The Rock in Chicago Show

My guest for this episode is the jam band Lost Pyramids. The band's sound is inspired by the music of Phish and the Grateful Dead with a hint of jazz fusion.

We talk about the formation of the band, their creative processes, the language of improvisation, plans for their upcoming release and the summer.

​

Derek Allen and Brian Sutton from Chicago-based math-punk trio Lower Automation are my guests for this episode.

Lower Automation creates a hyper-anxious blend of math rock, noise rock and hardcore

Back in August 2020, the band sequestered themselves in a secluded cabin in Western Michigan to record their first full-length release. With guitarist and vocalist Derek handling engineering duties the frenzied sessions lasted until the very last second of our rental agreement. The band's result is a 21-minute collection of tunes.

In this episode we dive into a bit of the backstory and making of the album and learn about what the band has in store for their summer plans.

Featured Tracks

Six Degrees from Phrenology

Father's Shirt is a Dress on Me

Combover

The guest for Episode 27 is Elijah Cirricione, the main man, guitarist, and vocalist for the band Dismalimerence.

The band started off as a side project for Elijah in 2011 and throughout the last 11 years it slowly evolved from a studio project into a full band and his main gig.

Their sound is best described as atmospheric black metal band with a lot of progressive leaning.

In this episode Erik and Elijah dig into the band's back story and how it has evolved from beginnings to the release of their first full-length "Tome 1" in 2020 to the four-way split "Recurrence" they released with fellow black metallers

from around globe Nurez, Olim, & The Wolf Garden.

Featured Tracks

Sequestered Hearts

Vernal Musings

My Only Love

In this episode, Erik chats with Bridget and Haley from the experimental indie duo OK Cool about their latest music, creative processes, the value of playing live again, in a post-pandemic reality and also their label, Take a Hike Records.

Featured Songs

Time and a Half

Five-Finger Exploding Heart Technique

Self-Sow

Hypervigilant

In Episode 25 Erik chats with Adele Nicholas, a Chicago-based civil-rights attorney and activist. Adele's practice focuses on fighting systemic abuses in the criminal justice system and accountability in the workplace in regards to worker's rights.

Adele is also the front person for the indie rock trio Axons, who just released the full-length album "I Object to Everything".

The album provides a lens into Adele's advocacy work through her songwriting while giving light to a more empathetic perspective on what prisoners deal with in the criminal justice system.

The song cycle for the album documents one of the city’s most notorious jailbreaks in recent memory. Back in December 2012, Joseph Banks and Kenneth Conley, two prisoners awaiting sentencing for bank robbery, escaped out of a five-inch wide window at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in down town Chicago using a rope fashioned from bedsheets and dental floss.

Adele talks about the story behind the album, her songwriting process and all how Axons has evolved over the years.

Featured Tracks:

Past, Present, and Future.

Suspended

Close Enough To Dream

Shove It

Photo by Jazmyne Fountain

Erik chats with Birdy V, vocalist and guitarist of Chicago-based duo, Sweetie,

Sweetie has been lighting up stages around the city and burbs since 2019. Their sound is a sonic cocktail of punk and garage rock, balanced with a drop of blues, Their sound draws comparisons to The Distillers, Misfits, and the Cramps.

In the episode Erik and Birdy chat about what's in a name, producing the video for their track "Devil Girl", finding a different and rewarding path as musicians and performers working with Chicago's drag performance community, and dealing with the challenges women in the music industry are still facing in 2022.

Featured tracks:

Danny Boy

Devil Girl

Catholic Boy

Mamma

Erik chats with Dave Marsalek of SPIZM about their latest full-length release "B4UDie", how he has been coping with the effects of the pandemic, his background, and also the upcoming plans for SPIZM.

Dave Marsalek has been a part of the Chicago music scene for two decades. Originally from Baltimore, Dave moved here to immerse himself into Chicago's free jazz, post rock and experimental music scenes. Dave formed the drum and bass duo SPIZM in 2003 with upright bassist Pablo Pascoll hand has toured nationally. He also hosted regular live drum n bass/IDM, Jazztronica, and Junglebop sessions at The Muse Cafe in the late 2000s and founded his IZM Records imprint as a way to catalog the recorded output of a myriad of projects that intersect at jazz, rock, electronic experimental music.

Featured Tracks:

Flight of Light

Slither

Twin Speaks

Featuring Johnny Wator, guitarist and vocalist for the Evictions - A chicago-based high energy garage rock n roll trio with fuzzed-out riffs and punk-rock scream-a-long choruses.

The Evictions have been rocking out stages since 2015, sharing bills with Cheetah Chrome and the Sonics. The track we just heard was Cut Me Up from their self-titled EP.

Johnny is a veteran guitarist with experiences recording and touring nationally over the last two decades.

in 2012 Johnny started his effects pedal business, Daredevil Pedals - Unable to find a pedal that created the tone he was looking for, he sought out and ripped apart pedals learning how they worked, his search quickly turned into an obsession.

Ten years later Daredevil Pedals is going strong as a one-man operation, with an sold word of mouth and online reputation from musicians around the globe and an astonishing brand presence and catalog with distribution across major musical instrument retailer sites and brick and mortar stores alike.

The pedals are still all 100% hand built in here in Chicago

In this episode Johnny takes us through a brief history of his business and also with what's going on with The Evictions.

Featured Tracks:

Cut Me Up

Head on Right

Off the Rails

Erik chats with Dan Stewart from Damager about the origins of the band along with his work as a filmmaker and the state of the local indie scene in Chicago.

Featured Tracks from Damager:

I Am Made of Solid Gold

Liquor Song

Tired Bad

In this episode, Erik chats with Dan Asio, an independent singer-songwriter from the suburbs of Chicago and the cohost of the local music podcast The Underbelly Hours. The conversations focus around Dan's latest EP "Still Jaded", the suburban brewery circuit, last week's Spotify debacle with Neil Young and Joe Rogan, and the importance of artists taking time to develop their sounds and the process of curation from a peer review and community perspective.

Feature tracks "Still Jaded" Dan's latest EP:

Hardly Know Ya

Jaded

Don't Know Anything