludlow? By suggesting that they’d had a dating relationship? According to the complaint, Unwanted Advances also insinuates that Doe is a liar and jeopardizes her academic career by characterizing her as a “serial Title IX filer.” As for the pseudonym: Doe claims that references in the book to her appearance and events cited make her easily recognizable to people in her field. So Kipnis can’t talk about the lawsuit (and HarperCollins says it doesn’t comment on pending litigation). But her readers can (and are)—among them, another provocative academic, University of Chicago law professor Brian Leiter, who’s written about both the book and the case on his Leiter Reports blog. He shared his assessment in a phone interview. “There are four claims,” Leiter says. “Intentional infliction of emotional distress, publication of private facts, portrayal of the plaintiff in a false light, and defamation.” In his opinion, “The big obstacle on the false light and defamation claims is going to be that [Doe] wasn’t named in the book. Publication of private facts can be justified if the matter [in this case, the fairness of the Northwestern proceedings] is newsworthy.” And intentional infliction of emotional distress? “The general standard is the facts reported have to be shocking to a reasonable person, and the conduct of the defendant has to be outrageous or shocking as well,” Leiter says. “The defendants are going to argue that this was an effort to report on a subject that has been in the national spotlight for a number of years now.” Leiter thinks that makes emotional distress “probably the least strong claim.” The others, “if they survive a motion to dismiss, will be factual questions for a jury.” Doe’s attorney, Evanston-based Julie B. Porter, said on the phone last week: “We have no objection to Laura Kipnis or anyone exploring Title IX’s reach and writing about the way it’s being implemented. But for her to use our client and her life and private pains as a way to tell that story, not only without her permission, but without even checking to be sure the facts she relied on were true, is just plain wrong. It’s been devastating for our client to have a professor at her own university do something like this.” v

ß @DeannaIsaacs

THEATER

A love story from hell By TONY ADLER

“[Leo Frank] sneaked along behind her, ’til she reached the little room / He laughed and said, ‘Lil’ Mary, you met your fatal doom.’” —From the song “Little Mary Phagan” by Fiddlin’ John Carson

n April 27, 1913, Mary Phagan was found dead in the basement of an Atlanta pencil factory where she’d recently worked. The factory superintendent, a transplanted New York Jew named Leo Frank, was falsely but conveniently charged with raping and murdering the 13-year-old, Georgia-born, Christian white girl. A highly publicized trial ensued, conducted in an atmosphere of bigotry and rage. On August 25, Frank was sentenced to hang. Two years later, in an act of moral courage amounting to political suicide, Georgia governor John Slaton commuted Frank’s sentence to life in prison. A group calling itself the Knights of Mary Phagan (whose members reportedly included sheriffs, mayors, bankers, and a former state governor) responded by kidnapping Frank from his cell and lynching him before a large and festive crowd. Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown recount these events in their Tony-winning 1998 musical, Parade, getting a powerful— and surprisingly charming—production now at Writers Theatre. Their narrative doesn’t start with the trial, though, or the commutation or even the murder. Instead, it reaches back a half century, to the time of the Civil War. The ﬁrst thing we see is a Georgia boy saying good-bye to the “old red hills of home” before heading off to ﬁght for the Confederacy. Which sums up Parade’s crucial insight, and the source of its considerable smarts and compassion: an awareness that Frank’s railroading was only incidentally about Frank. Or Mary Phagan, for that matter. The whole ugly business had its roots in the collective humiliation suffered by J

JUNE 8, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 17

ARTS & CULTURE Patrick Andrews and Brianna Borger in Parade o MICHAEL BROSILOW

READER RECOMMENDED

b ALL AGES

THEATER

Two women, five decades By DAN JAKES

continued from 17

the white southerners in the war, the loss of what they idealized as an Edenic agrarian culture, and their subjugation to a northern industrial economy foisted on them by what they denigrated as aliens and inferiors. In that context, the Frank trial—with its Cornell-educated, child-labor-exploiting, ethnic villain and its fatherless, working-class, homegrown victim—couldn’t have provided better optics for populist demagogues of the time. (You can draw your own conclusions about present-day parallels.) Not at all incidentally, the parade of the title is the one held on Confederate Memorial Day, which falls every April 26—the day Mary Phagan died. Talk about optics. Every musical is a kind of ritual, and Uhry and Brown make elegant use of the stations of Frank’s cross to create an almost Brechtian frame for their tale, allowing political and historical resonances to play through it. But they also allow for something much more intimate. Even as Parade explores the dialectics of the Frank trial, it also gives us a Frank love story, following Leo and his wife, Lucille, as they conquer their own cultural divide—only one dimension of which has to do with the fact that Lucille was a born southerner, like Phagan. News accounts at the time characterized Leo as self-contained and reticent; a courtroom drawing depicts him owl-eyed in glasses, sitting with legs crossed and arms folded as he gives testimony. Indeed, his apparent coldness was mistaken for a sign of guilt. As embodied here by Patrick Andrews, the Leo we encounter early on isn’t merely shy but difficult in a classically New York way: whiny, superior, impatient with interruptions, and disinclined to be reassuringly brave in

18 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 8, 2017

a bad situation. His arrogant manner leaves Brianna Borger’s Lucille locked out of the biggest struggle of her life as well as his. The idea that they might fall truly in love during their sojourn in hell is wonderful and compelling in direct proportion to its absurdity. Gary Griffin’s staging is clean, clear, and beautifully economical, using Christine Binder’s lights to convey everything from Frank’s sense of isolation to the rectangle marking Phagan’s grave. Conducted by Matt Deitchman under Michael Mahler’s musical direction, the nine-piece band makes crisp work of Brown’s score, which often alludes to period and regional styles. But the quiet triumph of the production is its casting: a marriage of strong talent with looks that in some cases uncannily recall the historical originals. The real Leo and Lucille, in particular, were a visually disparate pair—him short and delicate, her round-faced and full. That Andrews and Borger reproduce the ratios both emphasizes the distance between them and renders the closing of that distance all the more satisfying. One other, louder triumph: Jonathan Butler-Duplessis as Jim Conley, the pencil-factory janitor whose bartered testimony helped convict Frank. Big-voiced Butler-Duplessis makes Conley almost operatically satanic at times without losing his human anger. He’s quite literally scary good. v R PARADE Through 7/2: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 and 6 PM (2 PM only 6/18 and 7/2), Tue 7:30 PM; also Wed 6/28, 3 PM, Writers Theatre, 325 Tudor Ct., Glencoe, 847-242-6000, writerstheatre.org, $35-$80.

ne of the blessings of the human brain is just how much merciful work it does to soften the sharp edges of harsh memories, reconfiguring and rationalizing experiences through the lens of present-day needs and values. Take a step outside yourself, though, and critical moments past can appear so different as to be unrecognizable. Bright Half Life, Tanya Barfield’s unsentimental yet open-hearted dissection of a five-decade-long lesbian relationship, hits rewind and fast-forward through time to highlight and reexamine the minutiae of flirtations, pillow talk, arguments, and conversations in a marriage that only reveal greater truths in hindsight. We meet Vicky (Patrese D. McCain) and Erica (Elizabeth Ledo) in 1985 New York, where Erica—a “soft butch” extrovert with a flair for the dramatic—has eyes for Vicky, her type A boss, who operates with extreme diligence and caution as the only black supervisor in their company. Years later, we catch up with them preshow in a movie theater during an awkward valley in their courtship where the crackling dialogue has dried up but they’re not yet to the point that they can take comfort in each others’ silence. “Time’s changed,” Vicky says, “but not us.” It’s a sentiment that’s lovely and reassuring and, as Keira Fromm’s masterfully directed production goes on to demonstrate, absolute bull hockey. Of course they change. Over and over again, and this airtight 90-minute production

from About Face Theatre puts a magnifying glass on the seemingly small choices and interactions that can cause cataclysmic life transformations down the road. As the play darts back and forth over the years, audience are prompted to imagine for themselves: How much heartache could have been avoided if one phrase had been uttered with a little less malice? What is it about about one particular night that rekindles a waning flame? It’s not a coincidence there’s so much celestial and scientific metaphor here (Erica writes science textbooks)—in this universe, relationships evolve with an infinite number of possibilities as part of no larger fate, which is both liberating and absolutely terrifying. Bright Half Life is one in a long line of plays that mince a story’s chronology and tease out important information in fleeting moments, but few achieve the realism, comprehensibility, and emotional arc created here by Fromm’s directorial precision and performances that are simultaneously raw and polished. William Boles and Christine Binder’s minimal yet clarifying set and lighting design help keep the profound cerebral themes grounded and visceral, and McCain and Ledo intrigue and engage from curtain to whiteout. v R BRIGHT HALF LIFE Through 7/1: Wed-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Sat 7/1, 3 PM, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-975-8150, aboutfacetheatre.com, $40, $20 students and seniors.

ß @DanEJakes Elizabeth Ledo and Patrese McClain in Bright Half Life o MICHAEL BROSILOW

ß @taadler

ARTS & CULTURE

o RICHARD CAHAN

Hello, May Name Is Ice Cream author Dana Cree hosts a cooking demonstration on Sun 6/11. o SANDY NOTO

LIT

Printers Row in a nutshell By AIMEE LEVITT

eaders of Chicago rejoice! This weekend is the Printers Row Lit Fest, the annual Tribune-sponsored celebration of books and the people who write them. In a concession to unpredictable June weather, all author appearances and writing workshops this year will be indoors, either at the Harold Washington Library or Jones College Prep, though the bookseller booths will remain outside. As always, the festival is mostly free, except for featured speakers Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Sun 6/11, 1 PM, $5, $35 for assigned seating) and Senator Al Franken (Sat 6/10, 3 PM, $35); if you want to spend $50 for a Fest Pass, you can see them and get access to the express signing lanes.

And now a few highlights: In a cruel twist of fate, at 10 AM Saturday you’ll be forced to choose between Jason Diamond, author of Searching for John Hughes (HarperCollins), in conversation with Ben Tanzer; poet Rita Dove in conversation with the Trib’s Mary Schmich; the awesome Samantha Irby with Scaachi Koul and Jenny Allen; and Emil Ferris, author of My Favorite Thing Is Monsters (Fantagraphics), the graphic novel with an epic publishing history, in conversation with Trib reporter Christopher Borrelli. The 11 AM slot also presents a difficult choice: Ibram X. Kendi, author of Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Nation Books); legal-thriller-writing lawyer Scott Turow;

or another installment of the ongoing Our Miss Brooks 100 centennial celebration with Quraysh Ali Lansana, Sandra Jackson-Opoku, and Patricia Smith. At noon, your choice is cooking demonstrations by Anupy Singla and Rick Bayless; Megan Abbott and Jennifer Finney Boylan chatting about the ﬁne art of writing suspense; and the Trib’s Amy Dickinson discussing the challenges of dispensing advice to strangers. At 1 PM, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer E. Jason Wambsgans talks with Schmich about covering violence in Chicago, Ladydrawer Anne Elizabeth Moore and horror novelist Daniel Kraus compare the scary things in their work, Luvvie Ajayi tells Lolly Bowean about being awesome, and students from 826CHI read

from their new anthology PS: You Sound Like Someone I Can Trust. Syrian short-story writer Osama Alomar returns to Chicago for a 2 PM conversation with novelist Christine Sneed; at the same time, trans activist Janet Mock discusses her books Redefining Realness and Surpassing Certainty (Atria). At 3 PM Mayte Garcia talks about her memoir The Most Beautiful: My Life With Prince (Hachette), and at 4 PM there’ll be a taping of CHIRP radio’s live-lit show The First Time with Joe Meno, Freda Love Smith, and Britt Julious. Sunday’s schedule is a bit less packed, though it does begin with an odd pairing, NPR’s Scott Simon and Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh discussing Simon’s new memoir, My Cubs: A Love Story (Blue Rider). Also at 10 AM, Heather Ann Smith talks about Blood in the Water (Pantheon), her history of the Attica prison riot. At 12:45 PM, Dana Cree will do a cooking demonstration from her new book Hello, My Name Is Ice Cream (Random House). A special installment of discussion series the Conversation, “Writing Resistance,” takes place at 3 PM, along with a panel of coming-of-age fiction with novelists Allegra Goodman, Jane Hamilton, and Ann Leary. v R PRINTERS ROW Sat 6/10-Sun 6/11: 10 AM-5:15 PM, Dearborn between H a r r i s o n a n d Po l k , printersrowlitfest.org, free-$50.

ß @aimeelevitt JUNE 8, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 19

ARTS & CULTURE

12 O’CLOCK

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VISUAL ART

Draw your own meaning By DMITRY SAMAROV

Saul Steinberg, Head, 1945 o COURTESY ART INSTITUTE CHICAGO

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20 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 8, 2017

aul Steinberg liked to call himself “a writer who draws,” but during the 20th century few draftsmen could approach his inventiveness. In his drawings, Steinberg’s lines seem to reinvent themselves as they progress, zigging when you expect them to zag, or disappearing abruptly just as they appear to be gathering steam. In the Art Institute’s revelatory new show “Along the Lines: Selected Drawings by Saul Steinberg,” curator Mark Pascale has gathered 54 examples of Steinberg’s work spanning from the 1940s to the ’80s (given to the museum by the Saul Steinberg Foundation in 2013), and has presented an artist who’s always searching for the purest distillation of thought through the act of mark making. Born in Romania in 1914, Steinberg studied architecture in Italy, then fled the spread of anti-Semitism and fascism in Europe for America. His slant on the United States was always from the perspective of a newcomer, an immigrant’s view of his strange new home. Though known best for his many New Yorker covers and drawings, Steinberg wasn’t a cartoonist, as were many of the other prominent contributors to that magazine. It’s a testament to his unique place in art history that he was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s pivotal “Fourteen Americans” show in 1946, alongside such modernists as Arshile Gorky

and Robert Motherwell. Many of Steinberg’s drawings employ text, but the words don’t illuminate the images or vice versa; instead, both written and drawn elements cohere for a unified poetic statement. In I Do, I Have, I Am (1971) the phrases are both a graphic and literary message: “I Do” appears as a mixture of rainbow and sun, “I Have” is rendered as fencing and sheets hanging on a clothesline, and “I Am” is carved out of a piece of earth. Throughout his career, Steinberg had a knack for using quotidian tools like stamps in sophisticated ways. He applies bureaucratic stamps throughout Certified Landscape (1969), transforming them from their everyday usage into moons and building decorations. In fact, every mark in that drawing, in addition to several others in “Along the Lines,” was made using only stamps. What look from a distance like hand-drawn etchings are actually custom-stamped lines, imprinted repeatedly to form crosshatched and rhythmic textures. Elsewhere, Steinberg adopts collage elements in a transformative fashion. A newspaper clipping of a pipe organ becomes a skyscraper, a ledger sheet morphs into a building facade, and a hotel label is incorporated into its surroundings and becomes the vanishing point of a landscape. In his catalog essay, Pascale posits that

Steinberg’s greatest contribution was his demonstration that the drawn line is equivalent to thought. Indeed, Steinberg is rarely concerned with outward physical appearance and is much more interested in what and how we perceive what we see. His portraits and landscapes are of interior worlds rather than external ones. But his interest in the human psyche isn’t dry or academic—much of the humor and mystery in his work occurs in the way he relates humanity’s lack of understanding. When Steinberg draws thought balloons, for instance, they are usually ﬁlled with non sequiturs or gibberish. Cartoonist Chris Ware also contributes a catalog essay to “Along the Lines,” and in it he quotes fellow artist Lynda Barry: “[Steinberg’s] drawing went not from his mind to his hand but rather from his hand to his mind.” In other words, Steinberg made his art in order to ﬁnd out what he thought. Now, thanks to this beautiful exhibit, we can gain some insight into what he thought as well. v R “ALONG THE LINES: SELECTED DRAWINGS BY SAUL STEINBERG” Through 10/29: Sun–Wed and Fri-Sat 10:30 AM–5 PM, Thu 10:30 AM–8 PM, Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan, 312-443-3600, artinstituteofchicago.org, $25, $19 students, seniors ($5 discount for Chicago residents), free kids under 14; free for Illinois residents Thursdays 5-8 PM.

