4CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION THREE CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 6, 2006 | SECTION THREE 5 [email protected] The Meter www.chicagoreader.com/TheMeter The Treatment A day-by-day guide to our Soundman Versus Critic’s Choices and other previews Flesh-Eating Bacteria friday 6 KRISTIN SHOUT & SMOKING KITTEN Kristin His next challenge: a six-figure medical bill Shout’s a longtime Chicago fixture—she used to book bands at Czar Bar and was part of the team that won the 1991 By Bob Mehr National Poetry Slam—but she earned her musical chops ocal labels, musicians, and clubs busking around Europe, picking up the life experiences that are rallying to the aid of Gary give her jazzy country-hybrid songs their cinematic reso- L nance. Her swooping, husky, mutable voice inhabits a creepy “Elvis” Schepers, who’s been at Swedish Covenant Hospital since world of tornadoes, drugs, criminals, and ambivalent love, December 11, fighting an infection in and Shout sings like she’s been there a long time, familiar his left foot that at one point threat- with all its dark alleys and hiding places. This show is a ened to cost him his leg. Schepers, the release party for the self-released Thorny Devil, her first full- part-time tuba player for Devil in a length album with her band, Smoking Kitten. Thomas Pace Woodpile, has made a living as a and the Great Crusades open. a 9 PM, Martyrs’, 3855 N. soundman since 1987. He’s worked Lincoln, 773-404-9494 or 800-594-8499, $8. —Monica steady gigs at Lounge Ax, the Cubby Kendrick Bear, and the Empty Bottle, among other venues, and toured with local MED, OUTERLIMITZ Veteran SoCal rapper and regional favorites like Uncle c MED (formerly Medaphoar) rounded up some Tupelo, Material Issue, and Eleventh impressive company on his debut album, Push Comes to Dream Day. But like so many people in Shove (Stones Throw), and the guests wind up outshining the music business, he has no health the host. Most of the tracks were produced by Madlib, who insurance—and his medical bills, brings his trademark mix of clipped, bumping beats, soul which have already topped six figures, and jazz samples, and digitized slicing and dicing; J Dilla, will likely double before he’s able to Just Blaze, and Oh No contribute some fine grooves of their work again. own as well. MED’s a decent enough MC, but his narrow Led by singer Kelly Hogan and vocal range and jagged flow are a poor fit for the richly Bloodshot Records owners Nan detailed tracks he’s working with, and it doesn’t help that Warshaw and Rob Miller, Schepers’s his subject matter is so ho-hum: his raps are mainly love friends and colleagues are planning a letters to herb and hip-hop, though his rhymes are often so series of benefit concerts to help him illogical and convoluted it’s tough to figure out what the defray his expenses. “It seemed obvious hell he’s saying about them. He’d do better with more mini- to try and do something,” says mal production, but the mismatch here isn’t enough to sink Warshaw. “So we got the word out to the tracks—they’d be strong no matter what. bands around town. And I knew Gary Suicide Prevention (Galapagos4), the debut album by had lots of friends, but I had no idea Chicago’s OUTERLIMITZ, strikes a better balance between quite how many.” words and beats, style and substance. Silence’s production It took just days for organizers to is dense and sinister: paranoid bass tones, eerie orchestral confirm a week of shows, starting with samples, dark synth bursts, and stuttering beats that trudge a FitzGerald’s date on January 20. “The grimly and implacably onward. MCs Qwa (aka Qwazaar of ease with which it all came together Typical Cats) and Hellsent match the somber tone of the speaks to what and how much the com- tracks with carefully harnessed anger, swapping lines with munity thinks about Gary,” says Miller. ferocious precision. “It’s just happened so fast and so MED headlines, One.Be.Lo. goes fourth, Outerlimitz are organically without anyone pushing. I third, Reach & JP are second, and Verbal Kent opens. a 10 think people recognize that it’s not just PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276-3600 or 866- the musicians but guys like Gary that 468-3401, $14 in advance, $15 at the door. really make a scene like ours possible.” S —Peter Margasak Born in Oklahoma in 1958 and raised in Sycamore, Illinois, Schepers studied music (and played tuba in the Gary Schepers NOLAN WELL marching band) at the