Upcoming performances at The Red Line Tap

The following are upcoming performances at The Red Line Tap:

The Red Line Tap

7006 N. Glenwood Avenue

Chicago, IL 60626

773 274-5463 or 773 465 –8005

www.heartlandcafe.com

Thursday, March 28 – 8 pm
The Red Line Tap Open Mic, Hosted by Micki Croisant
Open Mic begins at 9 pm, No cover



Friday, March 29 - 9 pm
Slum Lotus
No Cover, DJ Night



Saturday, March 30 - 8 pm
Michael McDermott
Kevin Mileski
$15.00, Rock / Singer Songwriters
- Tickets -



Tuesday, April 2 – 9 pm
The Mudflapps
Craig Champlin
$5.00, Bluegrass / Americana / Folk

The Mudflapps: A Drinking band with a music problem. And they mean it, with songs about love, whiskey, jail, family problems and more, you’ll fall in love with The Mudflapps the moment you hear them.



Wednesday, April 3 – 9 pm
Wasted Wednesdays Presented by Miller High Life
Featuring:
DJ Funkoctopus
No Cover, Soul / Funk and More



Thursday, April 4 - 9 pm
Fatally Cool
Mandy Berry
Death By Cassette
$5.00, Rock



Friday, April 5 - 9 pm
Cornmeal’s Wavy Dave and Chris with Dog 1
$5.00 Adv / $7.00 Night OF Show, Bluegrass
- Tickets -



Saturday, April 6 - 9 pm
Cake Chicago Presents
An LGBTQ Showcase
Featuring:
1/2 Mad Poet
Amy Kelly & Bill Ande Band
$5.00, Variety of Music

“CAKE Chicago is one of the most inclusive, eclectic queer events in Chicago.”
Readers Choice – Chicago Reader – Best Gay Variety Show
The Red Line Tap, says it's usually one of the club's busiest nights."



Sunday, April 7 - 8 pm
Jerry The Bear
Bear with Hawkfist
Daniel Ridges
$5.00, Indie / Acoustic



Tuesday, April 9 – 9 pm
The Mudflapps
$5.00, Bluegrass / Americana

The Mudflapps: A Drinking band with a music problem. And they mean it, with songs about love, whiskey, jail, family problems and more, you’ll fall in love with The Mudflapps the moment you hear them.



Wednesday, April 10 - 9 pm
S.O.U.L D33P
Izzy Da Kid
$5.00, Soul / Funk / Rap



Thursday, April 11 - 7 pm
Fred Eaglesmith and The travelling Steam Show
James Curley
$15.00 adv / 20.00 Night of Show
Folk / Americana
- Tickets -



Friday, April 12 - 7 pm
Sara Hickman
Urban Twang
Christina Trulio
$7.00 Adv / 10.00 Night Of Show
Singer Songwriters
- Tickets -



Saturday, April 13 - 9 pm
Midwestern Lull
Dragon Wagon
$5.00, Jam / Americana



Sunday, April 14 - 7 pm
AJ Croce - Son of Folk Icon Jim Croce
Roots / Americana
With Ian Broeker of The Grizzly Sweets
And Dave Johnson of Midwestern Lull
$8.00 Adv / 12.00 Night Of Show
- Tickets -



Monday, April 15 - 9 pm
Ribbons - Ex Juliana Theory / Ex Thermo
Provinces
Grafitti Box
$5.00, Rock / Indie



Tuesday, April 16 - 8 pm
The Stray Birds
The Mudflapps
The Mike Meo Trio
$7.00 Adv / $10.00 Night Of Show
- Tickets -



Wednesday, April 17 - 8 pm
Amy LaVere
Eve’s Twin Lover
The Grant Wallace Band
$7.00 Adv / 10.00 Night of Show
Rock / Roots
- Tickets -



Thursday, April 18 - 7 pm
International Pop Overthrow 2013
7:30 Waiflike
8:15 Keith Betti 
9:00 The Outfit 
9:45 The PowWows
10:30 Telstar
11:15 Go Time
$10.00, Power Pop



Friday, April 19 - 7 pm
International Pop Overthrow 2013
7:30 Matt Pingel
8:15 Liam Davis & Steve Frisbie
9:00 The Velvet Cadillacs 
9:45 Too Much Saturn 
10:30 Ralph Covert
11:15 Gooey 
12:00 Frosting 
$10.00, Power Pop



Saturday, April 20 - 1 pm
International Pop Overthrow 2013
1:00 The German Art Students
1:45 Kirby Kaiser
2:30 The Uglies
3:15 Torch Singer
4:00 Dave Rave 
4:45 Jeremy
$10.00, Power Pop



Saturday, April 20 - 7 pm
International Pop Overthrow 2013
(Ginger Records Night!!)
7:30 Food and Drug 
8:15 Rob Schultz Band 
9:00 The Webstirs 
9:45 Dad’s Magazine 
10:30 The Surf Zombies 
11:15 Phil Angotti and Ellis Clark Pop Orchestra
$10.00, Power Pop



Sunday, April 21 - 1 pm
International Pop Overthrow 2013
1:00 The Unswept 
1:45 The Artist Formerly Known As Vince Band 
2:30 Freetoed 
3:15 Logan Squares 
4:00 The Abbeys 
4:45 Wiplot
$10.00, Power Pop



Sunday, April 21 - 7 pm
International Pop Overthrow 2013
7:30 Einstein’s Sister 
8:15 Trolley 
9:00 Sketch Middle 
9:45 The Black Roses
10:30 Dana DeStefano & Dollparts 
11:15 Semi Twang
$10.00, Power Pop



Monday, April 22 - 7 pm
International Pop Overthrow 2013
7:30 The Despotic Hall Of Fame
8:15 Kevin Lee 
9:00 The Bright White
9:45 The Intimate Machines 
10:30 Certain Stars 
11:15 The PondHawks
$10.00, Power Pop



Tuesday, April 23 - 7 pm
International Pop Overthrow 2013
7:30 Em & Them 
8:15 Ateliers 
9:00 Brother George 
9:45 Left Turn At Albuquerque
10:30 Pilgrims
11:15 The Top Shelf Lickers
$10.00, Power Pop



Wednesday, April 24 - 7 pm
International Pop Overthrow 2013
7:30 Mike Vanderbilt & The Suburban Garage Sound 
8:15 Leisure McCorkle 
9:00 Night Of Fire
9:45 Plastic Smiles
10:30 Minor Wits
11:15 The Gold Web
$10.00, Power Pop



Thursday, April 25 - 7 pm
International Pop Overthrow 2013
7:30 Michael Heaton
8:15 The Injured Parties
9:00 The Red Wigglers 
9:45 The Uncommon Houseflies 
10:30 The Viaducts 
11:15 Rollo Time 
$10.00, Power Pop



Friday, April 26 - 7 pm
International Pop Overthrow 2013
7:30 Nick Peay 
8:15 MariZen
9:00 Panoramic And True
9:45 Temporary Pharaohs
10:30 The Break
11:15 Lights Alive 
12:00 The JoyRyders
$10.00, Power Pop



Saturday, April 27 - 1 pm
International Pop Overthrow 2013
1:00 92 Degrees 
1:45 The Spindles
2:30 The Shake Ups 
3:15 The Pralines
4:00 The Hurtin Kind 
4:45 Treeshakers 
$10.00, Power Pop



Saturday, April 27 - 7 pm
International Pop Overthrow 2013
7:30 Slushy 
8:15 The Redfords 
9:00 The Valley Downs 
9:45 A Fragile Tomorrow 
10:30 The Queue 
11:15 The Romeros 
12:00 The Van Buren Boys
$10.00, Power Pop



Sunday, April 28 - 8 pm
Pure Remedy
Even the Jackyls
An Acoustic Machine
$5.00, Rock / Alt Rock



