Friday 1/12 – Thursday 1/18
13 SATURDAY Local songwriter Frank Polancic spent five years and thousands of dollars attending scores of seminars, showcases, and networking events in Nashville, New York, and Los Angeles, where he “heard professionals talk about why some people get ahead and why some people spend their whole lives in small nightclubs.” But it wasn’t until he attended a seminar with Jai Josefs, author of Writing Music for Hit Songs, that he realized no one else was delivering the nuts and bolts of how to write good pop songs. Polancic, who heads a group called Musicians Empowering Musicians, is bringing Josefs to town for Secrets of Songwriting Success, his first Chicago workshop. It’s today from 9:30 to 5 at Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, and costs $45. To register call 773-935-3856.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
16 TUESDAY “Bryan Katon, the boy that I like, tells me that he doesn’t like black girls and I think, with this big whoosh that turns my stomach upside down and almost knocks me over, is that what I am, a black girl? And that’s when the trouble starts, because suddenly I don’t know what I am and I don’t know how to be not what he thinks I am. I don’t know how to be a not black girl.” So writes Rebecca Walker in her memoir, Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self. Walker, the daughter of author Alice Walker and lawyer Mel Leventhal and founder of the activist, feminist Third Wave Foundation, will discuss her struggles with racial and cultural identity tonight at 7:30 at Women & Children First Bookstore, 5233 N. Clark. It’s free; call 773-769-9299.
