Music on the Northside

For the second time since I moved to Chicago, I found myself in Rogers Park. Before you get to the self-contained, self-absorbed suburb of Evanston, Rogers Park is the farthest north that Chicago will allow. 

I left the red line stop at Granville, and walked north to the next stop, Loyola, crossing from Edgewater to Rogers Park one block before I got to the station. Then I turned west on Devon. The last time I was this far north, it was by accident: CTA construction forced Heather and I to travel north to Loyola in order to switch to a southbound train. All southbound track from whichever northern neighborhood we were then visiting was closed for repairs, repairs that will soon creep south and, by the spring, completely shut down the red line in our part of town. 

Joy Ike

This time, it was intentional. Joy Ike, a singer-songwriter from PA was touring through, and we both had chances to enjoy her music when we lived in Harrisburg. Here's why we were so far north: there are two Uncommon Grounds. One of them is in the not-nearly-as-far-north Lakeview. We didn't really look that hard at Google Maps before committing to go, and inviting friends, and talking up the show, and then realizing where it really was. 

We made it, and we got some food and drink, and the first of the three acts (Joy Ike being the second) began. He was terrible. I know that you can use the magic of the internet to figure out his name if you want to, but I won't provide it here. His banter was politically incorrect ("Shout out to my friend's bachelor party here tonight. We got some sexually charged men in the house. All you other men, hold onto your ladies." and later "I sound like a retarded Neil Young. Makes me want to commit suicide") and his lyrics were reminiscent of a B-list Billy Joel. That he covered "Movin' Up" did nothing to dispel this illusion. That he used the wrong key harmonica in his closing song was unsurprising.

Angela Sheik

The only good thing about terrible opening acts is that they only make the headliners look good by comparison, and that was exactly what happened here. Joy Ike and Angela Sheik are touring the Midwest together, and everything that their opener did wrong, they did right: Engaging, unconventional music, mixed with genuine, sensitive banter, and a stage presence that was neither apologetic nor arrogant (their opener had, somehow, managed both). 

Ike's set was great. If you haven't listened to her music yet, just go ahead and put some on while you read. She has a great sense of rhythm, and she's willing to vary time signatures without straying too far from an accessible pop sound, while her lyrics deal with real topics that can stray quite far from the canon of accessible pop songs.

Maybe it was the novelty of seeing someone new (I've seen Joy play once before), but Angela Sheik was the evening's highlight. Angela Sheik is a looping artist, so 1) I was predisposed to find her music a bit gimmicky, but 2) her music packs  a huge punch live, more so than it does in any video or audio recording. Looping involves using a digital recorder to record a bit of sound and replay it repeatedly, usually to create an ambient drone or a rhythmic backing line.

In this case, Sheik performed her riffs live, cued them into the machine, and then cued them on and off with a foot pedal, letting each bit of sound build up behind her as she performed with the next instrument, then turning the loops on and off to create texture. We saw each bit performed live, and then heard it return again and again. Sheik is an accomplished singer, and her set exemplified a vocal range that extends in pitch and dynamics.

Though she sometimes performs with a theremin, at this gig, she used only an autoharp and a flute, tapping on the microphone to create percussion (and maybe, if I heard right, using one or two pre-recorded drum samples), and of course, singing in harmony with herself via the magic of the loop. She opened with some original songs, included an all-vocal loop performance of Amazing Grace, and closed her set with a cover of Radiohead's "Fifteen Step." While it was no live drumline, Sheik's cover sealed a great set that opened my eyes to the creative potential of looping.

The same construction that had forced us so far north the first time delayed our return trip, and we didn't get home to Hyde Park until close to 2AM. Even though I was waking up at 5:30 for work the next day, it was worth the trip.