Tuesday, April 30 – 9 pm
The Mudflapps
$5.00, Bluegrass / Americana



Thursday, May 2 - 8 pm
The Vinegar Strokes
Pure Pilot
Fowlmouth
$5.00, Rock

Red Line Tap Press Release: The Stray Birds W/The Mudflapps

The Red Line Tap

7006 N. Glenwood

Chicago, IL 60626

773 274-5463 or 773 465 –8005

www.heartlandcafe.com

Tuesday, April 16 at 8 pm

The Stray Birds with the Mudflapps & The Mike Meo Trio

7.00 Adv / 10.00 Night Of Show

Tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/profile/74898

The Stray Birds

Drawing upon the richness of American folk music traditions, the signature power of The Stray Birds sound lies in outstanding songwriting that soars in three-part harmony. Raised on music within a few miles of farmland from each other, The Stray Birds were born of a compelling collaboration between two unique writers and vocalists-- the pure, luxurious voice of Maya de Vitry and Oliver Craven's richness of tone and depth of delivery. Grounding their sound in the unshakeable groove of bassist Charles Muench, The Stray Birds are a trio of captivating chemistry and sensitive musicality. From bustling street corners to silent halls, their performances speak to an uncompromising reverence for songs. 

 

With miles of music already behind them, Maya and Oliver first shared a song in January 2010, in their hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Maya had just returned from Europe, where she’d been traveling by bike and train, making her way as a fiddling street performer. Oliver had been criss-crossing North America for two years as a harmony vocalist, fiddler, and guitarist for the Grammy-nominated Americana artist Adrienne Young. His repertoire of original songs had been deepening along the way. 

A snowy Pennsylvania winter welcomed collaboration between two such wanderers— and inspired the collection of seven songs found on the Borderland EP. With their good friend Charles laying down the bass lines, The Stray Birds landed their sound. Their love of travel, however, has hardly waned. An ambitious touring schedule reflects their embrace of the experience of live music. “Music exists in a time and place, not just in a digital format,” says Charles. Reveling in the energy of each room, a connection to the audience is the essence of their show. Often singing into a single microphone, their sound is a raw resonance of wood and strings beneath three joyfully blended voices. 

Their tangible passion for acoustic music is certainly a testament to three musically rich childhoods. Shortly after beginning classical violin lessons, Oliver began performing on the fiddle alongside his parents in the Craven Family Band. Their repertoire of folk, bluegrass, and country tunes included many of his father’s original songs. Maya first performed during “show & tell” in kindergarten. She strummed three chords on a tiny guitar and sang Iris DeMent’s “Our Town”—one of the songs in frequent rotation in the family car. She took piano lessons with her grandmother, who was a gifted composer. And alongside public school violin lessons, she learned fiddle tunes from her father, who performed in several local bands. The highlight of each year was the family's annual trip to West Virginia's Appalachian String Band Music Festival.

Inspired by his bass-playing father, Charles started bass lessons in a public elementary school string program. As he gained fluency on this large and versatile instrument, his passion and interest in music education heightened—culminating in a Music Education degree from West Chester University. In the midst of this classical music education, Charles found another musical outlet—a weekly bluegrass pick in the woodshed of a nearby horse farm. “When the bridge wasn’t out, it was only 4 or 5 miles to Joe’s house,” Charles remembers. While his college music courses focused on the technical and theoretical aspects of music, “playing music with Joe was more about the spirit—and the social nature of music.” Joe also called upon Charles to work up another skill that he would carry with him—bluegrass harmony singing.

Drawn to a region saturated by traditional music, Maya began at the University of North Carolina- Asheville, but left after one restless semester. During her travels, she became startled by the poetry she discovered in the songs of Townes Van Zandt and began listening to songs with fresh intent. For someone who had loved songs for as long as she could remember, “suddenly, writing songs seemed inevitable,” she says. She spent a year and half at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she studied under Mark Simos, Darol Anger, and John McGann. She has since received national recognition for her songwriting, including 4th place in the 2011 Telluride Troubadour Competition and 3rd place in the BMI/John Lennon Scholarship Awards.

Oliver also struck a balance in his musical education. Upon graduating high school he turned down several football scholarships, picked up the mandolin and guitar, and headed to Philadelphia to attend Temple University. While studying African American Literature and History, he wrote songs, played a few open mics, and began to record his original music. After three years, he realized that what he wanted to learn wasn’t within the hallways of a university, but rather along the roadways of North America. “I can do my learning in the front seat of a Subaru while crossing state lines,” Oliver says. “I listen to people I like, and then find the people they like, and then pay attention to that.” Experience has served him well—he has logged thousands of miles, played in forty states and four countries, and played for honky-tonks, folk festivals, and listening rooms. “I think music is the best thing about our country,” Oliver insists. “It is undeniable that if nothing else, we sure figured out how to make good music.”

Red Line Tap Press Release: Amy LaVere 4/17/2013

The Red Line Tap

7006 N. Glenwood

Chicago, IL 60626

773 274-5463 or 773 465 –8005

www.heartlandcafe.com

Wednesday April 17 at 8 pm

Amy LaVere

http://amylavere.com/
Eve’s Twin Lover

The Grant Wallace Band

$7.00 Adv / 10.00 Night Of Show, Americana / Rock

Tickets:

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/profile/74898

The stranger in popular culture has often been a signifier for isolation. Amy LaVere’s life since the release of her last album has seen the breakup with a long-term love relationship and musical collaborator, as well as the death of a musical mentor, which resulted in a longer gestation period for this, her third album, Stranger Me (Archer). Under the circumstances, one could imagine the allure of emotional distance.

Or does she mean stranger, as in more idiosyncratic? By a purely musical definition, Stranger Me would certainly qualify. Always texturally rich and often employing dissonance and off-kilter instrumentation, it is her most exploratory work to date. Producer Craig Silvey, fresh from engineering Arcade Fire’s Grammy-winning The Suburbs album, proved a perfect choice in helping LaVere materialize the music that was in her head. The resulting soundscape, alternately haunting and exuberantly defiant, creates a perfect backdrop for this collection of songs about frustration and feeling emotionally disconnected.

LaVere was originally planning on making this album with her second album, Anchors & Anvils, producer, the legendary Jim Dickinson. He had not been in good health for some time, and she felt that she may not have many more opportunities to record with him. “He was the one who really got me to believe in my own voice,” says LaVere. When he passed in August 2009, in addition to grieving one of her greatest mentors and champions, she was back at square one in the recording process. One of her first thoughts, after she was ready to begin thinking about producers, was Silvey. They met in London through a mutual friend at the BBC, hit it off immediately and he volunteered to run sound for her performance on Later With Jools Holland. Although he would make a point to see her when she was performing in London, he had yet to listen to her albums. When she contacted him to consider producing her, he further resisted the temptation to listen to the first two records, so he could approach the new recording with fresh ears and ideas.

LaVere experienced other upheavals last year, beginning with the departure of her guitar player, Steve Selvidge, who left to join The Hold Steady. Even more devastating, she and her boyfriend/drummer Paul Taylor decided to call it quits after six years. “There’s much love and respect between the two of us, but sometimes creative people aren’t good together when they never get a break from one another,” she explains. After starting the recording process without him, it was evident that she missed his musical contributions, so she called him, and he eagerly agreed to play drums on the album. “You can’t replace the magic that comes from all those years of playing together,” she says. The process of recording became a healing experience as they redefined their relationship. LaVere channels the heartbreak that comes with the end of a relationship in “Tricky Heart“and “Cry My Eyes Out,” an ethereal song that finds its protagonist driving late into the night hoping to find a song on the radio that will trigger a cathartic release.

Like Dickinson before him, Silvey encouraged LaVere to follow her own muse, even when (especially when) it led her to more esoteric choices, like the one to cover Captain Beefheart’s “Candle Mambo.” “When I was on tour for the last album, we went through a Beefheart phase in the van. My old guitar player said, ‘Now THAT’S a love song.’ And he’s right. I first became obsessed with the idea of just covering it live but we could never get it to make sense with the limited instrumentation of my band at that time. I wanted to present it in a way that would explore the drunken nature of infatuation and how distracting it is. This idea needed a messier bed to lie in. Recording it gave me the opportunity to realize that.”