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MOVIES

The new Wonder Woman is OK with men By LEAH PICKETT

n the marketing blitz leading up to Wonder Woman, the first big-screen feature to focus on the Amazonian superhero, one story stood out. When the Austin-based theater chain Alamo Drafthouse Cinema announced a women-only screening, a succession of men expressed their displeasure on social media, some calling the event sexist. Alamo Drafthouse responded by adding more “No Guys Allowed” screenings to their roster. The brouhaha became great free advertising for the ﬁlm because feminism—or rather, an amorphous “girl power” version glossed up and sanitized for mass consumption—has never been more popular. In fact, female

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“ celebrities can face a kind of political litmus test on the subject. When Elisabeth Moss, lead actor of the new Hulu series The Handmaid’s Tale, was asked during the Tribeca film festival in April whether she thought the show was feminist, she replied, “For me it’s not a feminist story. It’s a human story, because women’s rights are human rights.” Following an online backlash, Moss told the Huffington Post, “OBVIOUSLY, all caps, it is a feminist work. It is a feminist show.” How times have changed since 1941, when Wonder Woman made her debut in DC Comics alongside Batman and Superman; back then it was more controversial to assert one’s feminist views than to deny them. B

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The original Wonder Woman, created by psychologist William Moulton Marston, espoused what he called “psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world.” In The Secret History of Wonder Woman (2014), author Jill Lepore explains how the character arose from the suffragist and birth control movements of the early 20th century, which in turn were fueled by feminist utopian fiction based on the Amazons of Greek mythology. Marston conceived of Wonder Woman as a warrior princess from the magically shrouded, allfemale Paradise Island, who ventures into the modern world mainly to ﬁght masculine evil, destruction, injustice, and intolerance on behalf of democracy, freedom, and equal rights for women. According to Marston’s wife, Elizabeth Holloway, Wonder Woman’s core philosophy of love came straight from Woman and the New Race (1920) by Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. “Women should rule the world,” Sanger writes, “because love is stronger than force.” Marston and Holloway were fans of the book, as was Olive Byrne, who was Sanger’s niece and Marston’s live-in mistress. According to Lepore, Marston was indulged sexually, emotionally, and ﬁnancially by Holloway and Byrne, who worked to support him. He had two children by each of them, and the whole family—including another of Marston’s lovers, Marjorie Wilkes Huntley—lived in a sprawling house in Rye, New York, that they called Cherry Orchard. Marston may have advocated for a matriarchal society like that of the Amazons, but as Lepore notes, “a matriarchy Cherry Orchard was not.” Marston was also interested in bondage. “[His] idea of feminine supremacy was the ability to submit to male domination,” expained Sheldon Mayer, Marston’s editor at DC. Marston insisted that Wonder Woman be bound in every issue of the early comics, and though he had no problem with readers being turned on by this, the binding served a higher purpose than the erotic. As a psychologist he argued that men tend to be anarchic and violent, that women tend to submit to loving authority, and that we could all live in peace if we subscribed to the “Love Allure” philosophy of the Amazons. Yet whenever Wonder Woman is tied up or men weld chains to her gold bracelets, she breaks free. This was meant to ssss EXCELLENT

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represent women “breaking their chains,” Lepore writes, and invoked the imagery of the suffragist movement and the abolitionist movement before it. It also coincides with what Marston truly believed; despite his many contradictions, he declared in a press release for Wonder Woman’s first issue that “the only hope for civilization is the greater freedom, development and equality of women.” Wonder Woman is never bound in the new movie; in fact the great irony, given the male backlash that preceded the release, is that it’s so innocuous. Promoting the movie, director Patty Jenkins (Monster) and star Gal Gadot have described it and themselves as “feminist,” and indeed the movie upholds the principles laid out more explicitly in the comics. The new Wonder Woman—who goes by her Amazonian name, Diana—echoes Margaret Sanger’s idea that love can triumph over force (“I believe in love,” the heroine proclaims at the finale). But no one here is calling for women to rule the world. Diana is more of a gender egalitarian than a radical feminist: her love for a man, the dashing American intelligence officer Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), is coupled with a clunky third-act realization that some men are bad but the good ones make mankind worth saving. In the comics, after Steve crash-lands on Paradise Island, Diana flies him back to the U.S. in her invisible plane and arrives amid World War II, when women began to enter the workforce in higher numbers and realized they had value outside the home. For some reason—perhaps to distinguish this Warner Bros. release from Marvel’s World War IIthemed Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)—the setting has been moved back to the World War I era; Diana believes that Ares, the god of war, is behind the human conflict and that only she can stop him. Despite all the feminist branding and allusions to toxic masculinity—one villain inhales a poison to make himself stronger and scarier—Jenkins tries not only to include men on Wonder Woman’s side but also to make male viewers feel better about a woman saving them. That Steve immediately identifies himself to Diana as one of “the good guys” proves this is a movie pitched at red-blooded American males too. v WONDER WOMAN sss Directed by Patty Jenkins. PG-13, 141 min. See chicagoreader. com for listings.

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The Reader’s guide to the 2017

Chicago Blues Festival

CHICAGO BLUES FESTIVAL

Fri 6/9 through Sun 6/11, 11 AM-9:30 PM, Millennium Park, Michigan and Randolph, free, all ages

The fest refreshes itself with a move to Millennium Park and an adventurous bill that includes Rhymefest, Rhiannon Giddens, and Ronnie Baker Brooks. By DAVID WHITEIS

he big news about this year’s Chicago Blues Festival is that it’s followed in the footsteps of Jazz Fest and moved to Millennium Park. This should finally guarantee state-of-the-art sound, at least on the main stage at Pritzker Pavilion—the system there leaves Petrillo’s PA in the dust. The change of scenery seems to have had a salutary effect on the bookings as well—at the very least, they present more of a challenge to genre boundaries than those at some previous Blues Fests. The 2017 edition includes rapper R hymefest, eclectic roots-music innovator Rhiannon Giddens, R&B-flavored

southern-soul chanteuse JJ Thames, and forward-looking blues-based artists such as Ronnie Baker Brooks, the Cedric Burnside Project (who update the venerable north Mississippi “trance-blues” style with anarchic punk spirit), and Gary Clark Jr. Of course, it wouldn’t be a blues festival without plenty of rootsy music to satisfy the traditionalists, and this year the oldschoolers include former Muddy Waters and Magic Slim sideman John Primer, 1960s Stax Records soul legend William Bell, veteran harp man Billy Branch, beloved soul-blues pioneer Denise LaSalle, and elder statesman Jimmy Johnson. The seven acts the Reader

has featured in its coverage—Branch, Giddens, Baker Brooks, Bell, LaSalle, Johnson, and Rhymefest—draw from both groups, representing the scope and breadth of this year’s festival. All seven deﬁnitely deserve spots on your must-see list, but they’re by no means the only artists worth checking out. Explore, investigate, and discover! The festival’s new layout is cozier than the old Grant Park arrangement—it looks as though better sound quality will probably come at the expense of some elbow room. The Crossroads Stage (which emphasizes Chicago artists) is on the south promenade, southeast of the Cloud Gate sculpture, aka the Bean. The

Mississippi Juke Joint Stage (which mostly books southern artists) is on the north promenade, northeast of Cloud Gate. The Front Porch Stage (which features mostly acoustic artists and smaller bands) is on the Harris Theater rooftop terrace, south of Randolph and north of Pritzker Pavilion (where the headliners perform each night). The Blues Village in Wrigley Square, near the intersection of Randolph and Michigan, hosts nonproﬁts that sponsor or support the blues—and two of them, the Windy City Blues Society and Fernando Jones’s Blues Kids Foundation, present live music throughout the weekend on the Blues Village Stage. All events are free. v

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o CHANDLER WEST / FOR SUN-TIMES MEDIA

Rhymefest works the links between hip-hop and the blues

The veteran rapper’s devotion to Chicago’s black cultural legacy ﬁnds a new outlet in a Billy Branch remix. By LEOR GALIL

he “Rhymefest” Smith didn’t set out to perform at the Chicago Blues Festival. When Fray ne Lewis, a programmer with the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, approached the rapper last fall, it was to brainstorm ideas to shake the festival up. “The Blues Fest was not evolving. It wasn’t evolving as you see Lollapalooza evolving,” Smith says. “I suggested connecting [with] Donda’s House—the organization that I’m a part of that does artist development for youth—[to help] young people reimagine the blues.” In February DCASE, Donda’s House, and AARP launched a program called Bridges to the Blues, which invites young musicians from various genres to collaborate with older players and compete for a chance to perform at the Blues Festival. His work on the program inspired Smith too: “When I saw how that was turning out, I was like, ‘Well hell, I wanna perform too!’” Smith isn’t just a pillar in the Chicago hip-hop community—he’s also an educator and a former aldermanic candidate (he ran in 2011). He cares deeply about finding ways to connect the city’s black cultural legacy to the people who can carry it into the future, and for that reason he’s unconcerned about whether his Blues Fest appearance will ruffle the feathers of musical purists. He’s recently butted heads over hip-hop with veteran blues harmonica player Billy Branch, whose set follows his on Friday night at Pritzker Pavilion. “Every time Billy and I get together, he doesn’t waste a moment to tell me how he doesn’t like hip-hop,” Smith says with a laugh. “So you find these challenges of ‘Well, music should be like this!’ and ‘Music should be like that!’ But conquering that and having those conversations are important to the evolution of music.” Smith recently began working with Branch on a remix of “Help Me,” a languid, smoky number the harpist recorded with guitarist Lurrie Bell for the 1982 album Chicago’s Young Blues Generation. “I’m making that specifically for the Blues Fest,” Smith says— and Branch will join him onstage. The remix is part of a shift in Smith’s approach to recording and releasing music. In 2014 he launched a PledgeMusic page for his upcoming third solo album, Violence Is Sexy, a project he soon abandoned—he says he’s done making albums. (He also says that because he didn’t finish the record, the pledges never became donations.) He made the decision after writing “Glory” with Common and

John Legend for Ava DuVernay’s 2014 Martin Luther King Jr. biopic Selma. “Selma went to the Oscars, and it gave me an epiphany—that music has to be connected to something productive,” Smith says. “There’s so much music. Music is for free. You can get it on Spotify for free. So what, I’m gonna spend $15,000 to create an album that people are gonna get for free, play for a week, and it’s over? No, music should be connected to movements. So any music that you hear from me from now on is gonna be connected to something tangible.” Recently he recorded material for The Public, a forthcoming film by Emilio Estevez about a standoff between police and library employees. Smith also acts in the movie, playing what he calls “a homeless gentle giant” who gets caught up in the library occupation. Working on tracks specifically for Blues Fest is an extension of Smith’s new approach. “I don’t believe that most artists—especially hip-hop artists—that you see today are making their money off music. They’re making their money off products,” he says. “I just want my product to be community. The Blues Fest—you’ll hear new songs that I worked on with Jazzy Jeff, and stuff strictly for this show. I want my music to be connected with who I am as a person and my movement in the community, not just for the sake of my ego.” Smith wants to keep the blues—not just t he Blues Festiva l—a live a nd releva nt for future generations. “We have to start training each other to replace ourselves,” he says. “I think that’s not only been an issue with the Blues Fest, but the issue with many of our institutions—political, social, and arts-wise—in Chicago.” Foregrounding connections between the blues and hip-hop, he explains, could be a way to bring young blood to the old genre. In Smith’s view, hip-hop and the blues share core values. “Hip-hop, at its essence, tells stories—stories about revolution, about community, about hopes and dreams,” he says. “Blues comes from that same type of struggle.” His arguments about music with Branch are like sibling squabbles, where closeness magnifies small conflicts. “I believe that one of the reasons Billy Branch and I debate hip-hop and its messages and the blues so much is because it’s so much alike,” Smith says. “It’s the same thing, like, with a different drum pattern.” v

Rhymefest performs on Friday, June 9, at 6:20 PM at Jay Pritzker Pavilion.

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o JOHNNY WHEELER

chicago blues festival

Harmonica master Billy Branch celebrates 40 years leading the Sons of Blues So many current stars have cut their teeth in Branch’s band that they could ﬁll their own blues festival. By DAVID WHITEIS

illy Branch has been pay ing tribute to elder statesmen of the blues for so long that he’s become one himself. Born in 1951 in Great Lakes, Illinois, just north of Chicago, he grew up in California, returning in 1969 to attend college at the new urban campus of the University of Illinois. He’d been toying with a harmonica since childhood, and that year he ﬁnally found the inspiration to pursue it as a career: he attended a ten-hour free concert in Grant Park called “Bringing the Blues Back Home,” copresented by songwriter, bassist, and producer Willie Dixon and featuring such harmonica maestros as Junior Wells and Big Walter Horton. Soon Branch was sitting at the feet of some of the same hard-bitten veterans who’d awed him in the park, absorbing musical and life lessons— an experience he recounts in the song “New Kid on the Block,” on the 1990 Alligator release Harp Attack!

26 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 8, 2017

In 1977, Living Blues magazine cofounder Jim O’Neal invited Branch and about a dozen other young Chicago blues hopefuls to appear with Dixon at JazzFest Berlin as “The New Generation of Chicago Blues.” Out of this gig evolved the lineup that would become Branch’s band the Sons of Blues, whose 40-year run this set celebrates. The original roster did in fact include three musicians whose fathers were established Chicago bluesmen: guitarist Lurrie Bell (son of harpist Carey Bell, another of Branch’s mentors), bassist Freddie Dixon (son of Willie Dixon), and drummer Garland Whiteside (son of drummer Clifton James, a well-known studio musician and sideman). In the late 70s, Branch took over the harp spot in Dixon’s Chicago Blues All Stars, but by the mid-80s he’d returned to his position as full-time leader of the S.O.B., where he’s stayed ever since. Over the years he’s recorded not just with the Sons but also with other prominent blues artists, proving himself just

chicago blues festival

as convincing on traditionalist acoustic fare as he is on hard-driving electric blues rooted in the postwar Chicago style and spiced with R&B, pop, and jazz fusion. He’s helped sustain the blues both as an evolving contemporary genre and as a meaningful market segment. Branch has also cultivated an international reputation as an educator through decades of work with Blues in the Schools, and in his teaching and his performances he stresses that the blues are ﬁrst and foremost a form of living black history—that their musical syntax must be understood in this context and tapped from this source. Though his arrangements for the S.O.B. can lean pretty far toward funk or rock and many of his lyrical themes belong to the present day, Branch consistently summons his mentors’ voices, not only in his grits-and-molasses vocals but also in his harp work—he makes references to their styles and quotes their trademark riffs and solos, even as he throws in enough embellishments to satisfy his own ambitions and his forward-looking listeners. The stories in his songs sometimes invoke this heritage as well: “Going to See Miss Gerri One More Time,” from 2014’s Blues Shock (Blind Pig), tells the tale of Gerri Oliver, proprietor of Bronzevile’s storied Palm Tavern—the life trajectory of one remarkable woman becomes a metaphor for the African-American Great Migration. By now, so many artists have cut their teeth with Branch and gone on to establish careers as bandleaders that you could ﬁll an entire blues festival with them. This tribute performance features Lurrie Bell and Freddie Dixon from the Sons of Blues’ original late70s lineup; bassist J.W. Williams, an early Son who’s now a stalwart on the Chicago scene; and guitarists Carlos Johnson and Carl Weathersby, both of whom spent years with the S.O.B. and are now internationally recognized front men. Also pitching in are two longtime Branch collaborators: veteran blues, jazz, and R&B vocalist Mae Koen, who’s joined by a group called the Lights, and trombonist Bill McFarland, who leads the Chicago Fire Horns, one of the city’s most respected and versatile horn sections. v

Billy Branch & the Sons of Blues perform Friday, June 9, at 7:20 PM at Jay Pritzker Pavilion. Special guests for this set include Lurrie Bell, Freddie Dixon, J.W. Williams, Carlos Johnson, Carl Weathersby, Bill McFarland & the Chicago Fire Horns, and Mae Koen & the Lights.

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JUNE 8, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 27

chicago blues festival

o SUN-TIMES MEDIA

At age 88, late-blooming guitarist Jimmy Johnson enters his fifth decade in the blues

Syl’s older brother started out playing soul, but he came into his own as a bluesman in the late 1970s.

By BILL DAHL 28 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 8, 2017

espite getting an extremely late start in his quest for Chicago blues stardom—his first domestic full-length as a bandleader was released in 1979, when he was 50 years old—guitarist Jimmy Johnson has been a local fixture for so long that some fans take him for granted. Bad move. Johnson’s spiky solos twist and dart with startling unpredictability, and his searing, high-pitched vocals remind you that in the 60s he used to back up top soul acts onstage. When you watch him lay into his guitar or unleash his soaring pipes, you might find it hard to believe he’ll celebrate his 89th birthday in November. A native of Holly Springs, Mississippi, Johnson has reinvented himself more than once. He sang gospel long before he tried his hand at R&B, and he went by Jimmy Thompson until he followed the lead of his younger brother Syl and adopted the Johnson handle. He first played his instrument of choice thanks to a childhood pal who would go on to become a blues sideman extraordinaire. “I picked up a guitar because Matt Murphy had a guitar, back when I was in Mississippi,” Johnson says. “I knew how to play doo-doodoo-doo-doo. Just a couple of licks on the guitar.” After a stint in Memphis, he arrived in Chicago in 1950. Two big reasons brought him here, he says: “Economics and to get away from that Jim Crow!” Younger brothers Syl and Mack soon followed. While Johnson toiled as a welder and harmonized on spirituals with the Golden Jubilaires, they made their first marks on the local blues scene. Johnson bought a guitar from harpist Billy Boy Arnold in 1958, spent time in a local doo-wop group called the Masquerades, and backed blues harpist Slim Willis. At long last he formed his own combo, the Lucky Hearts—and that’s about when he changed surnames. The switch made a difference. “They knew that I was Syl’s brother and they pinned ‘Johnson’ on me,” he says. “When I said ‘Jimmy Johnson,’ I’d do the gig, where I might not have got it if I said ‘Jimmy Thompson.’”

