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Home , Carrying a Torch, Jon Langford, Kelly Hogan, Kevin Coyne, Pine Valley Cosmonauts, Sally Timms

4CHICAGO READER | AUGUST 19, 2005 | SECTION THREE CHICAGO READER | AUGUST 19, 2005 | SECTION THREE 5

[email protected] The Meter www.chicagoreader.com/TheMeter The Treatment A day-by-day guide to our Critic’s Choices and other previews friday 19

VORTIS If you told me five years ago that the most c compelling front man in the Chicago punk scene this decade would be a sixty-something political science professor with an anarchist ax to grind, would’ve said, “Well sure, why not?” I’d like to think we’re above obsessing over a guy’s age just because he’s not in the usual 15-to-25 punk-draftable demographic. F.T., aka Fellow Traveler, aka Mike Weinstein of Purdue University, comes at you with a fiendish gravitas, rat- tling off hardcore antiauthoritarian manifestos and voicing all the bad thoughts (“I want to have my own suitcase bomb”) that regular folks are afraid to express these days. Onstage he works a street-preacher-Jello Biafra persona, getting in your face with wild eyes full of conviction—you just know his brain’s filled with the footnotes to back up his lyrics. Vortis’s forthcoming album, Warzone, is mean, tight, righteously pissed, and full of hooky, nasty sloganeering choruses—and if you’re like me you might relish the frisson of hearing yourself chanting them. While guitarist G.Haad, bassist J.Los, and drummer D!yro (aka Sun-Times rock critic Jim DeRogatis) stay anchored in familiar punk most of the time, they also