Amy LaVere was born in Louisiana and moved around as a GM brat (“Dad moved around to open factories”), and the family eventually settled near Detroit, at least everyone but her father, who continued to travel for work. The family structure eventually gave way. She and her sister rebelled, and one of the ways Amy did so was by joining a band at age 14. Rebellion is still a potent theme for her, and she continues to defy and test love’s constraints, adding to the body count of the last album (“Killing Him”) with “Red Banks,” a sly turn on the blues/country yarn where the girl usually ends up getting it in the end. In “Damn Love Song,” she finally writes the love song that her lover has longed for, but it’s practically spit at him as she is walking out the door. “You Can’t Keep Me” is a insolent pop song that warns that she won’t be held captive in her relationship as a building cacophony of horns and Theremin joyously celebrate her imminent freedom.

LaVere brought together a group of musicians that provided the right aesthetic for the album. Her first call was to Rick Steff (Lucinda Williams, Cat Power, Lucero) whose love for all things left of center appealed to her. He brought to the recording process a fertile imagination and a repository of odd instruments, including toy pianos, organ, Buddha boxes and the Theremin. Guitar player David Cousar, whose style Silvey describes as “beautifully eccentric,” was her next call. Other musicians include Anchors & Anvils violinist Bob Furgo (Leonard Cohen), floutist/saxophone Clint Maegden (Preservation Hall Jazz Band), cellist Jonathan Kirkscey and violist Beth Luscombe (Memphis Symphony), trumpeter Nahshon Benford, saxophonist Jim Spake and bassist John Stubblefield (Lucero).

Stranger Me is the next step in the exciting evolution of Amy LaVere. — clearly more confident in her musical point of view, possessing more wisdom about what love is not and ready to embrace the ideal of the stranger, whatever its iteration.

Red Line Tap Press Release: AJ Croce 4/14/2013

The Red Line Tap
7006 N. Glenwood
Chicago, IL 60626
773 274-5463 or 773 465 –8005
www.heartlandcafe.com


Sunday, April 14 at 7 pm
AJ Croce
https://www.facebook.com/ajcrocemusic
With Ian Broeker of the Grizzly Sweets and Dave Johnson of Midwestern Lull
8.00 Adv / 12.00 Night Of Show

Tickets:
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/profile/74898



A.J. Croce

With a four star review in Rolling Stone, A.J. Croce’s Cage of Muses is a shining milestone on the circuitous road that the singer-songwriter has traveled - from his debut as a jazz influenced blues-based artist to his evolution into a pop music iconoclast. But at this juncture, A.J. is more focused on the present and the future than the past. And after a three-year stint living in Nashville, he has come home to California.

In the span of a 20 year plus career, A.J. has headlined festivals, concerts and major listening venues worldwide. He has been seen and heard on shows including The Late Show with David Letterman, Austin City Limits, Good Morning America, E!, MTV and CNN, and has performed with a roster of artists that includes his idol Ray Charles, B.B. King, Carlos Santana, Rod Stewart, Aretha Franklin and Willie Nelson. A loyal and appreciative audience and glowing press from Rolling Stone to the New York Times confirms the appeal of A.J’s genre-spanning music.

The son of legendary singer-songwriter Jim Croce. A.J.’s musical evolution was inspired by a broad spectrum of styles including classic rhythm and blues, folk, and British rock.

His two well-regarded releases for Private Music/BMG expanded his audience exponentially. With the support of BMG in 2003, A.J. founded an independent label, Seedling Records, to represent his music and that of other artists. Seven of his albums have subsequently been positioned in various charts including Top 40, College, AAA, Americana, and Jazz.

A dedicated family man, an adventurous artist and a confident creator; in this phase in his life and career, A.J. is focused less on expectations and more on instincts. And like the blues artists who influenced him, A.J. Croce continues to create compelling music with longevity, authenticity and truth.


“One of our greatest young songwriters” - David Wild of Rolling Stone


“A.J. Croce has wisdom beyond his years. With his music, he represents his generation with a profound sense of honesty in his lyrics and quality in his delivery. The future of entertainment is safe in his hands!” - Willie Nelson


“A.J. is one of the top three greatest musicians I’ve ever played with” –Ben Harper