As usual this year’s Country Music Fest, the only consistently themed block of music programming during the Taste of Chicago, offers a mixed bag of mainstream stars, alt-country talents, and local cover bands. Saturday’s “Afternoon of Musical Couples” on the Taste Stage (Balbo and Columbus) looks the most promising; the Petrillo Music Shell (Columbus and Jackson) is dominated by Nashville pap.
This Nashville couple, regulars on A Prairie Home Companion, made their first record and their first appearance on the radio show in 1975. Their gentle mix of folk, country, bluegrass, and adult pop is as good a musical equivalent as any for Garrison Keillor’s bland erudition: their voices blend nicely and their approach is always tasteful, but sometimes you just wish they’d cut loose a little. Keillor produced their latest album, Visions of Love (Sugar Hill), featuring acoustic renditions of the pair’s favorite old country tunes, among them the Conway Twitty-Loretta Lynn gem “After the Fire Is Gone,” Merle Haggard’s “Hungry Eyes,” and the Louvin Brothers hit “You’re Running Wild.”
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At the Old Town School earlier this year Robbie Fulks, his band, and ringers Jean Shepard and Gail Davies played songs from his superb 13 Hillbilly Giants (Bloodshot), a collection of obscure nuggets from golden-era country artists both well-known and not. Fulks’s wife, Donna, who also joined him onstage, turned out to be a great and energetic vocal foil; at this gig she’ll be featured more prominently, in front of a band that includes guitarist Grant Tye, bassist Lorne Rall, drummer Gerald Dowd, and stringed-instrument specialist Don Stiernberg. The Fulkses promise a mix of originals and classics with an emphasis on duet songs.
4:15 PM Victoria Williams and Mark Olson & the Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers
Long one of alt-country’s most idiosyncratic performers and writers, Richard Buckner has made a virtue of myopic romanticism. In some way or another, most of his songs chronicle the breaking of a heart (and occasionally a few dishes into the bargain); sometimes you wish you could just slap some sense into the big lug. His breathy, roller-coaster phrasing is an acquired taste, but if you’re willing to join him for the ride, it goes places. This fall the Chicago Overcoat label will release Impasse, Buckner’s first album in two years. For this gig he’ll be joined by his wife, drummer Penny Jo.
Vince Gill’s clear-as-a-bell tenor is undeniably purty, and by favoring weepy ballads at least five-to-one over honky-tonk stompers, he’s made it exceptionally profitable too, selling more than 22 million albums. While there are a few spirited cuts–like the gospelized “Baby Please Don’t Go”–on his most recent LP, 2000’s Let’s Make Sure We Kiss Goodbye, most of the soft-rock tearjerkers have little connection to country music in the historical sense.
1:45 PM Cedarcase