In the late 60s, Johnson cut a couple 45s with the Lucky Hearts for the tiny Stuff label and an instrumental cover of Syl’s smash “Come On Sock It to Me” (released on Syl’s Shama imprint under the name the Deacons). Aside from that, though, he didn’t record much till after he changed his focus from soul to blues in ’74. “That’s when that ﬁeld I was in had died,” he says. “You ever hear the word ‘Stop whippin’ a dead horse?’ Ain’t no use to keep whippin’ a dead horse if there’s another horse that’s still living. And I knew Buddy Guy and Junior Wells and them, James Cotton. Man, they were making a lot of money.” Johnson apprenticed in Jimmy Dawkins’s band and toured Japan in 1975 as Otis Rush’s second guitarist. “Otis Rush has been my favorite guy all down through the years,” he says—and he played a prominent role in last year’s Blues Festival tribute to the longsidelined southpaw. In 1978 Johnson reached a big new audience with four spectacular covers on the ﬁrst volume of Alligator’s anthology series Living Chicago Blues. “That’s what got me up off of the ground,” says Johnson. He saved his original material for his Delmark album Johnson’s Whacks, which came out the following year. He encored on Delmark in 1982 with North// South, and Alligator released Bar Room Preacher in ’83. By then, Johnson’s reputation as one of Chicago’s hottest blues guitarists had long been cemented. In 1994 he even had a dalliance with a major label when Verve picked up his album I’m a Jockey (released in France by Birdology) for U.S. distribution. In 1988 Johnson was badly injured in a tour-van crash that killed two of his band members. Unable to play guitar while he recuperated, he switched temporarily to keyboards. But Johnson has never wanted to give up the blues—he still plays on a weekly basis in local clubs. “I really enjoy being onstage entertaining people,” he says. “I’ve had enough of the road. You see me at home, playing all the time—that’s because I don’t want to be on the road.” v

Jimmy Johnson performs on Saturday, June 10, at 2:45 PM on the Front Porch Stage.

chicago blues festival

o DAVID MCCLISTER

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William Bell makes a triumphant return to Stax after more than 40 years

The veteran singer’s 2016 album This Is Where I Live has attracted new generations of fans to his classic southern soul. By BILL DAHL

ow hot is William Bell these days? At least as hot as he was in 1977, when his single “Tryin’ to Love Two” reached the top of the Billboard R&B chart, eventually selling more than a million copies. The Atlanta-based soul singer has been basking in critical acclaim for This Is Where I Live, his 2016 album for the reactivated Stax Records (now an imprint of Concord Music). It won a Grammy for Best Americana Album and earned three Blues Music Awards nominations, including two in soul-blues categories. Clearly its appeal runs wide. “We knew that we were really stretching it a little bit in crossing genres and trying to create something different,” says Bell. “We didn’t know if everybody would get it or not. But they did.” Bell collaborated with producer John Leventhal for This Is Where I Live, a partnership

that proved enriching. “Our first writing session, we knew that we had something special going, so I told him, ‘Well, I feel real comfortable, and this is the first time I’ve been this comfortable with a musician since I worked with Booker T.,’” says Bell. In the 60s, when he was a soul star with a string of Stax hits, he maintained a formidable creative partnership with organist Booker T. Jones. Born in Memphis in 1939, Bell had honed his pipes with Phineas Newborn’s orchestra in the 50s and fronted a vocal group, the Del-Rios, who debuted in 1956 on the Meteor label. Producer and songwriter Chips Moman, then with the fledgling Stax, approached Bell in 1960. “[He] asked me if I’d do a solo project,” says Bell. While traveling with Newborn’s band in New York, the young singer was inspired. “In a hotel room one night, it was raining,” he says. “I was homesick and wrote this song. Didn’t think that

much of it at the time.” Moman was impressed by that yearning ballad, “You Don’t Miss Your Water.” Stax chose it as Bell’s 1961 debut single, and though it barely broke into the Billboard Hot 100, it became hugely popular on the southern-soul circuit. After the 1962 single “Any Other Way,” Uncle Sam whisked Bell away, though he managed to cut a few sides while on leave from the military—and Stax also had some tunes already in the can that it released in his absence. When Bell returned to Memphis in 1965, musical trends had changed. Teaming with Booker T. Jones helped get him back up to speed. “We had known each other our whole lives,” says Bell. “He was kind of like an extension of me, and I was an extension of him. We just kind of clicked. We had some great success together.” They wrote several hits for Bell in the late 60s, including “Everybody Loves a Winner,” “I Forgot to Be Your Lover,” and “A Tribute to a King,” a moving memorial to their just-departed labelmate, Otis Redding. Their best-known collaboration was the swaggering blues “Born Under a Bad Sign,” which they tailored for southpaw guitarist Albert King in 1967. “We wrote the song overnight, came back the next day and got with the rhythm section and created the track,” says Bell. “Albert didn’t read, so I had to whisper the lines in his ear in between lines. But we got it down and he put his signature guitar on, and it came to life.” This Is Where I Live features a considerably retooled version of the oftencovered tune. Bell and Jones also wrote “Private Number,” William’s 1968 hit duet with Judy Clay. It was conceived as a solo effort for Bell, who’d already recorded his vocal track when Stax owner Jim Stewart came to him in search of material for Clay. “We didn’t do it in the studio together,” says Bell. “They got together and put Judy on it, doing the harmony on the chorus and doing the second verse. They kept my ﬁrst verse on there and the choruses and everything.” “Tryin’ to Love Two,” Bell’s only R&B chart topper, came after Stax folded and he’d signed with Mercury. Four decades later, he’s enjoying a truly spectacular career revival. “I’m busier than ever,” he says. “In my concerts, I’ve got the grandparents, the parents, and the kids now!” v

William Bell performs on Saturday, June 10, at 8:15 PM at Jay Pritzker Pavilion.

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JUNE 8, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 29

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chicago blues festival

Denise LaSalle earned her crown in southern soul—and wears it in the blues In a career spanning 50 years, the Mississippi native has proved herself a riveting performer and chart-topping songwriter. By BILL DAHL

enise LaSalle’s specialty is still telling it like it is. The veteran blues singer usually aims her earthy lyrics and sassy onstage patter straight at the women in the audience—and when it comes to talking about the kind of romantic entanglements she knows those women deal with, she doesn’t pull any punches. LaSalle burned up the 70s R&B charts with steamy southern soul, then shifted to blues in 1982 after signing with Malaco Records from Jackson, Mississippi. Not bad, especially considering music wasn’t even her ﬁrst choice— she once yearned to be a ﬁction writer. “I sent out story after story, and I got up one morning and I had eight manuscripts laying there in front of my mailbox. And I was so hurt,” LaSalle says. “So I said, ‘I’ll just write some poems.’” And soon she would set them to music. Born Ora Denise Allen in 1939 in Leflore County, Mississippi, LaSalle listened to

30 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 8, 2017

gospel and country prior to migrating to Chicago in her teens. “I made up my mind that I was leaving Mississippi if it’s the last thing I do,” she says. In Chicago she took the name “LaSalle” from a French character she saw in a newspaper cartoon. She spent a few years with gospel group the Sacred Five before meeting R&B singer Billy “the Kid” Emerson while she worked as a barmaid at a lounge on 51st and Calumet. It was the tragic day in November 1963 that President Kennedy was assassinated. Emerson, who’d written and recorded “Red Hot” for Sun Records in 1955, was crucial to launching LaSalle as a performer. “He got me started,” she says. Emerson helped land her a contract with Chess Records, but nothing came of it at first—she ended up releasing her 1967 debut single, “A Love Reputation,” through his Tarpon imprint. (It was cowritten by local bluesman Lee Baker Jr.—LaSalle takes credit for renaming him Lonnie Brooks.) Chess picked up the single

for national distribution, and she cut two encores for the label. In 1969 LaSalle and her husband at the time, Bill Jones, launched the Crajon label, and along with its subsidiaries it issued not only her own output but also hits by the Sequins and Bill Coday. LaSalle’s “Hung Up, Strung Out” caught the attention of Westbound Records in 1970, and the company brought her aboard. Memphis would be her new base of operations, and she used the studio run by Willie Mitchell—the bandleader who produced Al Green for Hi Records. “We found someone who could really understand what I was doing,” says LaSalle. “If I hummed the song, they’d play it. We started going to what they call ‘head arrangements.’ We’d work it up right in the studio and cut it, and come out with a hit record.” The formula worked to perfection on the charming LaSalle original “Trapped by a Thing Called Love,” which topped the Billboard R&B chart in fall 1971. LaSalle never equaled that song’s success, but from then on her singles consistently charted. The inspiration for her ’72 hit “Now Run and Tell That” sprang from the sign-off phrase used by the news director at WVON. “Roy Wood used to do his commentary, and talk about what black people were going to do,” she says. “He would say, ‘Now run and tell that!’” Her next hit, “A Man Size Job,” hinted at the saucy story lines she would later make her calling card. When Westbound began to falter, LaSalle moved to ABC, hitting in 1977 with “Love Me Right.” But times were changing. Disco was hot—and though she brief ly tried her hand at the new thing, she couldn’t make it work. “I was so glad when it was over, because it just wasn’t my bag,” she says. With encouragement from her new husband, disc jockey James Wolfe, LaSalle recast herself as a blues singer at Malaco. Just prior to her own successes there, she wrote the instant standard “Someone Else Is Steppin’ In” for Z.Z. Hill. “I was crazy about his ‘Down Home Blues,’” she says. “When he asked me to do one, I did ‘Steppin’ In’ for him, and it’s a classic!” Breaking the glass ceiling seems to have given LaSalle little trouble. “There was always somebody there in my path that was waiting to help me,” she says. “I just appreciate that.” v

Denise LaSalle performs Sunday, June 11, at 4 PM on the Mississippi Juke Joint stage.

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Ronnie Baker Brooks (right) and Eddy “the Chief” Clearwater at Pritzker Pavilion in 2012 for a Kennedy Center Honors send-oﬀ for Buddy Guy

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Guitarist Ronnie Baker Brooks balances his legacy with his drive to innovate His father, the late Lonnie Brooks, appears on the new Times Have Changed—alongside Memphis rapper Al Kapone.

By DAVID WHITEIS

n January guitarist Ronnie Baker Brooks released his ﬁrst album in more than ten years, Times Have Changed (Provogue), and the rumination on progress and decay in its title track might make Brooks sound like an old fogey if it weren’t for the conclusion he reaches (“Nothing remains the same, today it’s a brand-new game”) and the spiky rapping of Memphis MC Al Kapone. “Ain’t nothing wrong with going back to the basics,” Kapone says in the song’s outro, “and some things change for the better too. . . . Live, learn, and enjoy my evolution rule.” Kapone’s lyrics could easily double as a manifesto for Baker Brooks himself. He’s an innovative player who’s dedicated his career to furthering the legacy of his father, Chicago bluesman Lonnie Brooks, who died in April. Lonnie’s calling card in his latter days was straight-ahead postwar Chicago blues, and

Baker Brooks colors that style with inﬂuences from rock, pop, and (more recently) contemporary R&B and hip-hop. Born in Chicago in 1967, Ronnie picked up the guitar early and started performing on weekends with Lonnie’s group when he was in high school. After graduating he became his dad’s bandleader, a job he held until 1998, when he released his debut solo album, Golddigger, on his own Watchdog label. Some fans complained about what they saw as Golddigger’s assault on Chicago blues tradition and, by association, the Brooks musical legacy—though perhaps they’d forgotten that Lonnie Brooks, a Louisiana native, had also worked in zydeco, swamp pop, country, and mainstream soul. Ronnie and his heavily ampliﬁed rhythm section juiced up standard-issue shuffles and triple-feel ballads with blues-rock bombast and post-James Brown funk; his guitar playing, enhanced

with fuzz and wah-wah, sometimes exploded with an acrobatic fury worthy of Hendrix. His tough, streetsy vocals also betrayed the influence of postmodern funk artists such as Rick James and late-career Johnny “Guitar” Watson, another bluesman whose departure from tradition gave purists fits. But Golddigger also paid homage to Baker Brooks’s roots: the anthemic “Make These Blues Survive,” for instance, featured a characteristically crisp and resonant guitar solo from Lonnie Brooks, who has appeared at least once on every album Ronnie has released under his own name. On 2001’s Take Me Witcha, Baker Brooks moved even further toward rock and bluesrock—with notable exceptions such as the folky pop ballad “I Laugh to Keep From Cryin’,” where Lonnie stepped in to deliver some of the most wracked, emotionally intense vocals of his career. Baker Brooks first collaborated with Kapone on the 2006 album The Torch, whose title track is a tribute to his Chicago blues mentors: it enlists Lonnie, Jimmy Johnson, Eddy Clearwater, and Willie Kent as guest vocalists. “We paved the way for you,” they sing. “Now it’s all up to you—to carry this torch of the blues.” That mission continues to guide Baker Brooks on Times Have Changed, which for all its genre jumping also features canonical soul and R&B songs and guest appearances by such legendary old-school figures as the late Bobby “Blue” Bland, Stax house guitarist Steve Cropper, and Hi Rhythm Section stalwarts Teenie, Leroy, and Charles Hodges. Baker Brooks has earned a reputation for live performances as forward-looking as his recordings—he usually does his own rapping, for instance—but his musical inheritance makes itself felt in every note. The serpentine, precisely articulated lead-guitar technique he learned from his father remains a bedrock of his style, and his stage show is one of the most emotionally direct and uncompromising in contemporary blues. Like Janus, he can simultaneously look back to the music’s past and forward to its future. v

Ronnie Baker Brooks performs Sunday, June 11, at 5 PM at Jay Pritzker Pavilion.

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Folk polymath Rhiannon Giddens honors the musical cultures of the oppressed

The founder of the Carolina Chocolate Drops sings fables of struggle from a diversity of peoples and eras. By DAVID WHITEIS

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hiannon Giddens first gained international recognition in the late 2000s as a founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, an acoustic combo dedicated to honoring the African-American string-band tradition. During the heyday of these bands in the early 20th century, they incorporated a wide range of inﬂuences, among them antebellum slave songs, acoustic blues, popular tunes, ﬁddle breakdowns, creole music, and Celtic reels—though most modern listeners simply characterize the banjo-and-violin melodies of string-band music as “hillbilly” or “country.” Like their predecessors in the 20s and 30s, the Carolina Chocolate Drops cast a wide net: a typical set might touch on blues, folk, pop (and not just vintage pop—the

group has included beatboxer Adam Matta), vaudeville-tinged musical storytelling, and folk dances that hybridized Anglo-European and African-American cultural tropes as effortlessly as the music did. Giddens’s supple, expressive voice (she’d studied opera at Oberlin) proved more than equal to the diverse challenges she set it, and her flamboyant showmanship upped the ante further. She often ended her portion of the show with a folk version of the 2001 Blu Cantrell R&B number “Hit ’Em Up Style,” complete with body language and audience shout-outs borrowed from hip-hop. In 2006 the Chocolate Drops released their acclaimed debut, Dona Got a Ramblin’ Mind (Music Maker), but Giddens continued to record with other artists. In 2007 she appeared on Indian Summer by ethnomusicologist

and singer Talitha MacKenzie, contributing vocals, banjo, fiddle, and traditional “flatfooting” dance-step rhythms; in 2009 she and mezzo-soprano Cheryse McLeod Lewis formed the group Eleganza to release Because I Knew You, a set of songs drawn from classical music, the African-American spiritual tradition, and American theater and film. After the Chocolate Drops won a Grammy for the 2010 Nonesuch release Genuine Negro Jig (Best Traditional Folk Album), Giddens’s solo career blossomed. In 2013 she participated in a Manhattan concert organized to promote Inside Llewyn Davis, the Coen brothers film based loosely on the memoirs of folksinger Dave Van Ronk. Her renditions of “Water Boy” (where she invoked the spirit of African-American folksinger and activist Odetta) and two traditional Gaelic dance songs earned her a spontaneous standing ovation and widespread critical praise. She also recorded contributions to We Are Not for Sale: Songs of Protest (a 2013 compilation released by a collective calling itself the NC Music Love Army) and T-Bone Burnett’s 2014 Bob Dylan project Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes. Giddens’s solo releases under her own name—the EPs We Rise (2013) and Factory Girl (2015) and the albums Tomorrow Is My Turn (2015) and Freedom Highway (2017)— have solidified her status as a major creative force even as she remains difficult for marketers to categorize. African-American artists who don’t make R&B or hip-hop often get lumped into “blues,” especially if they play “folk” instruments, but Giddens’s output is too varied and extensive for that kind of racially coded knee-jerk label to stick. Because Giddens has made a specialty of stylistic and cultural mashups, the words “postmodern” and “postracial” get thrown at her a lot. But hers remains the voice of a proud black woman celebrating her heritage—and her understanding of that heritage means she embraces and honors the entirety of “people’s culture,” both high and low, no matter its origin or background. Whether borrowed or original, her songs are fables of struggle and triumph, usually from the perspective of the oppressed—the kind of staunch-hearted anthems of solidarity that we need now more than ever. v

Rhiannon Giddens performs on Sunday, June 11, at 6:20 PM at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion.

