Last night I went to the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago to see Caravan of Thieves and Works Progress Administration.
First, a bit about the venue. The School’s theater is cozy and intimate. It allows performers to see the audience. The ambiance is relaxed. The bands were relaxed and the whole show had the feel of hanging out with friends and jamming. Some really excellent musician friends who outstrip me in skill by miles and miles, but still.
I hadn’t heard of Caravan until seeing them perform and they were amazing – the musical style is called “acoustic swing” — this music is complex and unpredictable, the lyrics are dark and wonderful. Two acoustic guitars, one upright bass and a violin performed Bohemian Rhapsody – no joke, and they did it really well. They have a theatrical bent to their performance that makes the music feel even more adventurous – to really appreciate the music’s twists and turns, see them live as I did.
The stories told in the songs have a little twist to them. One song, Bar Isole, is about a bar and a wife and a bartender. It starts out with French cafe music, you know, when the guys come up to your table and start playing so you can’t even hear yourself think, but with a twist – it was in a minor key. They called the song a “modern love story” because it’s about a wife who flirts with a bartender, only to find that the bartender and her husband are sleeping together.
If I had to recommend one or two songs that simply must be downloaded, I’d say Bouquet and Bar Isole. If you like those, definitely finish the album.
Works Progress Administration is made up of guys from other bands. Glen Phillips from Toad the Wet Sprocket is easily recognized by most of us – he sings on many of the tracks. Luke Bulla from Lyle Lovett’s band and Sean Watkins from Nickel Creek play too, but the band itself flexes in its members based on the song being played. The first and second tracks of of their August release, Always Have My Love and Good As Ever, are being played on the radio station I listen to (Sirius XM’s The Loft, channels 29 and 50).
All of the songs they played last night are pretty different but a dominating factor is what I will call the warmth of the music. Yeah. Warmth. Like a fire you want to sit by. You’d expect a bluegrass domination thing to be happening but it doesn’t, which is nice. There’s an indie rock feel to some of the stuff, but there’s some nice blues stuff happening mixed in with the bluegrass, and you can tell that these guys are all buddies having a great time. That’s how the band came together – they were just playing together for fun and decided to work on some songs they had written… decided the songs sounded pretty good… so they formed WPA.
On their site they say: “We are an independent band. We have no label, no corporate pockets to pick, no millions to splatter our name across the mediascape.” You can decide how much you want to pay to download their album. They want me to embed their player to spread the word. So here it is in, totally worth playing during a workday:
