The Chicago Reader’s Monica Kendrick said some nice things about us and our little CD in this week’s Chicago Reader.

TANGLEWEED You know you’ve found a good CD when you can’t decide whether to wax more rhapsodic about its music or its liner notes. Liner notes first: Tangleweed’s debut, Just a Spoonful and Other Folksongs of Rural Cook County (Squatney), includes some deadpan and brutal parodies of po-faced folk-geek annotation. (On the manifold hardships and hardscrabble lives so commonly endured by folk musicians: “Most were forced to leave college after graduation.” On “Old Joe Clark”: “There are lyrics for this tune, but I’ve never heard them sung by someone sober enough to be intelligible.”) The music’s a rough-and-ready, busy take on the squeaky, scratchy, lively brand of bluegrass, which I much prefer to the slick, hillbilly-fusion variety. Tangleweed also plays as part of Pictures and Sounds 2006, a multimedia event presented by WHPK and the University of Chicago Film Studies Center; see Saturday for more info. Three on the Tree and Lost Ghost Lounge open. –> 10 PM, Red Line Tap, 7006 N. Glenwood, 773-274-5463, $5. –Monica Kendrick

…all fit onto the world’s tiniest backyard ice rink this morning. This weekend’s cold snap was kind to the ice, and we all got out there this morning to skate and knock a hockey puck around. Click on the image for a larger version.

…here’s a picture of our CD selling for just a hair under $75 (US). People of Germany: das kostet zu viel! We’ll sell you one for $12 postpaid.

Click the image to see a PDF of the Amazon page.

Despite being thwarted by the warmest January in memory, I finally got my little backyard ice rink in place. Our house is on a standard Chicago lot, 25′X125′, and most of it is taken up by our house and garage. That said, there was enough room to squeeze in a 16′x20′ ice sheet. With the help of a February cold snap, I now have a functioning mini rink. (more…)

After Tangleweed’s South Side show Saturday night, I’ll be rushing back home to Logan Square to play with my pal Bill Whitmer in the Williwaw Ensemble. Bill is the world’s foremost avant-garde ukulelist, and his ensemble shows are a trip.

The Chicago Reader’s Monica Kendrick gave Bill a nice write up in this week’s edition. (more…)

Tangleweed is playing a smoke-free show tonight (Friday, February 3) at the Charleston in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood. The Charleston is the first bar in the city to go smoke-free. It’s the kind of cozy neighborhood watering hole that Chicago doesn’t have enough of anymore, and, now that it’s smoke-free, you can have a few drinks and not come home smelling like an ashtray. http://www.charlestonchicago.com

Saturday night we’re making a rare South-Side appearance, only our second ever, when we play a music and movies event at the South Union Arts Center. Doors open at eight, with music following shortly thereafter. Our set will be followed with the first screening of a new indie rock documentary. Details follow. (more…)

…On WTPS’s most recent chart at least. WTPS is a community radio station in Milwaukee in the mold of our own beloved WLUW. They’ve been playing our record a lot. Enough, evidently, for us to register at number five on their most recent airplay chart.

Thanks to everybody there for your support. We’ll be heading to Wisconsin this summer for our first shows in Badgerland.

Download chart (PDF)