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The best of the weekend’s blues outside Millennium Park

Your extracurricular options include Eddie Shaw, Peaches Staten, L’Roy, and Eddy “the Chief” Clearwater. By DAVID WHITEIS

t’s never difficult to see live blues in Chicago, and during the Blues Festival it’s even easier—the city’s blues clubs pull out the stops all weekend, and even venues that don’t specialize in the blues get in on the action. This list isn’t here to remind you of those facts but rather to point out the special events and notable shows among the glut of offerings. On Thursday, June 8, Muddy Waters’s sons Big Bill Morganﬁeld and Mud Morgan-

34 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 8, 2017

ﬁeld perform at the dedication of a ten-storyhigh Muddy Waters mural at 17 N. State by Brazilian street artist Eduardo Kobra (part of the Big Walls project by Columbia College and the Wabash Arts Corridor). They’ll front a band led by former Waters guitarist Rick Kreher, and the event begins at noon. Also on Thursday, the Original Chicago Blues All Stars—formerly Willie Dixon’s backup band—present the Original Blues All Stars Awards from 6 to 11 PM at Motor Row

Brewing, where they have a regular gig. The group describes the awards as honoring “musicians who have devoted their lives to uphold the Chicago Blues Tradition,” and recipients include late guitarist Lonnie Brooks, guitarist Eddie C. Campbell, saxophonist Eddie Shaw, drummer Sam Lay, and vocalist Mary Lane. Motor Row will be pouring its new All Stars Pale Ale for the occasion. Reggie’s Music Joint hosts afterfest shows all weekend, most notably the annual Chicago Women in the Blues Festival on Friday—it starts at 7 PM and features the likes of Peaches Staten, Tracee Adams, Shirley King, and Liz Mandeville. And at Rosa’s Lounge on Sunday you can catch a set by Christone “Catﬁsh” Ingram, a teenage guitar prodigy from Clarksdale, Mississippi, who won the Artie “Blues Boy” White Youth Scholarship in 2015. Two veterans who haven’t gigged Chicago for a while return during the festival: Eddy “the Chief” Clearwater, an early Chuck Berry fan who was among the first bluesmen of his generation to graft rock ’n’ roll onto the postwar Chicago style, plays at Buddy Guy’s Legends on Friday. And Eddie Shaw, former saxophonist and bandleader for Howlin’ Wolf, makes a rare appearance at the Kingston Mines on Friday and Saturday. A few neighborhood venues that don’t advertise widely have also booked Blues Fest shows worth mentioning. For those who’d like to escape the crowds and heat in the park for a few hours but keep listening to the blues, Lemelle’s Luxury Lounge features vocalist Shorty Mack on Saturday afternoon. At the Odyssey East, vocalists Sydney Joe Qualls and New Orleans Beau hold forth on Friday and Sunday; they’re backed by the Source One Band, anchored by bassist Joe Pratt and featuring the esteemed Sir Walter Scott on guitar. Rooster’s Palace, formerly the 007 Lounge, showcases vocalist Little Harvey with Joe B. & the Shot Gun Band on Friday and soul-blues stylist Willie White on Saturday. Vocalist Mzz Reese performs at Dr. J’s on Friday and Sunday nights, and Vance Kelly & the Backstreet Blues Band hold it down at Ted’s Place on Sunday. In case you still don’t need a night in after festival weekend ends, the fantastic L’Roy appears at Linda’s Lounge on Monday night. As always, it’s wise to call these smaller clubs in advance to make sure the show is happening.

chicago blues festival

Tracee Adams o SCOTT STEWART/SUN-TIMES MEDIA

THURSDAY8 The Chicago Blues All Stars host the Original Blues All Stars Awards 6 PM, Motor Row Brewing, 2337 S. Michigan, free Big Bill Morganﬁeld & Mud Morganﬁeld Performing at the dedication of a Muddy Waters mural by Eduardo Kobra. Noon, 17 N. State, free, all ages

FRIDAY9 Chicago Women in the Blues Festival: Joan Gand, Tracee Adams, Ivy Ford, Donna Herula, Shirley King, Dia Madden, Liz Mandeville, Jeannie Tanner, Countess Williams, Ellen Miller, Peaches Staten, Ms. Trysh 7 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint, 2105 S. State, $12 Eddy “the Chief” Clearwater, Nick Moss, Steepwater Band 6 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends, 700 S. Wabash, $20

Little Harvey, Joe B. & the Shot Gun Band 9 PM, Rooster’s Palace, 600 N. Kedzie, 312-342-0179, free

Willie White 9 PM, Rooster’s Palace, 600 N. Kedzie, 312-3420179, free

Larry McCray, Eddie Shaw 9 PM, Kingston Mines, 2548 N. Halsted, $15

Christone “Kingﬁsh” Ingram 9:30 PM, Rosa’s Lounge, 3420 W. Armitage, $10-$15

Sydney Joe Qualls & New Orleans Beau 9 PM, Odyssey East, 9942 S. Torrence, 773-5307543, free

Vance Kelly & the Backstreet Blues Band 7 PM, Ted’s Place, 5813 W. Madison, 773-378-8389, free

Mzz Reese 9 PM, Dr. J’s, 3241 W. Chicago, 773-826-2140, free

SATURDAY10

Sydney Joe Qualls & New Orleans Beau 8 PM, Odyssey East, 9942 S. Torrence, 773-5307543, free

Shorty Mack 3-7 PM, Lemelle’s Luxury Lounge, 1801 W. 87th, 773614-8677, free

Mzz Reese 9 PM, Dr. J’s, 3241 W. Chicago, 773-826-2140, free

Larry McCray, Eddie Shaw 9 PM, Kingston Mines, 2548 N. Halsted, $15

SUNDAY11

MONDAY12 L’Roy 9:30 PM, Linda’s Lounge, 1044 W. 51st, 773-373-2351, free

JUNE 8, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 35

Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of June 8

MUSIC

PICK OF THE WEEK

Escort aren’t really disco, but they’ll still get you dancing

THURSDAY8 Tool Once & Future Band open. 8 PM, Allstate Arena, 6920 Mannhein, Rosemont, sold out. b Tool have long been notorious for operating at a glacial pace, but those once-familiar five-year gaps between full-lengths today seem like insignificant stretches when you consider that their last fulllength, 10,000 Days, came out more than 11 years ago. Now members of the band are saying that 2017 could be the year we actually get some new material—though they’ve also been saying that LP number five is coming out “pretty soon” since 2013. Tool could easily be blamed for helping kickstart the unfortunate nu-metal boom of the late 90s and early 2000s, but such a judgment would be unfair. Sure, they can reach some pretty angsty depths—especially on their antisociety, antireligion, antimedia breakthrough 1996 opus, Ænima—but musically they’re just a band of sharp players paying homage to the dark prog of late 70s Pink Floyd and the tribal grind of early 80s King Crimson. Some snippets of new material have worked their way online via bootlegs of recent concerts, like the winding, dizzying instrumental “A/Descending,” ultimately proving that they’ve still got it. Here’s hoping this tour comes along with some more new jams and a finally final announcement of a new album—but I’m not holding my breath. —LUCA CIMARUSTI

FRIDAY9 Peter Brötzmann & Heather Leigh Bruce Lamont and Mute Duo open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $15, $12 in advance.

ESCORT

o SHERVIN LAINZEZ

Sun 6/11, 8:30 PM (set time), Pilsen Food Truck Social, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $5 suggested donation; Mon 6/12, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $12.

Peter Brötzmann justiﬁed the crude nomenclature of early recordings like Machine Gun, Nipples, and Balls with the coarse tone and pugilistic phrasing of his saxophone playing. So the vulgar cover image of his latest album, Sex Tape, which depicts a cruciﬁed man getting a blow job from a viper, looks like a roots move. But the music that he and American-born, Scotland-based steel guitarist Heather Leigh make can hardly be said to fall back on old

ALL AGES

habits. There’s no mistaking Brötzmann’s rasping, insistent sound on each of the four woodwinds (alto and tenor saxophones, B-ﬂat clarinet, and the Middle-European tárogató) he plays over the 48-minute-long concert album. But instead of ripping through the action or driving home rhythms, he drops straight into Leigh’s undulating squalls and falls like a skydiver bent on keeping his rip cord untugged until the last possible second. If you’re looking for Brötzmann to rehash glories of yore, you might just stay home with your old records. If you want to hear the fearlessness that’s made him a force to be reckoned with for his more than 50 years in action, come on down. This concert is part of EB25, the Empty Bottle’s yearlong series of concerts celebrating its 25th year of operation. —BILL MEYER

Mutoid Man Helms Alee and Space Blood open. 9 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $18, $15 in advance. 17+ I like to imagine guitarist-vocalist Stephen Brodsky of Cave In and drummer Ben Koller of Converge— each an integral part of the early 2000s hardcore scene—shooting the breeze one afternoon about Robert Fripp side projects and figuring, what the hell, why not get together and jam at some point? Thing is . . . when you’re both hypertalented shredders with penchants for prog-metal exploration you don’t just noodle around for a snap, you build freak worlds of galloping Maiden-like rhythms, glam-metal vocal flourishes, and superriffs that morph from sludge to Slayer midheadbang. Rounded out by bassist Nick Cageao, Mutoid Man just dropped their third full-length, War Moans (Sargent House), and like so many records made by metal-band savants disguised as outcasts, it toes the line between wacky and mind-melting. Led by Brodsky’s theatrical, occasionally exhausting vocals, “Date With the Devil,” for example, vibes like a cross-pollination between Mötley Crüe and Spinal Tap when a line lands like “Came inside of satan’s daughter / Nine months later who’s the father?” So much of the record sounds like it was written with a heavy smirk—if not quite a full-on shit-eating grin—and perhaps that would come off a little too arrogant if it weren’t for the damn truth that these three can and will back it up. —KEVIN WARWICK J Tool o TIM CADIENTE

IN THE LATE 2000S, New York City was experiencing a disco revival, mostly due to genre nights at clubs like Passerby, Santos Party House, and Studio B, and DJ-producer groups such as Hercules and Love Affair, Metro Area, and Rub-N-Tug. Yet among this scene Escort were the one outfit that paid homage the hard way—as a 17-member band with full-fledged horn and string sections, cutting disco singles from scratch. The two sides from this time, “Starlight” and “All Through the Night,” are some of the finest relics of this brief scene, gleaming with the champagne-soaked, pill-popping decadence of dusty 12-inches from disco’s heyday. The group refined and expanded on these tracks for their 2011 self-titled debut, then made a soft turn into contemporary dance-pop on 2015’s Animal Nature (Escort Records). Their sophomore LP isn’t quite as vibrant or audacious as its predecessor, but as a live act Escort haven’t lost a step—the dancing begins from the first track and doesn’t let up until the lights go out. —TAL ROSENBERG

36 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 8, 2017

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6/14

MICHAEL ALBERT [THIN HYMNS]

THU

MARY TIMONY

OUR FATHERS

PLAYS HELIUM

6/15

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@ THALIA HALL (1807 S. ALLPORT ST.)

PILSEN FOOD TRUCK SOCIAL

ESCORT • DOS SANTOS & MORE!

HARD COUNTRY HONKY TONK WITH

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MEATBODIES PSYCHOTIC REACTION

FRI

6/16

STRANGE FOLIAGE

CREATURE FROM DELL POND

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NONNIE PARRY THE DRACU-LAHS • COOKIE

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6/13

@ THALIA HALL (1807 S. ALLPORT ST.)

SUN

6/11

FEE LION • DJ JILL HOPKINS

‘MIRRORED’ SERIES

6PM FREE 9PM

SAT

THE HOYLE BROTHERS

ESCORT

MON

6/12

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6/17

THE HOLD STEADY

#EB25

VARSITY

6/17 @ PEKIN THEATRE: ILLINOIS HUMANITIES & EMPTY BOTTLE PRESENT AN EVENING AT PEKIN THEATRE FEAT. REGINALD ROBINSON, 6/18: DAD ON THE DECKS: FATHER’S DAY BRUNCH (12PM; FREE!), 6/18: LAND OF TALK, 6/19: PINK FROST (RECORD RELEASE; FREE!), 6/20: MEDIA JEWELER, 6/21: GLITTER CREEPS: AKENYA, 6/22: JUICEBOXXX, 6/23: TEEN DAZE + SAM O.B., 6/24: UNIFORM, 6/24 @ BOHEMIAN NAT’L CEMETERY: BEYOND THE GATE FEAT. BODY\HEAD, 6/25: EB BOOK CLUB DISCUSSES THE AWKWARD THOUGHTS OF W. KAMAU BELL (3PM, FREE!), 6/25: THE HOLY CIRCLE, 6/26: THE CELL PHONES (FREE!) NEW ON SALE: 7/13: THURSTON MOORE GROUP, 7/16: AMERICAN FOOTBALL, 8/1: MARK McGUIRE / ANCIENT OCEAN, 10/26-28: COURTNEY BARNETT & KURT VILE (& THE SEA LICE) #EB25, 11/10: THE BLACK HEART PROCESSION #EB25

JUNE 8, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 37

MUSIC continued from 36 Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $10. 18+ The power of Joshua Abrams’s Natural Information Society is in large measure derived from a singular sense of purpose: to lock in on a single chord and with subtle, kaleidoscopic modality cast a spell at the nexus of a hypnotic groove. That intent is carried forth on the Chicago band’s fourth and best album, Simultonality (Eremite), but this time they’ve pulled back from a general focus on North and East African traditional music to further reﬁne their attack with generous dollops of Krautrock and classical minimalism. As usual, most of the pieces on the new record are built atop the twangy, cycling propulsion of the leader’s thrumming guimbri lines, the motor at the heart of Morrocan Gnawa music, which center the listener’s concentration, allowing him to bathe in the ensemble’s shifting timbres and grooves. On “Ophiuchus” the psychedelic, chromatic electro-harp strumming of Ben Boye casts a pulsating mood that Abrams and drummers Frank Rosaly and Mikel Avery reshape with a polyrhythmic groove; the sprawling canvas is also daubed with wandering harmonium ﬁgures played by Lisa Alvarado and electric guitarist Emmett Kelly. “St. Cloud” pushes into a more meditative space of gurgling arpeggios, while “Sideways Fall” borrows Jaki Liebezeit’s indelible break from Can’s brilliant “Vitamin C” as its driving force, the pattern split between Rosaly and Avery. The album concludes with “2128 1/2”—named for the address of the late Fred Anderson’s Velvet Lounge when it was on Indiana Avenue—with Abrams on double bass and guest saxophonist Ari Brown blowing coruscating tenor lines that channel the lung-scorched tone of Pharoah Sanders as Boye pounds out profound piano vamps a la Alice Coltrane. The piece both takes Abrams back to his roots and clears a wideopen plateau toward this band’s future explorations. Tonight the group plays two sets, the first with a core lineup featuring Abrams, Alvarado, Boye, Avery, and percussionist Hamid Drake, and a second enhanced by horn men Ben LaMar Gay, Nick Mazzarella, and Jason Stein. —PETER MARGASAK

SATURDAY10 Meridian Trio Makaya McCraven opens. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $10. 18+ Alto saxophonist Nick Mazzarella is one of the city’s most focused improvisers, a fervent student of jazz history and a staunch adherent of avant-garde tradition. He’s not a conceptualist. He likes form, function, and resolution, so at times he appears conventional within the context of Chicago’s shape-shifting jazz and improv scene. But with the release of Triangulum (Clean Feed) by his group Meridian Trio—a record beautifully recorded by Dave Zuchowski at the Whistler in January 2016—Mazzarella reasserts his versatility and presents a quiet brand of searching quite distinct from his past forays into the free jazz of Ornette Coleman and the sound sheets of John Coltrane. To be sure, the influence of those titans is still apparent on certain pieces—the former’s sweetly sorrow-

38 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 8, 2017

ful tone is echoed on the title track, and the jackedup final moments of “Ringdown” seep into a probing intensity that recalls the latter—but more often than not, Mazzarella explores different paths, as when he imparts a relatively soft-edged, soulful line into the lovely opening track “Rhododendron.” Part of the credit certainly belongs to bassist Matt Ulery and drummer Jeremy Cunningham, who together can generate a head of steam as well as any of the reedist’s other rhythm sections, though they generally favor a cooler, more spacious, groove-oriented feel. The title track’s opening theme features a beguiling see-saw saxophone pattern, as if Mazzarella were sonically illustrating the motion of a leaf falling from a tree toward the ground, while “Reminiscing” starts with a lovely folkish melody played in unison by alto and arco bass lines, then is deftly interrupted by a wonderfully tense passage of group flutters and skitters before returning home with a sweetly nostalgic finish—the piece, with its concision and lack of extended soloing, is unlike anything else in Mazzarella’s oeuvre. —PETER MARGASAK

SUNDAY11 Mykele Deville See also Wednesday. Brandon Markell Holmes, Mother Nature, and Kopano open. 9 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport. F On “Unqualified” Chicagoan Mykele Deville takes breaks from rapping about code-switching and cultural colonization to drop in skits that show the peculiar challenges he’s faced as a black person in a white space—or perhaps simply show strangers that he’s ﬁlled with multitudes, like anyone else. “Well, look, I wasn’t really just calling myself a rapper—I mean, I rap,” he says near the end of the song. “But I’m a poet and an actor and a curator, like I just think it all goes hand-in-hand, being a full artist.” His multidisciplinary experience enlightens April’s Peace, Fam mixtape—his third full-length, all of them dropped within the last year. Deville’s earnest, empathetic raps about racial injustice are as much about Black Lives Matter as about black life, and they’re set over instrumentals that embrace hip-hop’s history with jazz. But while “Mingus Baby” sounds like something that could’ve lit up the national scene in the 90s, Deville keeps the song grounded—even as he raps about the ways people who look like him struggle to survive, he sounds alive in the present, a multidimensional person building a future for hiphop as well as for himself. —LEOR GALIL

Escort See Pick of the Week (page 36). Part of the Pilsen Food Truck Social. 8:30 PM (set time), Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $5 suggested donation. b

MONDAY12 Bent Knee Arclight open. 8 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, $12, $10 in advance. 18+ The members of Boston’s Bent Knee came togeth-

er in 2009 while attending the Berklee College of Music, and there’s no question that the wildly ambitious sextet absorbed a lot of lessons and ideas while in school. As heard on its forthcoming fourth album, Land Animal (due June 23 from InsideOut Music), the group melds styles with breathless precision, putting a sparkling pop veneer on its elegant prog-rock grooves, thanks largely to the rangy vocals of keyboardist Courtney Swain. At times reminiscent of My Brightest Diamond’s operatic singer Shara Worden, Swain has an even wider vocal range and without a stumble can modulate her voice to seem ethereal, sugary, or ferocious. The intricate, masterfully executed arrangements borrow freely from alt-rock, jazz, soul, metal, and even bits of classical music; the record’s an omnivorous brew assembled with such fizzy verve and craft that it feels impossible not to admire it. The only problem I keep

having is ﬁguring out whether or not I actually like it. —PETER MARGASAK

Escort See Pick of the Week (page 36). Fee Lion opens; DJ Jill Hopkins spins. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $12.

TUESDAY13 David Bazan 8 PM, SPACE, 1245 Chicago, Evanston, $20. b At 41, Seattle singer-songwriter David Bazan is still searching for his life’s best path. In March he self-released his fourth solo album, Care, on which

SURFER BLOOD

JUN 17

EVAN DANDO

JUN 20

THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART

JUN 24

NE-HI

JUL 15

THE NORTH 41

AUG 19

THE DIG

DAN CROLL

SEP 15

NEW

MAX FROST

OCT 20

NEW

MUSIC

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MAXIMO PARK

NOV 24

Feist o COURTESY THE ARTIST

WINTER

CELEBRATING THE REISSUE OF HIS FIRST SOLO ALBUM, “BABY I’M BORED”

NEW NEW NEW

JUL 14

NEW

Supersludgy Arizona three-piece Goya open their third full-length, Harvester of Bongloads (Opoponax), with the 20-minute, three-part gauntlet drop “Omen: I. Strange Geometry. II. Fade Away, III. Life Disintegrates.” They’ve always wanted to be an heir to the (dope) throne of Electric Wizard in their lighter moments and Sleep when they plan to bring it way, way, way down, and this record represents their strongest journey through sluggish lava yet. What really proves rewarding for long-endurance listening is the gradually unfolding layers of texture, and rather than just slowly churning down-tuned earth, J

CHERRY GLAZERR PRIESTS

JUL 15

NEW

Goya Destroyer of Light and Ikaray open. 8 PM, LiveWire Lounge, 3394 N. Milwaukee, $8.

JUL 03

¡ESSO! AFROJAM FUNKBEAT

JUL 30

SMOOTH HOUND SMITH

AUG 01

WILLIAM WILD

AUG 16

GRACIE AND RACHEL

HENRY JAMISON

AUG 26

GEOGRAPHER

SEP 09

GLAD RAGS + THE DEVONNS

NEW

In recent interviews Leslie Feist has said that since her 2011 album Metals she’s been engaged in quiet introspection about whether making music is really what her soul aches to do. As she told Joe Coscarelli of the New York Times in April, “I wanted to make sure it was a legitimate drive, coming from a really honest and humble place, not because it’s what I do.” Her terrific, complicated new album Pleasure (Interscope) provides an answer. Defiantly raw, with tape hiss ﬁlling out the sonic canvas—and free of the smothering compression of her earliest work—the record features Feist ruminating on the ambiguities that pile up as the years pass. She aims for a Zen-like acceptance, whether

R.LUM.R.

CHRISTIAN LOPEZ

NEW

Feist 8 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Sheﬃeld, $45. 18+

Mykele Deville See Sunday. Akenya, Jade T. Perry, and Half Gringa open. 8:30 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Diversey, $10 suggested donation. b

TICKETS AT WWW.LH-ST.COM

COREY KILGANNON

NEW

WEDNESDAY14

observing our intertwined existences on the multivalent title track or struggling with the changes that can push people apart even against their wishes: on “I Wish I Didn’t Miss You,” she sings, “I felt some certainty that must have died,” before adding with a sense of anger, “Because how could I live if you’re still alive?” While the closing tune, “Young Up,” functions as a kind of buck-up jolt of positivity, the rest of the songs are generally quiet and endowed with a sense of tension that rarely ebbs, whether it’s from an unexpected sample of metal band Mastodon in the closing seconds of “A Man Is Not His Song” or the numb throb of crudely strummed guitars on “Century.” Feist has clearly left behind the polished approach that made her an indie darling 13 years ago in favor of a sound that’s immediate, unadorned, and deeply intimate. It might not be as catchy, but it sure hits a lot harder. —PETER MARGASAK

AKENYA + CHURCH BOOTY + STEADY FLOW

NEW

uncharacteristic synth-heavy music aids his quest to explore parts unknown—or at least helps him understand his journey as a songwriter in a different light. Care follows last year’s Blanco, Bazan’s first solo fulllength largely made with electronic instruments; the artist also had a brief tenure leading the lo-fi synthpop project Headphones, which occupies a special place in the cult of Bazan. This new collection feels more insular and chilly, as if he wrote it while trying to find his way out of an uncharted cave with only the help of a single lantern. But as much as his lonesome coo can inflict a deep sense of sorrow, he’s the kind of emotionally intelligent musician whose performances are ambiguous enough to allow his listeners to make what they will of them—“Make Music” has a morbidly realistic take on how relationships crumble under the weight of adulthood, yet Bazan’s portrait is lit up by memories of young love that can sometimes be strong enough to right the ship. —LEOR GALIL

PARENT

NEW

BEVERLY + ABLEBODY

JUNE 8, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 39

4544 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG • 773.728.6000

MUSIC

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

JUST ADDED • ON SALE NOW! 10/6

Chris Hillman & Herb Pedersen with John Jorgensen VISIT OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG TO BUY TICKETS!

FRIDAY, JUNE 9 7PM

House of Waters

In Szold Hall

THURSDAY, JUNE 15 8PM

A Conversation with Robben Ford In Szold Hall

Jay Som o CARA ROBBINS

SATURDAY, JUNE 17 8PM

Robyn Hitchcock

FESTIVALS

Ribs, food trucks, and the blues

with special guest Kacy & Clayton

SUNDAY, JUNE 25 8PM

Django Festival All Stars THURSDAY, JUNE 29 7PM

Inside/Out with Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre In Szold Hall

John Moreland o MATT WHITE

THURSDAY, JULY 13 8PM

Goya oﬀer a whole trip’s worth of psychedelic warble and warp with rhythm and fuzz. The shorter but no less heavy tracks that come after “Omen” are a little like being served appetizers when you’re already in a coma from digesting a monster meal—and yet the relatively jaunty classic-metal sounds of “Disease” prove there’s always room for dessert. —MONICA KENDRICK

An Intimate Evening with Eva Ayllón FRIDAY, JULY 21 10PM

Okkervil River

continued from 39

with special guest Jesse Hale Moore

ACROSS THE STREET IN SZOLD HALL 4545 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL

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40 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 8, 2017

Aldous Harding Michael Albert and Our Fathers open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $10, $8 in advance. On her remarkable new album Party (4AD), New Zealand singer-songwriter Aldous Harding manages to further strip down an already minimal sound while dramatically extending her range. There are a few songs on the new album—magnificently and resourcefully produced by frequent PJ Harvey collaborator John Parish—where the diaphanous, eerie folk of her striking eponymous debut remains, but on most of it she uses her voice to create a dazzling variety of musical personas, cumulatively oﬀering a richness and depth I didn’t expect even given how much I loved her first album. Over spare beats, a gentle acoustic guitar arpeggio, and a few electronic squiggles, she can push her voice into pixie range, suggesting Joanna Newsom. Then there’s “Imagining My Man,” during which she unleashes a much fuller, deeper presence over a simple piano-and-drum pattern, meditating on her desire of yet hesitance toward letting herself be loved, and singing at first with gossamer restraint before gloriously opening up. Later, “I’m So Sorry” carries subtle soul inflections, its beautiful melody shadowed by a tantalizingly brief backing-vocal response. Nearly all of the songs are constructed around a rudimentary piano or guitar part, but terse embellishments—the plangent saxophone arrangement

on “Imagining My Man,” the soaring cameo Mike Hadreas (Perfume Genius) makes on “Swell Does the Skull”—occasionally pop up and caress this song or that with a masterful accent. Still, it’s her voice that has me riveted. —PETER MARGASAK

John Moreland Will Johnson opens. 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $20, $18 in advance. 17+ I’d never spent any time seriously listening to the music of Oklahoman John Moreland until I got a copy of his new album Big Bad Luv (4AD), but in some ways I feel like I’ve been listening to him most of my life. His work is shot through with the influence of various deeply American singers, whether Bruce Springsteen or Steve Earle, and his dusky blend of folk, country, and blues—all filtered through a rock sensibility—sounds as familiar as rain falling. He rips through his new record’s songs with a sense of weary passion, a soul beaten down but fueled by romantic optimism and a little recklessness. On the storming opener, “Sallisaw Blue,” he declaims, “Let’s get wrecked and bruised and battered,” summoning carpe-diem courage in spite of life’s obstacles and pitfalls. On his previous albums Moreland wrote often of heartbreak, but the new album shifts toward a sunnier disposition as he pours out his emotions to convey something beyond greeting-card bliss. To wit: “Love Is Not an Answer” doesn’t dismiss the titular sentiment, but expresses something more basic when he sings, “But love is not an answer / I don’t need an answer, I need you.” Moreland situates his husky voice in a variety of Americana settings, some which plod generically, but at his best his elemental melodic shapes fit the scuffed hope of his words. Though the record features a scrappy band, for tonight’s performance Moreland is joined only by guitarist-pianist John Calvin Abney. —PETER MARGASAK v

Chicago Blues Festival The long-running annual blowout returns with Gary Clark Jr., William Bell, Rhiannon Giddens, Ronnie Baker Brooks, and many more. See page 23 for our feature on the fest. 6/9-6/11, Millennium Park, cityofchicago.org. F Green Music Fest The environmentally conscious party features a bike-powered stage, lots of sustainable retail, and sets from Nothing, Lucero, JD McPherson, the Appleseed Cast, and Jay Som. 6/10-6/11, Damen between North and Schiller, wickerparkbucktown.com, $5 suggested donation. Pilsen Food Truck Social Street food and dancy beats spread out over the block outside of Pilsen’s Thalia Hall. Escort (page 36), Sonorama, Ganser, and Dos Santos: Antibeat Orquesta are among the acts performing. 6/10-6/11, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, pilsenfoodtrucksocial.com, $5 suggested donation. Ribfest Chicago Enjoy grub from 13 barbecue joints and a very sloppy rib-eating contest. Musical guests include Diane Coffee, Grizfolk, Magic Giant, and the Whiskey Gentry. 6/9-6/11, Lincoln between Irving Park and Berteau, ribfest-chicago.com, $10 suggested donation, $20 per family. Spring Awakening This massive electronic festival features megaDJs and producers from all over the globe. Enjoy sets from Diplo, Benny Benassi, Die Antwoord, Paul Van Dyk, Martin Garrix, and more. 6/9-6/11, Addams/Medill Park, springawakeningfestival.com, $89-$99 per day, three-day passes sold out. 18+ v

KING CRIMSON

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LYLE LOVETT & HIS LARGE BAND

MARY J. BLIGE

ALPHAVILLE CHICAGO DEBUT FEATURING MARIAN GOLD & BAND

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 28

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JUNE 8, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 41

FOOD & DRINK

CURIOUS “A CHEF’S PLAYGROUND” | $$ 2020 W. Chicago 773-360-7534 facebook.com/CuriousChicago

Brazilian shepherd’s pie has a crusty cheddarcornmeal topping that’s an appealing textural addition to the stewy innards. o KRISTAN LIEB

RESTAURANT REVIEW

At Curious, things are curiously out of whack

Tru vet Laurel Khan makes her return to Chicago with “A Chef’s Playground.”

By MIKE SULA

ne early evening at Curious “A Chef’s Playground,” a friend gazed distantly out the window at the McDonald’s across Chicago Avenue and began chanting like a devotee of Lord Krishna: “Filet-O-Fish-Filet-O-Fish-Filet-O-Fish . . . ” He was nervously awaiting the restaurant’s own fillet of fish, which appeared on the menu as “Parmesan Crusted Whitefish, Lemon Dill Sauce, Gratin Potatoes & Veg—18.” My pal predicted the experience would require a postprandial visit to the Mickey D’s drive-through to obtain a proper Filet-O-Fish. That’s because up until that moment there had been all sorts of grim, telltale signs about this restaurant from a former Tru vet, who’d gone on and made what appears to be a commendable career at a farm-to-table place called Mackinaw’s in rural Chehalis, Washington. For one thing, the first time I uttered the name of the restaurant where chef Laurel Khan chose to mark her return to Chicago, he cringed and immediately decided he’d hate it. Second, on the first night I coaxed him to join me, we were greeted by a locked door and a sign posted in the window saying that thenceforth the restaurant would be closed on Tuesdays. This had not been reflected on its Facebook page (and as of this writing

42 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 8, 2017

still isn’t), which is the only online platform Khan has chosen to publicly share the hours of operation and other important details about her business. Third, my friend dreaded the approach of his fish and the other dishes we ordered, because a large, round six-top next to us that had been occupied and abandoned sometime before we showed up remained cluttered with plates of half-eaten food long after we’d ordered our own. Meanwhile, the sole front-of-house staffer had returned to fill our water, including a top off on a fourth glass for an invisible companion who’d never touched it in the first place. The table remained uncleared long after we’d begun our own adventure with Khan’s food. He—let’s face it, we—had little confidence in Curious. Khan’s menu is a bit of a day-to-day mystery too, since she changes it up quite often, adding some new dishes and scuttling others, following the loose dictates of her culinary doctrine as printed on the manila envelope the menu is delivered in: “Look forward to enjoying an everchanging menu, focusing on what’s fresh and available during the season & adding her twist of whimsy to the Tastes of Our World . . . Adventures in Food!” When a chef changes her menu every day, there are bound to be duds—disasters even. And I suffered a few on my visits to Curious, during which my companions and I were treated to the full attention of the chef and her sidekick in the front of the house, uninterrupted by the demands of any other customers. A bowl of mussels and clams in a thick tomato sauce was mined with coins of andouille sausage that behaved more like supermarket hot dogs. A salad of mixed greens was drenched in a berry vinaigrette so sweet it deserves to go on a sno-cone. Crumbly sconelike wedges of giardiniera bread were punctuated here and there with bits of pickled vegetable too overwhelmed to express anything like their expected spicy character. A tub of cheese fondue was surrounded by cubes of the same bread, and pieces of the same alleged andouille dog. Duplication is a theme across Khan’s menu: the same J

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vegetable sides show up with different entrees; that bread appears again and again and again. But then Khan has some successful, if odd, dishes that hit all the right notes in her professed metier of comfort food. There’s a deconstructed chicken ravioli—really, a bowl of thick noodles, swimming in a lake of cream, with chunks of chicken and free-f loating gobs of pesto-spiked ricotta—a sloppy, satisfying mess. There’s a shepherd’s pie, allegedly Brazilian in nature, filled with ground steak, corn, and roasted red peppers, with a crusty cheddar-cornmeal topping that’s an appealing textural addition to the stewy innards. Fried green tomatoes are a firm, crispy, workmanlike but enjoyable effort, and a creamy New England-style clam chowder is a straightforward approach apart from the oversize hunks of potato that dominate the

bowl. Beef shank, supposedly prepared in the style of a Jamaican curry, seemed unseasoned apart from salt, but its meat was meltingly tender and its savory juices saturated the rice in a most primally appealing way. And then there’s that fillet of fish, which to everyone’s surprise was perfect: moist, flaky flesh jacketed by a cheesy brown crust. Who cares if the promised potato gratin was replaced by smashed sweet potatoes? At least we wouldn’t be darkening the McDonald’s drive-through. I don’t begrudge a chef who always strives to try something different, especially if it frequently leads to things as elementally satisfying as that fish. But there’s too much else amiss at Curious to gamble on its small ratio of peculiar but winning dishes. v

ß @MikeSula JUNE 8, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 43

FOOD & DRINK

DEADBOLT

2412 N. Milwaukee, 773-698-6101, deadboltbar.com

BARS

Deadbolt has done a number on the old Two-Way By JULIA THIEL

t would be natural to look for traces of Helen’s Two-Way Lounge in Deadbolt, the cocktail spot that replaced the dive bar and neighborhood favorite, which sold cheap beer and shots for more than 50 years. You won’t ﬁnd many, though. There’s still a pair of doors—the source of the Two-Way’s name— opening onto Milwaukee and Fullerton, but the rest has changed completely. Where the pool table once sat is lounge seating, and chandeliers have replaced the neon beer signs. The tin ceiling has been revealed and restored, and one wall is now exposed brick. In fact, Deadbolt resembles the nearby cocktail bar Spilt Milk (dark wood, exposed brick, mirrors, even the tin ceilings) much more than Helen’s old joint. Like the owners of Spilt Milk, the folks behind Deadbolt are industry veterans. Two-Way owner Glenn Miller sold the place last year to Anshul Mangal and Shin Thompson, the owners of Furious Spoon, the ramen restaurant next door. Before Deadbolt opened in February, Dustin Drankiewicz (Moneygun, Dusek’s) came on board as a managing partner and developed the cocktail menu. Gone are the handwritten specials behind the bar—$1 drafts and $6 pitchers on certain nights, or any three bombs for $12 at any time—in favor of actual printed menus. You can still get an Old Style on draft, though ($3, $12 for a pitcher), or a Jager shot with cranberry and apricot juice ($6) that’s actually pretty good. The rest of the brief draft list is dedicated to craft beer, but a few macrobrews (and several more microbrews) are available in cans. A window has been added to the wall that separates the bar from the Furious Spoon kitchen, allowing Deadbolt to offer a few items, carefully chosen for maximum alcohol absorption: fries, chicken nuggets, a hot dog, a burger, and a buffalo chicken sandwich. That’s it, but it’s all you need. Deadbolt is primarily a cocktail bar, though. The dozen drinks on the menu (all $11) are, for the most part, jazzed-up classics. For the Chronic + Tonic you pick your own booze, which is mixed with hop-infused house-made

44 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 8, 2017

Smoky Mai Tai o JUSTIN OLECHAW

tonic and lime juice; the Jabroni is a take on the Negroni that substitutes Galliano liqueur for the Campari. The Smoky Mai Tai isn’t particularly smoky, but it does manage to make coconut rum seem respectable (or at least very palatable) with grown-up additions like Glenlivet Reserve scotch, Angostura bitters, and absinthe. The Spiced Paloma, on the other hand, adds mezcal and ancho chile liqueur to the traditional tequila, lime, and grapefruit to startlingly smoky (and appealing) effect. The one cocktail that wasn’t thoroughly enjoyable was a rum drink called the City Pigeon: the ﬂavor is a little thin (though I appreciate that Deadbolt not only makes its own amaro for the drink but has chosen to refer to it as “hillbilly Campari”). The Pisco #2—a pisco sour with a very subtle strawberry infusion— has all the ﬂavor the City Pigeon lacks. A raft of egg-white foam separates the baking spices sprinkled on top from the liquid underneath, resulting in a cocktail that smells like Christmas cookies but tastes citrusy and refreshing. It’s a strange disconnect that just makes the drink more intriguing. Packed with cocktail bars, Logan Square hardly needs another one. But last year Spilt Milk took a gamble that people would want a place that serves a tightly curated selection of classic cocktails, (mostly) craft beer, and a few wines, and it seems to have paid off. There’s no reason that Deadbolt—with its friendly service, comfortable atmosphere, and wellmade cocktails—can’t do the same. It may be a lot fancier than its predecessor, but it’s still a neighborhood bar at heart. v

ß @juliathiel

Anheuser-Busch & the Northcenter Chamber of Commerce present

Voted Best Food Fest CHICAGO READER Featured on FOOD NETWORK

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Ribfest-Chicago.com JUNE 8, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 45

JOBS

SALES & MARKETING OFFICE MARKETING SCHEDULING PERSON WANTED. Part-time Tues-Fri 1pm-7pm. Pleasant, cheerful phone manner, Computer/social media skills necessary. Evanston office next to Purple Line. nikitsitsis@yahoo.com, 847-875-6463. APPOINTMENT SETTERS WANTED: salary + substantial bo-

nus, paid training. Days or evenings. No experience needed. Full or parttime. Dempster/Gross Point Rd Skokie, Email beisen@gmgoldman.com, 847-675-3600

TELE-FUNDRAISING SUMMER CASH!

