When a record release is only the third most significant event of the month for a band, things have definitely turned a corner. On September 14 Silkworm put out its ninth album, It’ll Be Cool (Touch and Go), but just three days before, guitarist Andy Cohen had gotten married–and ten days later, bassist Tim Midgett’s first child was born.
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Silkworm continued to tour and record at the same rate for the next few years, but Midgett made time to complete his electrical engineering degree in Seattle, where the band was based for most of the 90s, and graduated in early 2001. A few months later he took a job with the Shure microphone company in Niles, and later that same year drummer Michael Dahlquist started with the company as a technical writer. Around the same time, Cohen graduated from the University of Chicago law school and began practicing. Now all three own their own homes, and Cohen and Midgett are both married. These days they don’t tour for more than two weeks at a time–on the current trip, which brings them to Schubas on Saturday (see the Treatment for more), they’ll play just five dates. The wait between Silkworm albums has also grown longer, but sales haven’t dropped dramatically. “I don’t think it makes the music any different, but it makes our relationship with it different,” says Midgett. “We’re not out flogging it all the time.”
For the Poster Children, a 17-year-old pop-punk outfit from Champaign led by Rick Valentin and his wife, Rose Marshack, a single moment of reckoning never came. “The only time I really felt a titanic shift in my life in relation to the band,” says Valentin, “was the day Rose and I quit our day jobs to go on a full U.S. tour in 1991–and even then, we thought we’d get home afterwards and go find other jobs. It was just a fluke that we wound up making enough money to survive as a touring band for a number of years.”
Although the band hasn’t gigged regularly in ages–this is its first tour since 1998–it’s released three more albums, including this year’s Stereo Blues. For Menck and Chastain, making a record means big long-
What: Silkworm
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