• Here’s a chance to watch someone sing for someone else’s supper:
Gary Burt, the Prairie Crooner, romps through the Sinatra catalog to help raise
funds for the Episcopal Food Pantry. Burt, a southern Illinois native, began
to take crooning seriously after his retirement. Now he has a Nashville-recorded
CD and a film documentary about his second career and is filled nearly full-time
with Sinatraness. A silent auction and a Mature Mob performance fill out the
2 p.m. benefit on Sunday, Nov. 14, at the Hoogland Center for the Arts.
• Pull out those snap shirts and dust off the cowboy boots — it’s
time to play country boy. Thad Cockrell, a silver-throated singer who claims
to come from a country without “alt,” supports his Chris Stamey-produced album
Warmth and Beauty at 9 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 11, at the Underground City
Tavern. On Saturday, Last Train Home, a critically acclaimed (Washington
Post, Village Voice, Tennessean), proudly alt-country roots-rock
group, chugs into Twangville at the UCT. Mike McClure has escaped from his former
group, the Great Divide, and is slipping around on his own. Catch the songwriting
wonder at 10 p.m. Saturday at Talk of the Town in Elkhart.
• Viele’s Planet becomes a sanctuary for fans of 1980s metal music
on Thursday, Nov. 11, when Metal Church evangelizes to the masses. The California
group began in the midst of metal mania in the ’80s, kept true to its dark roots
when other groups bleached out and went pop, and disbanded in the ’90s. Now
reborn, the band is out preaching to the choir about new CD The Weight of
the World. Opening for the reunited rockers is Three Inches of Blood, a
band that fiddles in fantasy lyrics and rip-roaring rock in addition to terribly
descriptive monikers.
• On Saturday, taste a real treat when violinist Laura LaCombe
and guitarist Russel Brazzel team for a night of classical music from 7-9 p.m.
at the Due Gatti Coffeehouse on the square in Jacksonville. The joe joint just
recently began hosting live music with plans to continue most every Saturday
night. I’ll second that mocha.
• We all think we can play the harmonica. I mean, how hard is
it, blowing and sucking into a little piece of metal and wood to make music?
Listen to R.J. Mischo, the host of this week’s Blue Monday Jam at the Alamo,
and you may think again. The Minneapolis native has blown the harp for more
than 20 years at most major blues venues and festivals. See him up close and
personal (for only a dollar) at the Illinois Central Blues Club-sponsored weekly
event.
— Tom Irwin
This article appears in Nov 4-10, 2004.