University of Iowa and later Northern Illinois University. He moved to Chicago in the age of the bar, and no one is charging perhaps several—in an assisted living early 80s and began his career as a overhead expenses, so everything is center. “I’m trying to be philosophical soundman working for Stan Doty, going right to Gary.” about it,” Schepers says. “My job right owner of Pravda Sound, which rented Seven shows have been confirmed: now is to fill up on antibiotics to kill PAs to clubs like Dreamerz and Jay Farrar headlines January 20 at all the bacteria in my body. Hopefully, Medusa’s. He was at the board for FitzGerald’s, on a bill that also I’ll get back—on both my feet—as Bloodshot’s first showcases at Lounge includes Robbie Fulks and the soon as possible.” Ax and the Bottle a decade ago, and Prohibition Orchestra, and the New most recently he’s been freelancing at Duncan Imperials play the Abbey Pub Kevin Tihista Leaves the Abbey Pub, Schubas, and the same day. The Hideout hosts a the Woodshed FitzGerald’s. He’s also the chief pair of shows January 22, the first fea- engineer at Humboldt Park’s Strobe turing Sally Timms and Jon Kevin Tihista isn’t much for self-pro- recording studio and a member of the Langford’s kiddie band the Wee Hairy motion—he prefers to hole up at home Prohibition Orchestra, which plays Beasties and the second headlined by and write songs. But these days he’s dance tunes published between 1923 Califone. On January 25 Jeff Tweedy maintaining an uncharacteristically Pomes and 1934. plays the Abbey with Devil in a high profile: he took a ten-day solo tour Early last month Schepers devel- Woodpile, and the next night Martyrs’ of the UK in November and played the oped pain and swelling in his foot, and hosts Kelly Hogan and a few other Double Door on December 22, and POMES I don’t know if this local band took some inspira- in the wee hours of Sunday, December acts. The week wraps up at Schubas after he head- tion from Jack Kerouac’s Pomes All Sizes, but that’s what its 11, after working a show at the Abbey, on January 27 with the Bottle Rockets Kevin Tihista, lines the first name makes me think of—which sets the bar pretty high in he was worried enough to check him- and Tijuana Hercules. Andrew Morgan, night of the my mind for its full-length debut, At the Adelphi (Black Dead self into the emergency room. “Once In addition, Freakwater will anchor Tenki Tomorrow Never Roses). I suspect ol’ Jack would be bored shitless by the they got my shoe off and looked at it, an afternoon benefit at the Hideout on WHEN Thu 1/12, 9 PM Knows festival at album’s stretches of jam-band cruising and college-rock they said, ‘Well, you’ll be staying here a February 4, and organizers expect WHERE Schubas, 3159 Schubas on meandering, but the songs improve a great deal whenever while,’” he says. bands to keep volunteering throughout N. Southport Thursday he has Jessie Wehrle pitches in with a full-throated hippie-soul Schepers was diagnosed with a par- the winter as word gets around. Even PRICE $10 plans for a hand- chant, and Paolo Urizar’s ringing guitar leads are a fine foil ticularly nasty Group A streptococ- people unable to perform are pitching INFO 773-525-2508 ful of LA shows for her—better than Michael Cummins’s bored-sounding cus—one of the bugs that began mak- in. “Steve Albini got in touch, but his in February and declamations. Kerouac wrote his fair share of filler too, but ing headlines in the 90s as “flesh-eat- schedule is really crazy,” says Warshaw. a three-week full-band UK tour in he always seemed to want to rise above mediocrity. 7 x 7 and ing bacteria.” During the course of his “So he’s going to contribute some items April. the Brink Band open. a 9:30 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. treatment doctors also informed him for us to auction off.” Tihista spent much of the past year North, 773-278-6600 or 800-594-8499, $7. that he had type 2 diabetes. “The fact Schepers, who’s all but bedridden writing and demoing his fourth full- —Monica Kendrick that I have diabetes, which I did not and needs a wheelchair to get around, length, a follow-up to the acclaimed know, probably contributed to the doesn’t expect to attend the concerts. Wake Up Captain. It’s due in the fall, RAISE THE RED LANTERN Chicago’s Raise the infection growing faster,” he says. “But His doctors decline to speculate about and he’s currently recruiting musicians Red Lantern released their debut full-length, Breathe Fire anyone can get it.