American Veterans helping Veterans. Felons need not apply per Illinois Attorney General regulations. Start ASAP, Call 312-256-5035

General

Marketing Specialist. Working for a small metal & electronic recycling company. Analyzing data & create marketing reports. Req. Bachelors in Market Research, Marketing Research & similar fields. Jobsite: Chicago, IL. Send resume to: RDI Inc. 4101 W Ann Lurie Pl, Chicago, IL 60632.

TRANSUNION,

LLC

SEEKS

Lead Engineers – Info. Technology, Network for Chicago, IL location to design, implemt & support of a global network. Master’s in Comp. Sci./ Comp. Eng./any Eng. field + 2yrs exp. or Bachelor’s in Comp. Sci./Comp. En g./any Eng. field + 5yrs exp. req’d. Req’d skills: SSL/VPN technology, MPLS , routing protocols, Layer 2 & 3 network protocols, Cisco routers, switches, ASA Firewalls and Load Balancers, VoIP, Cisco ACS, Silverpeak Wan Acceleration. Must hold CCIE certification. Send resume to: C. Studniarz, REF: SCB, 555 W Adams, Chicago, IL 60661

THE

ENERGY

RESOURCES

CENTER at the University of Illinois at Chicago, located in a large metropolitan area, is seeking a full-time Senior Research Engineer to lead project teams to conduct applied research and technology transfer in the fields of energy and the environment, providing industry, utilities and government agencies, and the public with education proven ideas and concepts, information and technical assistance. Initiate and direct the development of energy and environmental research ideas, leading these ideas into new fundable projects and programs in the areas of: energy efficiency, energy use, energy conversion, energy storage and emission reduction. Apply energy engineering principles, technologies and concepts to specific energy and/or environmental research projects and tasks, and establish direction and budgets for existing and new program areas. Utilize knowledge of energy engineering to perform energy audits, energy studies and analyses to identify practical answers through research to energy problems in the industrial, commercial, institutional and/or residential markets. Manage energy efficiency projects, including the approval of project plans, timelines and cost structures. Review and approve final project deliverables to ensure accuracy and supervise ten Research Engineers. Requirements are a Bachelor’s degree or its foreign equivalent in Energy Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field of study, plus five years of energy related research experience, including three years of experience related to energy efficiency. Some travel is required. For fullest consideration, please submit a CV, cover letter, and 3 references to the attention of the Search Coordinator via email at jfarme1@uic. edu, or via mail at University of Illinois at Chicago, Energy Resources Center, 1309 S Halsted Street, Chicago, IL 60607. The University of Illinois is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action employer. Minorities, women, veterans and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply. The University of Illinois may conduct background checks on all job candidates upon acceptance of a contingent offer. Background checks will be performed in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

The Department of Pediatrics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, located in a large metropolitan area, is seeking a full-time Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics/Physician Surgeon to assist the department teach, train and advise medical students, residents and fellows in the field of Pediatrics and Genetics. Provide clinical patient to a diverse patient population in the hospital and outpatient clinics. Other duties include conducting medical science research, motivating and attracting students to the program, and performing University service and administrative duties as assigned. Requirements are an MD degree or its foreign equivalent, plus five years of training (3 years of Pediatrics residency training and 2 years of Medical Genetics fellowship training). Valid Illinois medical license and board certification or eligibility for certification in Pediatrics and Medical Genetics also required. Some travel is required. For fullest consideration, please submit a CV, cover letter, and 3 references to the attention of the Search Coordinator via email at nthaka2@uic.edu, or via mail at University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Pediatrics, 840 S Wood Street, Chicago, IL 60612. The University of Illinois is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action employer. Minorities, women, veterans and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply. The University of Illinois may conduct background checks on all job candidates upon acceptance of a contingent offer. Background checks will be performed in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

TRANSUNION, LLC SEEKS Di-

rectors of Market Strategy for Chicago, IL location to identify, evaluate & develop new go-to-market strategies for credit info. & info. management services. MBA + 2yrs exp. or BBA + 5yrs exp. req’d. Req’d Skills: Design & conduct market research, including primary research on financial services products & companies in order to identify market opportunities, develop & apply quantitative methodologies to develop market size & growth estimates, & conduct opportunity sizing, analyze products & services of current & potential competitors & partners, conduct due diligence, valuation of companies, & evaluation of M&A opportunities, develop & present compelling clientfacing strategy concepts in an easy to understand way, including building storylines & communicating presentations through PowerPoint, to both internal & external customers, as well as to business partners, manage & execute cross-functional projects, manage internal & external client relationships, build complex & dynamic company valuation models w/Excel. Travel to client sites as needed. Send resume to: C. Studniarz, REF: SSC, 555 W Adams, Chicago, IL 60661

Quantitative Analyst Valuation Research Corporation is seeking a Quantitative Analyst for its Chicago, IL ofc to work w/I VRC’s FIs and deriv practice and primarily conduct valu of var fin derivs & other complex secs for FR (ASC 718 & 815), tax and reg comp (IRC Sec 409A), trans sup LOOKING FOR ENERGETIC, and fin’ing ops. Req: Bach in dedicated, and loyal workers. Sev- Math, Stats, Econ or Fin plus a of 3 yrs exp w/ a nat’l audit, eral positions available including min tax and advisory firm conducting drivers, messengers, and general valu of various derivs and other laborers. Full-time positions. Visit complex sec for FR, tax and reg 2100 South Sawyer Ave. from 9:00 comp, trans sup and corp strgs AM to 12:00AM Monday-Friday to sup thru util of deriv eqns (e.g., apply. diff and integration, num integration, partial diffs & diffusion EN BUSCA DE personas dedica- eqns), multi-linear regression, das, enérgicas y leales. Varias posi- hedging strgs, stochastic modelin ciones disponibles incluyendo con- g/simul meths (BS, MC) finite-diff ductores, mensajeros y trabaja- methods and option strgs as well dores en general. Posiciones de as util of MatLab, Java, Python & tiempo completo. Visitar el 2100 S. Mathematica (will alt accept MTS Math, Stats, Econ or Fin plus a Sawyer Ave. en Chicago, de 9:00 a in min 1 yr exp as described above); 12:00 pm de lunes a viernes para & CQF desig. To apply, send reaplicar. sume to ChicagoHR@ valuationresearch.com.

Retail

BINNY’S IS HIRING!

NEW STORE OPENING SOON IN PORTAGE PARK ADDITIONAL OPPORTUNITIES IN LINCOLN PARK AND LAKEVIEW Binny’s Beverage Depot is the Midwest’s largest upscale retailer of ﬁne wines, spirits, beers and cigars, and due to our continued growth, we are now looking for dedicated individuals to join our team at multiple Chicago locations.

STORE ASSOCIATES

Portage Park: Full Time and Part Time Lincoln Park and Lakeview: Part Time We are seeking energetic, customer-oriented individuals to perform a variety of store functions. Qualiﬁed persons must be over 21 years of age, able to lift 40-50 lbs. and available to work ﬂexible hours. Previous retail experience a plus, with cashier or stock experience preferred. Candidates must be able to work nights & weekends.

Please apply online at www.binnys.com/careers

46 CHICAGO READER | JUNE 8, 2017

EOE

SOFTWARE SUPPORT ENGINEER (Bensenville, IL) – Perfrm anlysis &creat/ implem solutions for defcts & stuck ordrs for telecomrltdOMS apps. Coord implem of projcts from test to production phases. Reqs: MS comp sci/eng/info sys or sim IT-rltd & 1 yr telecom-rltd SW dev supp exp or BS comp sci /eng/info sys or sim IT-rltd & 3 yrs telecom-rltd SW dev supp exp; 1 yr exp HP, SUN, UNIX, Oracle DB, Oracle 11i w SQL*Plus, SQL, PL/SQL, SQL Developer, TOAD, Quality Center, J2EE, JSP, Servlets, JMS, Web Services, JNLP, XML, DHTML, JBuilder, MS ODBC, MS Visual Basic, MS Project; 1 yr exp CRM/ OMS/OSS/retail interact mgmt SW, customr-facng facet of telecom SW dev, telecom customr care/bill platfrm, & rating, chnge/ subscribr mgmt, multichannl self-servic, sales functionalities. Res: Amdocs Inc., caree rsta@amdocs.com, RefHR1049

TRANSUNION, LLC SEEKS Sr.

MERIDIAN TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS INC. seeks Systems Analyst in Oakbrook, IL to wrk wth bsnss stkhldrs & Crprte FP&A teams to prfrm Mstr data defintns & data srvcs in spprt of Hyperion Plnning outlk prcss. Reqs: BS in Comp Sci or rltd fld + 5 yrs exp; 5 yrs exp dsgnng & dvlpng cmplx ETL sltns, trnsltng dsgn reqs into fsible, reusbl & scalable tchncl implmn; Exp loadng Mstr Data & Transctnl data; Exp wrkng w/ data using the SAP Bus Objct Data Servcs; Data Convrsn exp frm Legcy to SAP systs; Exp w/ data load t Hyprn Plning financl appl; Exp w/ loadng & cleaning data into Data Wrhouse for rprtng & analys; Exp Dsgn & dvlpng SAP BO Data Srvcs jobs to extrct data from SAP R/3 & BW Objects (Open Hub Dstnton) using Batch Job. Trvl to vrious unantcpted clnt sites thrght the U.S. as needed. Send cvr lttr & rsme to samih.ahmed@meridianit. com; sbjct: ref 12000

DRIVERS - Regional & OTR LCL is expanding & seeks drivers to run regionally & OTR. $58K - $70K+/yr $2000.00 Sign-on Weekly payroll FULL BENEFITS & MORE!!! Class A CDL and 12 mo tractor trailer exp required. Visit: LCLbulk.com

THE NORTHERN TRUST Com-

pany is seeking a Consultant, Applications in Chicago, IL w/ the following reqts: BS degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics/ Finance or related field or foreign academic equivalent. 5 yrs of related experience. Required skills: Prepare Project Plan using Microsoft Project Plan (mpp), Test plans using MS Excel and Technical Designs using MS Word, MS Visio or Confluence; Perform data gap analysis using SQL, base SAS and provide Technical solution architecture/ Data model using Sybase Power Designer; Provide ETL development and Systems support using tools like SAS Data Integration Studio, Base SAS, IBM Data Stage and PL/SQL; Build and maintain Reports for internal Management Reporting using BI Suite i.e. SAS WRS (Web Report Studio) and MS Excel. Please apply on-line at www. northerntrustcareers.com and search for Req. # 17055.

CQG, Inc. sks 1 FT Database Administrator in Chicago, IL. Respbl for implemention, dvlpmnt, mgmnt, support, upgrade & monitoring of database environs suprtng CQG apps, infrastrctre, sys & services. Req: Bachlr’s in CompSci, IT or rel & 4 yrs exp working as MS SQL Server Database Admin on Windows platforms. Exp, in aggregate, must incld: exp in dev of reports w/MS Reporting Services platform; exp devlp of MS Integration Services packgs for data process & transformation; exp maintaining hi-availability systms (24/7/365); familiar w/Dev/Ops concepts, exp working w/Dev/Ops team focused on implementing & enhancing continuous delivery capabilities. Select job at http://careers.cqg. com to apply. SOFTWARE IMANAGE LLC seeks in Chicago, IL: STAFF SOFTWARE ENG with MS in Comp Sci, Comp

Analysts for various and unanticipated worksites throughout the U.S. (HQ: Chicago, IL) to independently design & execute all aspects of statistical analytics projects. Master’s in St atistics/Applied Mathematics/related Quantitative field + 1yr exp. req’d. Exp. must incl. 1yr w/R, SAS, Python, mainframe computer, SAS macros, SQL, Netezza, Unix Command, data visualization, MS VBA, Dimensionality reduction techniques (feature selection, feature extraction, and stratified sampling), GLM (Logistic, LASSO, Tweedie), Tree models (GBM, Decision tree, Random forest), Neural network. May telecommute. Send resume to: C. Studniarz, REF: ZZ, 555 W Adams, Chicago, IL 60661

RESEARCH ASSOCIATE; RESEARCH & quality control & analysis at Recom-binant Protein Production Core Facility; scaledup biologics production (pro- & eukaryotic expression), upgraded bioreactor fermentation, FPLC, hybridoma and phage display antibody technology; PhD +2 yrs. exp.; contact Chunhui.ye1@ northwestern.edu, Evanston, IL.

MANAGEMENT: KRAFT HEINZ

FOODS COMPANY seeks Head of US Logistics Capability to work in Chicago, IL. Plan & manag the Kraft Heinz Logistics Netwrk while drivng & implmntng its stratgy & optimztn prjcts. Degree & commensurate exp. req’d. Apply to #9269BR at kraftheinzcompany.com/careers.

REAL ESTATE RENTALS

STUDIO $500-$599 Chicago, Beverly/Cal Park/Blue Island Studio $575 & up, 1BR $665 & up, 2BR $885 & up. Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Prkg. 708-388-0170

STUDIO $600-$699 REHABBED APARTMENTS 1 Month Free 1BR on South Shore Drive From $650 w/Parking Incld. Call 773-374-7777 CHICAGO, HYDE PARK Arms

Hotel, 5316 S. Harper, maid, phone, cable ready, fridge, private facilities, laundry avail. Switchboard. Start at $ 160/wk Call 773-493-3500

STUDIO $700-$899 LARGE STUDIO APARTMENT

Near Loyola Park. 1335 W Estes. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. $725/ month. Available 7/1. 773-761-4318,

STUDIO OTHER LARGE SUNNY ROOM w/fridge & microwave. Near Oak Park, Green Line & Buses. 24 hr Desk, Parking Lot $101/week & Up. (773)378-8888 SHARE FURNISHED HOUSE at

93rd & Union. Utilities and cable incl. Senior Male preferred, No Smoking. $600/mo. Call 773-238-1082.

CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE,

CABLE & MAIDS. 1 Block to Orange Line 5300 S. Pulaski 773-581-1188

Eng, or Info Tech plus 18 mos exp in job offered or sub sim pos, or BS in Comp Sci, Comp Eng, or Info Tech plus 5 yrs exp in job offered or sub sim pos. Send resume to Peopleops @imanage.com (ref. no. L3108) or Attn: Recruiting, 540 W. Madison St, Ste 2400, Chicago, IL 60661.

1 BR UNDER $700

NUTS ON CLARK POPCORN

SPRINGTIME SAVINGS! NEWLY Remod. 1 BR Apts $650 w/

STORES- Paid training, lots of hours & opportunity available. Apply in person between 9 A.M. & 11 A.M. 3830 N Clark St. Must bring state ID & Social Security Card.

Ashland Hotel nice clean rms. 24 hr desk/maid/TV/laundry/air. Low rates daily/weekly/monthly. South Side. Call 773-376-5200

gas incl. 2-5BR start at $650 & up. Sec 8 Welc. Rental Assistance Prog. for Qualified Applicants offer up to $ 400/month for 1 yr. (773)412-1153 Wesley Realty

7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impecca-

bly Clean Highrise STUDIOS, 1 & 2 BEDROOMS Facing Lake & Park. Laundry & Security on Premises. Parking & Apts. Are Subject to Availability. TOWNHOUSE APARTMENTS 773-288-1030

SPRING SPECIAL: STUDIOS starting at $499 incls utilities. 1BR $550, 2BR $599, 3BR $699. With approved credit. No Security Deposit for Sec 8 Tenants. South Shore & Southside. Call 312-446-3333 MIDWAY AREA/63RD KEDZIE Deluxe Studio 1 & 2 BRs. All

modern oak floors, appliances, Security system, on site maint. clean & quiet, Nr. transp. From $445. 773582-1985 (espanol)

CHICAGO, 709 W. Garfield, 1BR Apartment. Newly decorated, heated, appliances incl. $635/ mo + security. Call 1-773-8814182 CHICAGO, 1115 W. 76th St. 1BR Apartment. Newly decorated, heated, appliances incl. $645/mo + security. Call 1-773-881-4182 WEST PULLMAN (INDIANA

Ave) RENT SPECIAL 1/2 Off 1 month rent + Sec dep. Nice,lrg 1BR $575; 2BR $699 & 1 3BR $850, balcony, Sec 8 Welc. 773-995-6950

FREE HEAT! NO SEC Dep. No Move-in Fee! 1, 2, 3 & 4 BRs, laundry rm. Sec 8 OK. Tiffany 773.285.3310 www.livenovo.com

SPRING SPECIAL $500 Toward Rent Beautiful Studios 1, 2, 3 &

4 BR Sect. 8 Welc. Westside Loc, Must qualify. 773-287-4500 www.wjmngmt.com

CLEAN ROOM W/FRIDGE & micro, Near Oak Park, Food -4Less, Walmart, Walgreens, Buses & Metra, Laundry. $115/wk & up. 773-637-5957

HYDE PARK- 53rd St Nr Maryland . Small 1BR $675 hdwd floors, Sec 8 ok. Heated, w / Laundry facilities. 773-8590169 6930 S. SOUTH SHORE DRIVE Studios & 1BR, INCL. Heat, Elec, Cking gas & PARKING, $585-$925, Country Club Apts 773-752-2200

EXCHANGE EAST APTS 1 Brdm

$575 w/Free Parking,Appl, AC,Free heat. Near trans. laundry rm. Elec.not incl. Kalabich Mgmt (708) 424-4216

BURNHAM - 14500 S. Torrence

Beautiful 2 BR in a class of its own, tile floors, appls, lndry room, a/c, heat included. 773-731-5010

3BR APT IN quiet home on SW

side. lndry hookup avail., close to schools & shopping. $900/mo + 1 mo security. Call 773-821-4855.

