Feature Thu Oct 09 2008

A Community Affair: The Baltimore Round Robin Tour

This year Chicago had numerous corporate sponsored tours come through town. Each tour had its own headliners and advertising and high ticket prices and service fees, and so on. We, as fans, attended these tours not because we wanted to support the advertisers, but because we hoped that we were in someway supporting the musicians. However, we never know how much of our money is actually filtering to the bands. If this bothers you then Baltimore's Dan Deacon has come up with an interesting solution.

The Baltimore Round Robin Tour is a completely unique concept, and has equally unique individuals participating in it. The basic principle is that a collection of bands will set up around the perimeter of the venue with the audience standing in the center. Each band will perform one song per round until the show is completed. It's a live mixtape unfolding right before your eyes. There is no headliner, no front row, no back row, essentially a community of musicians playing together.

Not only are they playing together, but they are also traveling together in "Veggie Powered" bus. That is a bus that operates on waste vegetable oil, you know the stuff that restaurants have used in their fryers. In fact, they have put Jana Hunter in charge of oil management. She has recently put out a call for oil, "For those of you interested in attending the Round Robin performances, there is this definite opportunity to get in sans paid ticket. We need oil to power our school bus. Bring us oil, get in free". You can contact Jana for details (jana [@] whamcity.com).

Each stop of the tour will feature two separate performances. The first being the "The Eyes Night", a night of a mixture of folk, noise, theatrics, improvisation, music that is spiritual, dreamy, and peaceful. This night will feature Beach House, Creepers, Ed Schrader, Jana Hunter, Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez, Lexie Mountain Boys, Nautical Almanac, Santa Dads, Teeth Mountain, and Wzt Hearts. This night's fall on Fridays and are a nice way to unwind from a stressful week. Saturday night is a different story, and a night filled with dance and foot stomping energy. This night is called "The Feet Night", and features Adventure, Blood Baby, Dan Deacon, The Deathset, DJ Dog Dick, Double Dagger, Future Islands, Height, Lizz King, Nuclear Power Pants, Smarthgrowth, and Video Hippos. Also, mixed in through out each night will be bands dubbed as "Weird Round".

As an added bonus the members of the tour have put together a compilation CD that can be downloaded for free from their website.

The veggie powered bus rolls into Chicago this Friday, Oct. 10th, at The Epiphany Episcopal Church (presented by Empty Bottle) located at 201 S. Ashland Ave. As with most shows held at Epiphany this is a rare All Ages show. Tickets are $8 each night and the show begins at 6pm.

Tickets can be purchased via Ticket Web.

- Jason Behrends