Y sound ready to go anywhere Weinstein might lead them,

GORE which only helps him scare audiences even more. Blackfire Revelation headlines, Thunderwing plays second, and Vortis opens. a 10 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276- CHRIS MC , Robert Coyne, and at the Old Town School in 2002 3600 or 866-468-3401, $8. —Monica Kendrick Carrying a Torch for Kevin Haven’t fallen in love with late English singer- Kevin Coyne yet? Jon Langford wants to help. By Bob Mehr on Langford has a lot of favorite a collaboration with avant-garde singer them, they’re incredible. A lot of it’s so Kevin Coyne stories. Like the one . funny, and so dirty and rough as well. J about how Elektra boss Jac Babble—which, with its lyrics about But that’s the way he was. He was totally Holzman called after died lovers who go to dangerous extremes for unfiltered, very entertaining to be with.” to ask him to be ’ new lead each other, was widely assumed to be a Ticket sales for the subsequent Old singer and Coyne turned him down, fictionalized portrait of the couple who Town show were anemic, though— unimpressed by the band and put off by committed the Moors Murders, a noto- Coyne was still off the radar in the idea of wearing leather pants. And rious series of child rapes and killings America. “It didn’t dawn on me, the one about how Coyne refused an in the mid-60s—was one of Coyne’s because in my mind he was huge,” says invitation from of last records for Virgin. After leaving Langford. “I literally begged, bribed, Virgin to write lyrics for ’s the label in 1981 he suffered an and bullied people to come down and Tubular Bells on the grounds that the alcohol-induced nervous breakdown, see him, ’cause I didn’t want the place music was “total rubbish.” went through a divorce, and disap- to be empty. We’d only sold like 50 The British singer, songwriter, peared from public view. He moved to tickets.” Coyne and the Cosmonauts painter, and author, who died in , Germany, in 1985, where he ended up playing for an audience of December 2004, had a sharp tongue met his future second wife, Helmi; with about 200 musicians, invited guests, and little taste for euphemism—his her help he sobered up and returned to and die-hard fans. “Probably the best lyrics were often painfully stark, and he art and music, as prolific as ever. ever crowd for me in the U.S.,” Coyne was on intimate terms with the outcast Though Langford and Coyne had would later note on his Web site. and reviled. Hard for the music business been labelmates at Virgin for a brief “The rest of us didn’t quite know to make head or tail of, he never became spell in the late 70s—and though the what we were doing, but it came a star, and in the U.S. he isn’t even par- Mekons had covered Coyne’s “Having a together,” says Langford. “For about a ticularly well-known. But his stubborn Party,” a about being a minor week afterward, people were phoning devotion to his craft has been inspiring artist on a major label, on the F.U.N. me up and thanking me for dragging Abigail Washburn people like Langford for decades, and ’90 EP—they didn’t meet until 2002, them out, because it was such an unbe- this Friday at the Hideout some of them after mutual friend lievable show.” Four from that ABIGAIL WASHBURN Stylistic purity doesn’t seem will gather for a memorial show. put them in touch. “Brendan suggested performance appear as bonus tracks on to be much of a concern for banjoist Abigail Washburn: on The concert will double as a CD- he do some stuff with me,” recalls One Day in Chicago. her recent debut full-length, Song of the Traveling Daughter release party for One Day in Chicago Langford. “Kevin was well up for it, Langford spent the next year and a (Nettwerk), she blurs the boundaries between , blue- (Buried Treasure), an album Coyne which was hugely flattering, because half trying to find a label to pick up the grass, and prewar folk and includes a pair of tunes written recorded here in December 2002 with he’d been such a big hero of mine.” project—he still needed to add overdubs and sung in Chinese (she’s studied and performed in Langford and the Pine Valley Coyne and his wife came to Chicago and get the recordings mixed. Then in China). Though she picked up the banjo only three years Cosmonauts. Langford, fellow Mekon that summer, during an American tour. spring 2004 he and former Rykodisc ago, she writes like a seasoned folklorist and has annotated (who covered Coyne’s “I’m “I took them to the Lincoln to eat. exec Peter Wright decided to launch a her liner notes with information about the tunes she’s Just a Man” on her 2004 album In the Kevin quite liked diner food, so we had Web-only label, adapted or that inspired her; her sources are the likes of World of Him), singer-songwriter Chris a big plate of fried stuff and this very Kevin Coyne Buried Treasure, Dock Boggs and Blind Willie Johnson. A number of string Connelly, and a few special unbilled intense conversation,” says Langford, Memorial and using its players, including coproducer Bela Fleck, add twangy layers guests will perform Coyne’s music and laughing. “He’d never had anything WHEN Fri 8/19, 7 PM budget Langford to the recordings, but Washburn’s voice—a striated cry that read from his short stories. Some of resembling a hit record, and neither WHERE The Hideout, returned to the suggests a less ethereal —carries the Coyne’s paintings will be exhibited, and had , so we were definitely 1354 W. Wabansia album last winter. music. The Evanston native performs with cellist Ben footage from a 2002 German docu- kindred spirits in that respect. We each PRICE $8 He and engineer Sollee. Chris Smither headlines. a 8 PM, Old Town School mentary will be screened along with had a sort of eagerness to continue in INFO 773-227-4433 Ken Sluiter were of , 4544 N. Lincoln, 773-728-6000 or 866-468- video of Coyne’s last American show, at the face of crippling failure.” in the studio when 3401, $20, $16 seniors and kids. A —Peter Margasak the Old Town School that same year. Coyne made plans to come back to they heard Coyne had died. Though Born in in 1944, Coyne gradu- Chicago that winter to play a show and Coyne had known he was mortally ill ated from art school in the mid-60s and cut an album with Langford and the with fibrosis of the lungs, he’d kept quiet went to work as a therapist and coun- . He arrived in about the seriousness of his illness. “He saturday 20 selor for drug addicts, an experience that mid-December with his guitarist son, was still touring before he died, with an would forever color his work. For several Robert, and everyone went to Kingsize oxygen tank on the stage and tubes up years he fronted the blues-rock band Sound Labs for a single day of recording. his nose,” says Langford. “He was JOHN WESLEY HARDING’S LOVE HALL Siren, which recorded for ’s “All the time we were setting up he packing his bag to go off to Vienna to TRYST Earlier this year singer-songwriter John Wesley Dandelion label, and then in the early looked like he was gonna explode,” says play the night he passed away.” Harding published a long, dense, fanciful novel about gen- 70s he went solo. (Langford first saw Langford. “He was pacing around and Though a memorial service was der and the search for love, Misfortune, under his real name, Coyne on TV in 1973: “The next day uptight. ...He wanted to go in and held in Germany in December, Wesley Stace. (I reviewed it back in April.) To accompany it, everyone in school was talking about record something. We didn’t even have Langford wanted to honor Coyne in the last month he released Songs of Misfortune (Appleseed), a him,” he says.) Nicknamed the “English the mikes set right, but he was like, ‘I States as well, and his widow Helmi song cycle of traditionals and originals that fit the themes of Beefheart”—a comparison he didn’t care gotta do something now.’ ” agreed to come to Chicago to help. the book, performed by Harding with , Nora for—Coyne made his reputation on Coyne’s performances seemed off- Langford also hopes to release addi- O’Connor, and actor-singer Brian Lohmann as the Love Hall Virgin in the 70s, releasing several the-cuff, but Langford thought the tional live or archival Coyne recordings Tryst. Their interpretations are loose—only Leonard Cohen’s scabrous, thought-provoking LPs material was way too good to be impro- on Buried Treasure. “Joan of Arc” resembles something like a cover—but what of dark, bluesy, psychedelic folk. vised. “I asked his son, ‘Has he written “His talent was so vast. There’s so really sets the group apart is their (mostly) a cappella Those albums have since influenced any of this down? Has he been working much quality in his music and his approach. The four sing twisted, braided harmonies that everyone from John Lydon to Will on this stuff?’ And his son said, ‘No, he writing and his paintings,” he says. “It’s turn the familiar into the unearthly and back again, much as Oldham, who’s recorded a seven-inch doesn’t write any of it down. He’s just a bit scary, because I am sorta walking Harding’s book does. a 7 and 10 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. EP of Coyne’s material and cites as a making it up.’ Twelve songs came out of in his footprints. I only wish I was half Southport, 773-525-2508, $18. —Monica Kendrick touchstone his 1979 song cycle Babble, his head that day. And if you listen to as good as he was.” v continued on page 6