Here’s some video footage of us playing around a campfire at Deer Valley YMCA Camp in Pennsylvania. We played to an appreciative crowd of Scott’s family and friends in front of a beautiful setting. It was a nice cap to our Appalachian tour. This excerpt includes Listen to the Mockingbird, High on a Mountain, and Ginseng Blues.

I am playing the fiddle in yet another Chicago theater production. This time it is with Blindfaith Theatre’s production of Woody Guthrie’s American Song, playing at the Victory Gardens Greenhouse Theater (2257 N. Lincoln Ave).

This musical tells the story of one of America’s greatest songwriters and folk singers, interweaving his songs through the show. The nine-member cast sings some great harmonies and everyone plays an instrument. I will be performing in half the shows, which run from June 14 to July 20, Thursdays through Sundays.

Escape the summer heat in a cool air-conditioned theater and help pay tribute to an American legend!

I’ve been hosting a bluegrass jam every other Sunday at the Wild Rover Pub (6001 N. Paulina) on Chicago’s northside. We just had our second session over Memorial Day weekend and it was a blast. We’re including a pot luck dinner as part of the fun. It makes the event kind of like a church picnic where everyone is drunk. This week Tiffany (bartender and hostess) made her special vegetarian sloppy joes and Matt Reese (banjo and co-host) showed up with some oven baked chicken wings. I took a crack at making some chocolate chip cookies with walnuts and they turned out surprisingly well.

The highlight of the evening was when two brothers visiting from Dublin started requesting Irish songs. I drew upon Tangleweed’s limited repertoire and soon the bar was filled with shouts of choruses from “Wild Rover” and “Whiskey in the Jar.” One of the brothers, Craig, had a great voice and belted out the verses. “Wild Rover,” being the namesake of the establishment, was such a hit we decided to play it twice that evening.

The next session will be held on Sunday, June 8 from 4-8 pm. Come bring your instruments, voice and a dish to pass if you feel so inclined. It’s been a great time so far, and there’s free parking across the street at the European Auto Body Shop!

This just in from the Chicago Music Commission, the group of activists spearheading the resistance to the Promoter Ordinance.

Hello fellow musicians/music lovers,

The “promoters ordinance” was postponed, but it is not over yet. A committee is working on a revised ordinance that will probably come up again for a vote in 1 month. The Chicago Music Commission is asking people to fill out a survey about the promoter’s ordinance that they’ll present to Daley and City Council. The last day to complete the survey is this Friday. Here’s a link:
http://chicago-music.org/promoters-comments.php

Please take the time (15-20 minutes) to click on the link below, read the ordinance, and fill out the Chicago Music Commission’s survey by Friday. All of us will be negatively affected by this ordinance if the language is not revised. It seems like the city is open to revising the language, but there must be a large outcry in order to make it happen.

Pass this along to every musician/music lover you know!

Related posts:
Promoter Ordinance update
Oppose Promoter Ordinance! (please?)

Good news – thanks to the large public outcry against the Promoter Ordinance, the proposal has been pulled from tomorrow’s City Council meeting. There will be further review and undoubtedly this is not the end of the issue, so hopefully everyone will stay informed. We’ll try to keep you updated on the Tangleweed blog. In the meantime, contact your alderman and let him/her know how important the independent music scene is to Chicago, and why an ordinance like this is a bad idea.

For this of you (like me) who are just finding out about this issue, Jim DeRogatis of the Sun-Times has written an excellent blog detailing the ordinance, its history, and public reaction to it:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/derogatis/

Here’s another blog that was also responsible for raising public awareness.  They collected almost 6,000 signatures for their online petition opposing the ordinance:

http://savechicagoculture.org/

Power to the people!

My friend Julie Benner (banjoist and musical activist) just sent this out. Hope everyone will read and act accordingly…

Hey friends:

Quickly, a plea. There is an ordinance being voted on in the city council meeting tomorrow that will severely impact the freedom of small venues to host events. It is called the Promoter Ordinance and it is going to require venues to pay more fees and jump through more bureaucratic hoops than ever! This means music, performance, theatre, comedy, etc will be affected and limited to only the wealthy and established venues and promoters! Yuk!

I encourage you to email or call your alderman TODAY. Particularly if you live in the 47th ward, as the Gene Schulter himself is the one who brings this ordinance before the council.

Here is more information about the ordinance:
SunTimes.com

And here is a link to find your alderman:
CityOfChicago.org

Extra Credit: Join me and others tomorrow morning at 9 am at city hall to protest! There will be a musical uprising!

I’ll bring the banjo – you bring a guitar, harp, kazoo, castanets, your audition monologue, mime act or baritone uke – whatever! For real, we are going to sing out! 121 N. LaSalle St. The council meets on the second floor. See you there! (The meeting itself is at 10. Attend that for extra extra extra credit and speak out!)

yours truly,

Julie B

ps. forward on to people I don’t know but you do.

My cousin recently sent me a couple links featuring cultural icon Stephen Colbert. It turns out he has a long standing feud with the Korean R&B pop star “Rain.” As a fellow Korean involved in playing music quite outside my traditional cultural heritage I took interest and decided to share.

Here is Colbert with his own Korean pop video, He’s Singin’ In Korean:

Rain and Stephen Colbert finally settle the score with a Dance Off:

***Disclaimer: In no way am I advocating the singing of Korean R&B songs or the production of their videos, either by Korean pop stars or American satiric comedians, but this was just too funny to pass up.

After more than three years of procrastinating, I finally got around to visiting the barbershop again. I figured a nice trim would go well with this season of change, and I’ve always been of the philosophy that if you’re going to pay someone to cut your hair, you might as well get the most for your money. So it was with giddy anticipation that I scheduled an appointment at the Belmont Barbershop in Roscoe Village, the only place in Chicago where you can shoot pool and drink PBR while you wait. They run a fine establishment and everyone there is well schooled in the barberial arts, including hot towel shaves. Thanks to Andrew who did a wonderful job.

Not being one to be wasteful, I also decided I would donate my shorn hair to a good cause. My 14 inch locks are now on their way to Wigs For Kids, an organization that provides free hairpieces to children with medical conditions. There are a few other charities that provide similar services, and anyone interested can read about it in this article from the New York Times.

By pure coincidence, while I was waiting for a chair to open up I received a call from my sister who informed me she’d just given birth to my newest nephew, Gabriel DaeMyung Shen. I’ll be visiting him next week and hope that he likes my new ‘do.
For anyone curious to see what my face looks like without a mop of hair surrounding it, come check it out at our next show.

With my mane sheared, this once again leaves Scott as the only hirsute member of the band, and this marks the first time I’ve ever used that word in a sentence!