SECTION 8 WELCOME

Bronzeville 4950 S Prairie. 1BR. Heat, cooking gas, appl incl. $660 & up. Call Zoro, 773-406-4841 Newly updated, clean furnished rooms, located near buses & Metra, elevator, utilities included, $91/wk. $ 395/mo. 815-722-1212

û NO SEC DEP û

1431 W. 78th St 1BR. $500/MO HEAT INCL 773-955-5106 NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $130/wk & up. 773-275-4442 BIG ROOM with stove, fridge, bath & nice wood floors. Near Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry, Shopping. $121/wk + up. 773-561-4970

22nd & Kostner, 1BR, heat & A/C included. Newly decorated kitchen. $650/mo + 1 mo sec. Call 312-401-3862 or 773-846-5130

1 BR $700-$799 8322 S INGLESIDE & 8001 S Colfax, 1BR $650, newly remodel, hrdwd flrs, cable. Sec 8 welcome (Laundry Ingleside only) 708-3081509 or 773-493-3500

1 BR $800-$899 ONE BEDROOM NEAR Warren

Park and Metra. 6804 N. Wolcott. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. $850895/month. Available 7/1. 773-7614318.

LARGE ONE BEDROOM near

CHICAGO SOUTH SIDE Beauti-

1 BR $900-$1099

SUBURBS, RENT TO OW N! Buy with No closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com

the lake. 1335 W Estes. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. $875-900/month. Available 7/1. 773-761-4318.

Ravenswood DLX 3/rm studio: new kit, SS appl, granite, French windows, oak flrs, close to Brown L; $1050/heated 773-743-4141 w ww.urbanequities.com DOLTON -14545 Chicago Rd. 3BR, $1300/mo + sec. On-site laundry, pkng, appl. Tenant pays utils. 708-372-4392

1 BR $1100 AND OVER AVAILABLE JULY 1ST, First floor one bedroom apt. all utilities included heat, gas, electric and air conditioning. $1,100.00 monthly 2472 N Clybourn, Chicago. One month security deposit required. Please call 773-935-1280.

LINCOLN SQUARE, 2629 W.

Winnemac beautiful 2BR apartment. New bath and remodeled kitchen, hardwood floor, big apartment. Wate r/gas + heat included. Close to Brown Line. No pets. $1350 + deposit. 773-710-5100

1 BR OTHER IMMEDIATE AVAILABILITY Affordable housing-section 8 preferences for Senior 62+. Near elderly with disabilities 50-61 & near elderly 50-61. Beautiful Park like setting near University Commons. Pay 30% of income for rent (Sec. 8) Appliances, A/C & Heating. Indoor hallways, laundry facilities and rec. rooms. Cable ready, gated parking, Wheelchair accessible units. Congressman George Collins Apartments, 312-243-5048 EHO/H APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. LTD. IT’S MOVING TIME!!! OUR UNITS INCLUDE HEAT, HW & CG PLENTY OF PARKING 1BDR FROM $775.00 2BDR FROM $925.00 3 BDR/2 FULL BATH FROM $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000*** APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. LTD. SPRING HAS SPRUNG!! MOST UNITS INCLUDE.. HEAT & HOT WTR STUDIOS FROM $475.00 1BDR FROM $550.00 2BDR FROM $745.00 3 BDR/2 FULL BATH FROM $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000** ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar Villas is accepting applications for subsidized 1BR apts. for seniors 62 years or older and the disabled. Rent is based on 30% of annual income. For details, call us at 847-546-1899 ∫

CALUMET CITY 158TH & PAXTON SANDRIDGE APTS 1 & 2 BEDROOM UNITS MODELS OPEN M-F, 9AM-5:30PM *** 708-841-5450 *** RICHTON PARK hour assistance or live alone? Rooms South Suburbs. Call 9760

Need 24 unable to for rent, 708-336-

ROOMS FOR RENT. MALES PREF. 6140 S. St. Lawrence. $450/mo., include all utilIties. Will Go Fast, Call Now! 773-726-8263 SOUTHSIDE, NEWLY REMODELED room for rent near CTA, $4 50/mo + $100 sec dep. Parking available. All utils incl. 708-2997605. SOUTHSIDE, FURN. R m s , $350 & $425/mo, utils incl. Nr good trans. $200 clean up fee req’d. Fixed income invited. Call 312-758-6931

ful Studios, 1,2,3 & 4 BR’s, Sec 8 ok. $500 gift certificate for Sec 8 tenants. 773-287-9999/312-446-3333

CHICAGO, RENT TO OWN! Buy with no closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com

NO SECURITY DEPOSIT NO MOVE IN FEE 1, 2, 3 BEDROOM APTS (773) 874-1122 ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597

2 BR UNDER $900 CHICAGO, KING & 73RD ST., Beautiful 2BR Apt. Newer rehab, new cabinets, $750/ mo + heat. MUST SEE! Call Irma, 847-987-4850 CHICAGO SOUTHSIDE BRAND new 3BR-4BR condos. Exc. neighborhood, near transp/ schools, Sec 8 Welc., For details call 708-774-2473 7701 S. South Shore Dr. 2 BDs with 1.5 Baths, Large Combo Living-Dining Rm, FREE Heat & cking gas. Prkng extra. $785-$850, Kalabich Mgmt (708)424-4216

LOGAN SQUARE 2 Bedroom Apartment. Modern kitchen & bath, balcony, washer & dryer in unit. $850/MO. 773-235-1066 CHICAGO 3BR 5258 S. Hermitage. $665 246 S. Hermitage: 3BR, 2nd fl, $625 & 2BR bsmt $400. 1. 5 mo sec req’d. 708-574-4085.

2BR, VERY NICE, lrg rms, quiet bldg, no pets, tenant pays own util. $725/mo + 1 mo sec. 6545 S. Winchester Ave. 773-799-5696 CHICAGO

7600 S Essex 2BR $599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sect 8 Ok! 773287-9999 /312-446-3333 2BR W/ NEW CARPET, cherry

kit cabinets & Kolher prod., tenant pays heat, 8632 Escanaba, $650/mo + security. Call 773-415-4970

2 BR $900-$1099 78TH & WINCHESTER - Spacious

2 bdrms apt. 2nd FL with hardwood floors, separate DR, heat included $1,000 SEC 8 OK. call 708-794-6485.

2 BR $1100-$1299 ELMHURST: Dlx 1BR, new appl, new carpet, AC, balc. overlook pool, $925/mo. incl heat, prkg, OS Laundry. 773-743-4141 www. urbanequities.com ROGERS PARK, 7400N & 1900W. Newly Decor 2BR, free gas & heat.

no pets, no smoking or drugs. $1100 + dep. Sec 8 welc. 847-4772790 4300 BLOCK OF AUGUSTA,

2BRs, 1st & 2nd floor, laundry facility on site. $1150/mo, utils incl. Sect 8 ok. No pets/no smoking. 773-418-0195 73RD & DORCHESTER, 2BR, refrig & stove, lndry hookups, off street prkg, enclosed yard, $975/ mo. No security dep. 773-684-1166 SOUTH SHORE - 2BR, 1.5BA, hdwd floors. appls incl, fin basement. near beach & Metra. $1250/mo, utilities not incl. 708-868-3225

2 BR $1500 AND OVER

GREAT ANDERSONVILLE DUPLEX apartment. Two bed-

rooms + den, living room/dining room. Hardwood floors. Unique kitchen with island stove opens up to private deck and backyard in charming grey-stone 2 flat. Close to redline, beach, shops. $1,875 with garage parking. Available August 1. Last tenants loved so much they stayed 7 years 312-371-8025

EAST LOGAN: 2BR + den/1BA. Remodeled 2nd floor unit; new kitchen w/SS appliances, updated bath, new hardwood floors, freshly painted. Separate utilities. No smoking. No pets. $1750 + one month security. Available now. Call 773-879-2430

CHATHAM 8817 S. Cottage

2 BR OTHER ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar

Villas is accepting applications for Subsidized 2 and 3 bedroom apt waiting list. Rent is based on 30% of annual income for qualified applicants. Contact us at 847-546-1899 for details

NORTH LAWNDALE, 2BR Apts, Multiple Units Available. New construction, next to park and elementary school. Sec 8 welcome. 972-256-1141 NEWLY REHABBED 1BR Apt.

$750. 3 & 5BR single family homes w / 2BA. $1300-$1800. Sect 8 Welc. 847-962-0408

Southshore 3BR , 2nd fl Heat & gas incl, $1100/month Section 8 ok,1 month sec, no pets, Avail now 773-221-7269 SECTION 8 WELCOME West

103rd Street, small 2 bedroom. No security deposit. Heat and appls included. 773-719-2695

2BR APT: LR/DR, carpet, stove / refrigerator furnished. Section 8 & Seniors Welcome. Call 773-287-7512 or 773-430-0089

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 SECTION 8 WELCOME $200 Cash Move-In Bonus, No Deposit 6227 S. Justine 3BR/1BA & 225 W 108th Pl, 2BR/1BA, $1100; 7134 S Normal, 4BR, 2BA, $1150. Heat & appls incl. 312-683-5174

DOLTON, 3BR, 1.5BA , 2 car garage, hdwd floors, newly remodeled, kit appls incl, c/a, close to trans & shops 708-8463424 Avail Now! 54th/May. Sec 8 ok, La Large 3BR Apt, 1st flr, lndry rm, hdwd flrs, A/C, cfans, fncd in bldg, $1100/mo 773-9813919

3BR APT $1100 1MO. SEC, APPL

INC. WD HKUP IN-UNIT, PRKNG, ADT, STRGE THIS IS A STEEL! LAWNDALE 773-609-1054

ADULT SERVICES

Grove. Nice 3BR, 1st flr, Ten. Pays Utils., $1,100/mo. Section 8 Welcome No Sec. Dep! Call 773-844-1216

CHICAGO- 6005 S. ASHLAND . 3BR Ready to move in! 2nd

floor apt., secure bldg., washer/dryer in bsmt. $850/mo plus utilities. 773329-3780

CALUMET CITY, 3BR, 2 full BA, fully rehabbed w/ gorgeous finishes, CAC & appliances incl., porch, Section 8 OK. $1100/mo. 510-735-7171

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499

3 BR OR MORE $2500 AND OVER

SECT 8 OK, 2 story, 4br/2ba w/ bsmt. New decor, crpt & hdwds, ceiling fans, stove/fridge, $1465. 11243 S. Eggleston, 773-443-5397

Gary NSA accepting applications for studio & 2 bedroom SUBSIDIZED apartments. Apply Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9am to 1pm ONLY at 1735 W 5th Ave. Applications are to be filled out on site. Adult applicants must provide a current picture ID and SS card.

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799 330 W. 107TH ST. 5BR, 2BA, fenced-in yard, hrdwd flrs, stove, refrig & micro incld. $1500/mo, no Security. Sect 8 welcome. Tenant pays utils. 773-221-0061.

Lansing , 2BR, carpeting, AC, patio, 2 parking spaces, w/d, heat incl, quiet bldg. Section 8 Welcome $925 + 1 mo sec. (773)9552125

PARK MANOR: 7825 S Champlain, beaut rehabbed 4BR, 2BA house, granite ctrs, SS appls, fin bsmt, 2-car gar, $1500/mo. 708288-4510

8001 S. DOBSON. 3BR $950 New Kitchen and Bath. Heat and

ALB Pk DLX 3BR + den, new kit, SS appl, granite, oak flrs, on-site lndy, $1375/+ util. 773-743-4141 www. urbanequities.com

ALSIP, IL 3 BR/1.5 BA 2 story

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499

appliances incl. 312.208.1771 or 773. 916.0039

townhouse for rent. $1150/mo without appliances. Call Verdell, 219888-8600 for more info.

HARVEY 15318 S. VINE. 6BR, 2 Full BA, freshly updated, garage, quiet block, nr schools. $1250/mo. 773-501-0503 70TH AND DORCHESTER. 2BR available for a janitor on 3rd flr, $475/mo + security. Tenant pays utilities. Call 773-744-4603

MARVELOUS AND CHARMING character with stained glass

and venetian plastering, 1st floor, 3BR, 2BA, kitchen & bath with stainless steel & granite, spacious LR/DR, hardwood floors, washer & dryer in unit, central air, lawn & patio with grill, garage available. $2150/mo. Call 773-274-4775.

ADULT SERVICES

3 BR OR MORE OTHER

ALL NEW APT, 5BR, 2BA, hardwood floors, granite & laundry room. 4BR Section 8 Voucher Welcome. Call 773603-4356

GENERAL CHICAGO HEIGHTS, 498 W 17th St, 3BR, 1BA, off street parking, Section 8 Welcome. Available Now. 312-458-9804 10234 S. CRANDON, small home, 3BR, 1BA, kit & util room, totally ren a/c, all appls incl, nice fncd yd, CHA welcome. 773-3174357 ALL NEW, 2 flat on Lake & Lockwood, 2BR, granite, stainless steel in kitchen. Mature building. Call 773-603-4356 CHICAGO HOUSES FOR rent. Section 8 Ok, w/app credit $500 gift certificate 3, 4 & 5 BR houses avail. 312-446-3333 or 708-752-3812

5400 S. MAY, 3BR, central air & heat, laundry facility, hdwd floors. 5407 S. May, 4BR, 2BA. Section 8 Welcome. Call 773-373-2933

EASTWOOD GARDEN APTS., 6531 S. Lowe Ave. Great Specials starting at $660. Call 773-8740100

CHICAGO, 33 W. 104th Place, 4BR, 2BA & 130 E. 120th Place. 7BR, 2 full BA. Hdwd floors in both Section 8 welcome. Call 708-296-5477

OPEN HOUSE 2421 W. Berteau,

CHICAGO, 12328 S. Normal, newly remod 3BR, 1BA, hdwd flrs, low security deposit. Near elementary school. $1200/mo. 708275-1751

ADULT SERVICES

$1025. 7908 S. Justine. 2-3BR ($750-$800) & Restaurant for rent. 708-421-7630 or 773-899-9529

HEALTH & WELLNESS

PULLMAN AREA, Newly

remodeled 111th St., East of King Dr. $450-$550. Close to shopping & 1/4 block to metra. 773-468-1432

FEMALE ILLINOIS LICENSED Emergency Medical Technician with Masters degree in Healthcare is available for Elder care or Child care Mon-Fri 7am-7pm. Near north only. $20/hr firm. Email expertspecializedcare@ gmail.com, include your name, phone, preferred time to talk and needs.

MARKETPLACE GOODS

MASSAGE TABLES, NEW and

used. Large selection of professional high quality massage equipment at a very low price. Visit us at www. bestmassage.com or call us, 773764-6542.

HARLEY DAVIDSON CLASSIC

FULL BODY MASSAGE. hotel, house calls welcome $90

1990 JOHN DEERE 770 4X4, LOADER, Manual transmission, 23 HP, 1254 hours ,3 cyl, $ 2200, Call: 779232-3902

Electra Glide. Fuel injection. Year 1998. One owner. 24,000 miles. Very good condition. $10,000. 312-7332919.

FOR SALE June 11, 1-3pm. Lincoln Square/ North Center. 2003 solid quality, 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath home. 2 car garage. Storage. Much more. Possible updating credit. MLS# #09360376. Virtual Tour http://redefinedagent. com/listings/2421-w-berteauavenue-chicago-illinois/ Call Mary, Solid Realty Services 773-590-6500 with questions.

CHICAGO RADICAL USED BOOK FAIR, Second Annual Massive Used Book Sale with hundreds of radical leftist political works. June 17, 12pm-4pm at In These Times, 2040 N. Milwaukee Ave. More info on Facebook: http://bit.ly/2swRAnr

CHURCH RUMMAGE SALE

SELF-STORAGE CENTERS. T W O locations to serve you. All

Grace Lutheran Church 7300 Division Street, River Forest Friday, June 9, 9am-6pm Saturday, June 10, 8am-1pm Collectibles, Toys, Furniture, Antiques, Bicycles, Vintage, Jewelry, Electronics, Clothing, Books, Seasonal and much more.

CLASSICS WANTED ANY CLASSIC CARS IN ANY CONDITION. ’20S, ’30S, ’40S, ’50S, ’60S & ’70S. HOTRODS & EXOTICS! TOP DOLLAR PAID! COLLECTOR. CALL JAMES, 630-201-8122

ADULT SERVICES

non-residential units fully heated and humidity controlled with ac available. North: Knox Avenue. 773-685-6868. South: Pershing Avenue. 773-523-6868.

4010 S. KING Dr. 3BR, heat incl,

roommates

special. Russian, Polish, Ukrainain girls. Northbrook and Schaumburg locations. 10% discount for new customers. Please call 773-407-7025

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D17150895 on May 18, 2017 Under the Assumed Business Name of CHIEFUSION with the business located at: 1348 W. HASTINGS ST, CHICAGO, IL 60608. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/partner(s) is: IRVING JONES, 1348 W. HASTINGS ST, CHICAGO, IL 60608, USA NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pur-

suant to "An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State," as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D17151020 on May 30, 2017, under the Assumed Business Name of Bakerbot Cookie Cutters with the business located at 3708 W Ainslie St Unit 2, Chicago, IL 60625. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/ partner(s) is: Margaret G Lopez, 3708 W Ainslie St Unit 2, Chicago, IL 60625, USA.

