When I relocated to Chicago in 2015, it seemed that nothing could smooth my ride over the endless city potholes, until I heard The Phone Calls. Their fresh, surf rock sound makes Lake Shore Drive feel as breezy as the highways of the left coast.
Mayaeni is a writer, a singer, and a guitar player, all of them in the old-school style, from Detroit. Johnny Nevin caught two of her shows in Chicago, got these pictures, and talked to her all about what it is she sees, and how.
Lunar Chiefs are a new band out of Chicago with a cool, hard-to-nail-down sound, but it's all their own for sure. Where does it come from?
When you can do something as well as Kaki King can play a guitar, there's just no telling where it might take you.
When you can do something as well as Kaki King can play a guitar, it can take you almost anywhere.
Wray is a three-piece band out of Birmingham whose album is a driving but dreamlike adventure through the collective musical imagination of David Brown, David Swatzell, and Blake Wimberly.
Jessica Hernandez & the Deltas(Photo by Johnny Nevin) There's a band out of Detroit called Jessica Hernandez & The Deltas, and just about everybody who sees them thinks they're seeing a promising new group with a cool new singer, but that's not quite all of it. When you take a good look at Jessica Hernandez & The Deltas you can see a lot more than just that, because what you're really seeing is an exorbitant take on where music can come from, an all-embracing vision of what music can be. You're looking at a stage full of gifted young jazz
The Phone Calls is a mezmerizing tour through the art of writing and making a great instrumental song.
