« Umpteen Different Words for "Snow" | Drums come rumbling over the hill...only to fizz into a sea of oscillators » |
Review Wed Feb 28 2007
Blues a Bit Up North
Any given night in this wide city of ours, someone hits a couple of licks on a guitar or blows a bit into a harmonica or does a pickup on the drums and thinks about the blues.
Tuesday night was a great opportunity to see purveyors of the art give both grateful listeners and potential sidemen a chance to appreciate the music, as Lil Ed and the Blues Imperials showed up at Bill's Blues in Evanston to promote their latest album Rattleshake.
First off, the show was delayed by the appearance of a bar employee in the CBS show "The Unit." Many people walked in at the supposed show time, saw a roomful of people watching the projector screen, and promptly walked out. They missed a helluva show, if they bothered to come back.
While the show was an hour late in starting, it wasted no time in moving people's asses in their seats. The band spent the next hour and a half rocking and imploring the audience to a challenge. "We'll do requests," Lil Ed implored. "If we know em, we'll play em. If not, we'll do em anyway."
After the initial set, the band invited some local players to come and join in a mostly electric jam session, with harmonica and trombone joining the ensemble on stage.
All in all, a great evening of music. They'll be at B.L.U.E.S. and Buddy Guy's Legends in mid-March, so there's still a chance for y'all who didn't make the trek up to Evanston last night to catch what should be a crowd-pleaser.