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EARLY WARNINGS

chicagoreader.com/early 48 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 8, 2017

to the dangerousness of Agent Orange? Of course it was dangerous to plants, but what about the grunts? I personally wouldn’t want to breathe in anything the U.S. government is dropping on the enemy, but the concern in the mid-80s seemed to be the lingering nature of the symptoms. Any ideas? —ERIC LEE

A : “Lingering” is certainly the mot juste—45

years after we quit spraying it around, we’re still trying to figure out what Agent Orange’s effects on the body are. If it seems surprising that the U.S. has yet to fully flush a Vietnam-era toxic agent from its system, consider that nobody’s figured out how to get rid of Henry Kissinger either. First, to recap: Faced with a peasant army fighting out of the dense forests of South Vietnam, the U.S. military resolved to simply destroy the forests via mass herbicide spraying, thereby forcing the guerrillas out into the open. For this initiative—codenamed Operation Ranch Hand, and running from 1962 until 1971—the military relied on a few different herbicides. The most heavily used, to the tune of 12 million gallons dispersed, was Agent Orange. Agent Orange contained equal parts of two plant-killing chemicals, 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T. Manufacture of the latter, it turns out, also produces a contaminant: the dioxin TCDD, a notably persistent chlorine compound that’s been linked to spina bifida and related neural birth defects, cancer, skin disease, and a host of other unpleasant conditions. The collective realization that our superdefoliant might be even more harmful than intended wasn’t particularly gradual—as early as the mid-60s, scientists were warning against the long-term uncertainty of what might be wrought by herbicidal warfare. By 1969 researchers had discovered the dioxin in Agent Orange, and in 1970 the surgeon general issued a warning about it. The Vietnamese, meanwhile, were seeing these fears come to life—local dispatches reported rising rates of birth defects, stillbirths, premature births, and miscarriages. You asked about U.S. troops, and that’s where we’ll confine our discussion here, but the Vietnamese-civilian angle is another, frankly ghastlier, story. Service members’ exposure was incidental; noncombatants on the ground were the ones being hosed down with the stuff. What was gradual was an understanding of the exact link between Agent Orange and the afflictions that started showing up in Vietnam

vets and their children—a devilish connection to make, even over decades of study. Nonetheless, after years of veteran activism, and plenty of anecdotal data—namely, a lot of veterans getting sick—enough dots had been connected that in 1991 Congress passed the Agent Orange Act. This established a few conditions suspected of being linked to dioxin exposure as “presumptive diseases”—that is, if a Vietnam vet was diagnosed with one of them, the connection to herbicide exposure could be presumed without anyone having to prove it, and Veterans Aﬀairs would provide compensation. The government remained reluctant, though, to spell out any links between defoliant and health trouble: a beneﬁts act passed in 2000, granting compensation to female vets whose kids had birth defects, didn’t mention Agent Orange, dioxin, or herbicides at all—it just talked generally about service in Vietnam. And that about brings us to the present, where the scope of the Agent Orange problem is still under debate. In 2010 the Obama administration issued a rule further expanding the presumptive-disease circle to include Parkinson’s, ischemic heart disease, and other conditions; it estimated that an additional 150,000 vets would be able to submit claims. Any chance a President Trump will take up the cause? Well, he has promised to beef up the VA, and there are opportunities here—Congress has lately been considering extending benefits to “blue-water sailors,” personnel who served on ships off the Vietnamese coast where Agent Orange may have been handled, but never got any closer to where it was used. (The VA’s current position is that there isn’t enough evidence for their disability claims.) But we’ve heard nothing about this or any other Agent Orange-related topic from the White House, which hosts no relevant policy papers on its website. Meanwhile, a general Internet search for the phrases “Donald Trump” and “Agent Orange,” yields . . . well, I’m sure you can guess. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 350 N. Orleans, Chicago 60654.

SAVAGE LOVE

By Dan Savage

‘I hate how my boyfriend has sex with me’ What to do. Plus: a “GGG” clariﬁcation

Q : I hate how my boyfriend

has sex with me. It used to be ﬁne, but a year ago he started adding new moves he obviously got from porn: smacking my pussy with an open palm, vigorously rubbing my clit, wrapping his hands around my neck. I’m not antiporn; what bothers me is that even though I told him these moves don’t feel good on my body and hurt me, he doesn’t care. I’ve told him that it is painful when he slaps and manhandles my clit, and he responds that he likes it and I should feel happy that he still wants to fuck me six times a week. I don’t feel like his enjoyment should come at the price of mine, but I don’t know how to get him to listen to me.

—PORN LESSONS ERASING ALL SEXUAL ENERGY

A : Your boyfriend listened

to you, PLEASE. You told him you don’t like his porny new moves; he told you he likes them and intends to keep doing them. So this isn’t about listening—it’s about caring. Your boyfriend is hurting you and, in your words, “he doesn’t care.” Dump the motherfucker already.

Q : I’m 28 years old and have been with my boyfriend (also 28) for three years. Our relationship is monogamous and vanilla. I’m a pretty sexual person: I’ve been to bondage clubs, and I’ve had my fair share of sexual encounters with men and women. I like to dominate and be dominated. However, my boyfriend is nonaggressive, nondominating, and noninitiating. I enjoy strong masculine energy! I’m a feminist, but sometimes in the bedroom it can be incredibly hot to feel like a sex object. We’ve talked

and talked, and tried some light bondage (he didn’t like it), and talked about a threesome (he’s opposed). How do I get him to show some sexual aggression?

—WANTS HIM AGGRESSIVE MORE

A : Keep reading, WHAM. Q : My husband of 17 years

has never been into sex— which I always knew was a problem, but the other stuﬀ was good. He’s into pornography, though, and I’ve busted him many times. To say I am resentful is an understatement. He uses corn oil for masturbating, and I’ve been reduced to marking the bottle and boobytrapping it to see if he’s been up to his tricks. We have two children, so that’s what keeps me from “pulling the trigger.”

—GAGGING IN CHICAGO

A : GIC: You have three

options. 1. Pull the trigger. 2. Redefine your marriage as companionate—it’s about child-rearing and family life, not about sex. 3. Continue with what you’re doing now—your husband sneaking off to have a wank, and you monitoring every bottle of corn oil that comes into the house. WHAM: Your boyfriend isn’t going to suddenly become more interested in sex or more sexually aggressive, so if you don’t want to be sending me a letter like GIC’s in 14 years, end this relationship. People who want healthy, functional, monogamous LTRs need to prioritize sexual compatibility at the start. That doesn’t mean things can’t go off the rails later (see the first letter), but they’re less likely to.

Q : I desperately wanted to be GGG in my past

relationship. My partner chronically complained that I wasn’t giving him enough sex. I felt so guilty that I put up with some very coercive situations. I became an orgasm dispenser for a dumbass whose beard prickled my clit painfully, who complained my G-spot moved around, and who fell asleep ﬁngering me. I put up with his shit for far too long. It would have been helpful to be told that GGG needs to be MUTUAL and feel good for both parties. —SASSY

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A : GGG—good in bed, giving of pleasure, and game for anything within reason—is what we should be for our partners and our partners should be for us. So it absolutely needs to be mutual, SUB, and there are deﬁnitely limits. “Being GGG means considering a partner’s reasonable sexual requests,” I responded to a previous reader who asked for a GGG clarification. “Not all sexual requests can be fulfilled, and not all needs can be met. But two people who want to make their relationship work need to carve out a mutually satisfying repertoire that doesn’t leave anyone feeling frustrated or used. Does everyone get everything they want? Of course not. But each of us has a right to ask for our needs to be met. . . . We should also recognize when the gulf is too great and end the relationship rather than engaging in sex acts that leave us feeling diminished and dehumanized.” v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at savagelovecast. com. ß @fakedansavage

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HUMPFILMFEST.COM JUNE 8, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 49

Beach Fossils o COURTESY GROUND CONTROL TOURING

NEW

Alvvays 11/3, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM, 17+ American Football 7/16, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM Bang 7/28, 7:30 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Courtney Barnett, Kurt Vile 10/26, 7:30 PM, Rockefeller Chapel; 10/27, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall; and 10/28, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM Rayland Baxter 8/17, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM b Beach Fossils, Snail Mail, Raener 10/17, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 6/9, 11 AM, 17+ Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys 9/27, 8:30 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 6/9, 11 AM Birdtalker 8/14, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Black Heart Procession 11/10, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM Benjamin Booker 10/16, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM, 17+ Borgore 8/6, 10 PM, the Mid Circles Around the Sun 7/15, 11:30 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Paula Cole 10/11, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM b Shawn Colvin 10/28, 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Curt Cohiba 6/29, 7:30 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe 7/14, 11 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ El Famous 7/29, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 17+ Freakons 9/10, 8 PM, Hideout Max Frost 10/20, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM b

Galactic Empire 7/18, 6 PM, Bottom Lounge b Geographer 9/9, 9 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM Gramatik 8/4, 10 PM, the Mid The Great Lawn with Houndmouth, Greensky Bluegrass, Shovels & Rope, Dr. Dog, and more 7/22-23, Harrison Park, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM, 17+ Growlers 10/6, 9:30 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM, 18+ Gza 7/24-25, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 6/8, noon b Wayne Hancock 8/17, 8:30 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 6/9, 11 AM Chris Hillman, Herb Pedersen, and John Jorgensen 10/6, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b International Festival of Life with Capleton & the Prophecy Band, Farley Jackmaster Funk, Al Hudson & One Way, Queen Ifrica & the Rhythm 2000 Band, and more 7/1-4, Union Park INVSN 9/15, 7:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM b Leo Kottke 8/21-22, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 6/8, noon b Lords of Acid, Combichrist, Christian Death 10/31, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Shelby Lynne & Allison Moorer 8/30-31, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 6/8, noon b Maximo Park 11/24, 8:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Mark McGuire, Ancient Ocean 8/1, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Meat Puppets 7/9, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Milky Chance 8/5, 11 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Ian Moore 9/10, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 6/8, noon b

50 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 8, 2017

Thurston Moore Group 7/13, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM Mountain Goats 11/17, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM, 18+ My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult 10/20, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Oh Wonder 9/15, 7:30 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM b Johnny Orlando 7/9, 7:30 PM, House of Blues b Overcoats 7/18, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM b Rahsaan Patterson 7/30, 6:30 and 9 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 6/8, noon b Phantogram 8/3, 11 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Chuck Prophet 8/4, 8 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 6/9, 11 AM Psychedelic Furs, Bash & Pop 10/17-18, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Joe Purdy 9/8, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 6/8, noon b Pvris, Lights 10/22, 7 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM b RL Grime 11/15, 9 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM, 17+ R.LUM.R 7/3, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM, 18+ Porter Robinson 8/3, 10 PM, the Mid Tom Russell 9/14, 8 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 6/9, 11 AM Astrid S 9/22, 8 PM, Subterranean b Sheer Mag, Flesh World 9/15, 9:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM, 17+ Smooth Hound Smith 8/1, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM Nora Jane Struthers 8/31, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM b

b Avery Sunshine 9/20-21, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 6/8, noon b Swervedriver 9/7, 9 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM, 18+ Tops 9/20, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Torres 10/5, 8 PM, Subterranean, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM 2 Chainz 8/26, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM b Vance Joy 8/4, 11 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Bryce Vine 7/20, 7 PM, Subterranean, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM b Max Weinberg’s Juke Box 8/15, 7 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 6/8, noon b Dan Wilson 9/23, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 6/8, noon b Alison Wonderland 8/5, 10 PM, the Mid Ying Yang Twins 6/23, 10 PM, the Promontory, 18+ Zola Jesus, John Wiese 10/8, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM, 17+ Jeremy Zucker 8/13, 7 PM, Schubas b

UPDATED At the Drive-In, Le Butcherettes 6/18, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom, canceled Roger Waters 7/22 and 7/28, 8 PM, United Center, second show added, on sale Fri 6/9, 10 AM

UPCOMING Actress, Elysia Crampton 8/24, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Afghan Whigs, Har Mar Superstar 9/22-23, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Banks, Japanese House 8/4, 11 PM, the Vic, 18+ Tab Benoit 8/15-16, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Big Business 6/23, 9 PM, Subterranean Cap’n Jazz, Hop Along 7/29, 7 PM, House of Vans, 18+ F Car Seat Headrest, Gold Connections 8/5, 11 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds 6/16, 8 PM, Auditorium Theatre Evan Dando 6/20, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Dead & Co. 6/30-7/1, 7 PM, Wrigley Field Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, Edgar Winter Band 9/6, 6:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Depeche Mode 8/30, 7:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Descendents 10/7, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Elder, King Buﬀalo 10/17, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+

ALL AGES

WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK

EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

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Fleet Foxes 10/3-4, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre Yonatan Gat 6/21, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Freddie Gibbs 6/22, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Guided by Voices 7/28, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen Don Henley 6/17, 7:30 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Lauryn Hill, Nas 9/7, 6:30 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion In the Valley Below 7/18, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Jeﬀ the Brotherhood 7/29, 10 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ King Crimson 6/28, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre King’s X 7/6, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Lawrence Arms, Dillinger Four, Toys That Kill 6/22, 7 PM, House of Vans, 18+ F Live, Shelters 8/4, 11 PM, Park West, 18+ Wynton Marsalis 10/13, 8 PM, Symphony Center Metallica, Avenged Sevenfold 6/18, 6 PM, Soldier Field Neurosis, Converge, Amenra 7/28, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Conor Oberst 9/9, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Omni 7/29, 9 PM, Hideout Graham Parker Duo 7/12, 8 PM, City Winery b Pinback 10/11-12, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Rooney, Run River North 6/22, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Juelz Santana, Northside Jojo, Juno Lost Kause, Lita Garcia 6/16, 8 PM, Portage Theater, 17+ Scarface 6/17, 10 PM, the Promontory Tigers Jaw, Saintseneca 6/15, 7 PM, Metro b Tower of Power 8/11-12, 8 PM, City Winery b UFO, Saxon 10/8, 6:30 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Ultimate Painting 7/25, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Venom Inc., Goatwhore, Toxic Holocaust 9/8, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Waka Flocka Flame 7/15, 7 PM, Metro b War on Drugs 10/19, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Paul Weller 10/12, 9 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Wire 9/16, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Dwight Yoakam 6/16, 8 PM, Joe’s Live, Rosemont You’ll Never Get to Heaven 8/15, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Zeal & Ardor 8/22, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ v

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene AT THE MCA’S Prime Time after-hours series in October 2015, local DJ collective Impala Sound Champions debuted a massive 66,000-watt battery of speakers they call the Royal Hands Sound Sytem, which consists of 20 cherry-stained wooden cabinets, clusters of gold horns, and a few vintage theater speakers. On Sunday, June 11, the collective will bust out the beast for what they’re calling the Chicago DJ AllCity Assembly, an all-day, all-vinyl party on the south stage of the Green Music Fest. Impala Sound cofounder Dave Mata put together the roster of selectors, which includes Teklife’s DJ Phil and DJ Manny, Sonorama’s Charly Garcia and Eddy Baca, Simmer Down Sound’s Nic the Graduate and King Tony, Jocelyn Brown (aka DJ Clerical Error), and Vocalo’s Jill Hopkins. This wolf loves checking out live rock ’n’ roll, being outside, and shopping—so it’s great news that for the third year in a row, on Saturday, June 10, nightlife promoters Do312 host a Rock ’n’ Roll Market— and it’s in their parking lot, right next to Logan Square hot spot East Room! The market runs from noon till 7 PM, and Gossip Wolf faves White Mystery and Flesh Panthers anchor a full lineup of bands. The equally hot (and much larger) lineup of vendors includes Ludwig Drums, Dead Meat Design, Eye Vybe Records, Girls Rock! Chicago, and vintage fashion hub Kokorokoko. If you’re not sick of Logan Square after the Rock ’n’ Roll Market, this wolf recommends hitting up Bric-a-Brac Records for the shop’s fourth anniversary! Four acts play in-store sets beginning at 4 PM: Wad, Negative Scanner, Sweet Cobra, and a mysterious performer who goes by Jimmy the Undertaker (word is he’s a neighborhood guy who used to play in garage bands decades ago). The ﬁrst 50 people get a complimentary tote bag of goodies, including a T-shirt, an anniversary print by Ryan Duggan, and a mixtape. Admission is free, and so is the pizza (while it lasts). —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

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ON SALE AT NOON THURSDAY 6.8 ON SALE TO VINOFILE MEMBERS TUESDAY 6.6

6.13-14

MICKY DOLENZ: THE VOICE OF THE MONKEES

JENNIFER 6.16 HARTSWICK BAND W/ ORGAN FREEMAN 11:00PM SHOW

7.24-25 7.30 8.15 8.21-22 8.30-31 9.8 9.10 9.20-21 9.23

GZA RAHSAAN PATTERSON - 6:30PM & 9PM MAX WEINBERG’S JUKE BOX LEO KOTTKE SHELBY LYNNE & ALLISON MOORER JOE PURDY WITH AMY VACHAL IAN MOORE AVERY*SUNSHINE DAN WILSON - WORDS & MUSIC

40th Anniversary Tour

THE CHURCH

6.18

JOSH KELLEY

LYNNE JORDAN & THE SHIVERS

10:30PM SHOW

6.28

INTERNATIONAL

BOB DYLAN TRIBUTE

6.30-7.1

6.29

& the Peacemakers

Wasabassco Burlesque

6.26

William Elliott Whitmore

Roger Clyne

6.23

6.25

GRIFFIN HOUSE

6.21

Funkadesi

6.22

DIRTY DOZEN BRASS BAND

7.3-4

HOLLY BOWLING

7.2

The Capitol Steps

1PM SHOW

OFFICIAL AIRLINE PARTNER

JUNE 8, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 51