Chicagoans Have The Good Fortune To Enjoy American Music’s Best Artists Right Here In Our Own Backyard As Fitzgeralds Festival Returns For 2022

Jul 06, 2022 admin_bitlc Features, Music News, Reviews 0

By Vernon Hester

If you live in the state of Illinois, there’s more than a chance that you’re aware of Fitzgerald’s Music Hall’s annual Fourth of July four day shindig. The festival has been going on for over forty years and has a reputation for being stacked to the rafters with killer performers, lots of hooch and brisket, and a genial cheeriness which has invaded Berwyn and Oak Park. In all that time I’ve never actually had the chance to go to the festival but this year was different. I made it for all of two hours on Sunday July 3 and was so overwhelmed that I left exhausted and extremely happy. Between the pristine summer’s day, that smell of that brisket, all that laid back cheer [it’s true…everyone was so damn NICE], and a host of bands which I had never heard of I could only equate the experience to good sex. I will refrain from talking about “scratching the cat” or going for a deep helping of “peach pie” [This is a family friendly publication!!!] and stick to the subject at hand.

I walked in halfway through Kevin Galloway’s set and liked him immediately. Galloway, like say Chris Stapleton or even Tom Petty has a talent for laying out well written songs without flourishes and he makes not re-inventing the wheel by adding unnecessary frills something to be admired. On the other hand, the relatively new band Stranger aimed to fuse intricate low fidelity acoustic country with Avant flourishes. The hat trick here was that those flourishes were low key and did not overwhelm the songs.

The only performer on the bill that day who I had seen was feisty country siren Lydia Loveless and she came prepared to have a ball. Dressed in a midnight blue vest, what looked like a billowing petticoat, and jewel encrusted mini-boots she started her set by announcing that the day was the first anniversary of her last break up and the first time in two years that she and her band had played in front of an audience. Then she strapped on a Stratocaster and ripped through a set of ragged snarling country peppered with shots of acrid humor [she cracked at one point, “We didn’t enough cuss words on that last album…”].

I was kicking myself for leaving Loveless mid-set until i went into the Side Bar and caught a chunk of Wild Earp’s rowdy show. Like Loveless the band dressed to celebrate with cowboy hats, embroidered shirts, and cowboy boots but between lead guitarist Jed “Valentine” Taylor’s incendiary and bracing licks and front man Wild Earp’s rascally humor they gave Loveless a run for her money. With all this I was surprisingly exhausted but on the way out I caught Jeremia Albino closing out his set with an astonishing ballad dripping in raw blues. He may look like a college senior, but Albino’s talent for arming a song with dramatic phrasing atop a lilting rhythm is something I’ve rarely heard onstage for years and I’m looking forward to him hurrying up his upcoming Canadian tour so he can play here again. Wild Earp and Jeremia Albino are the two names I’d never heard of that I definitely want to hear again, and as for Loveless, well, I’ll always have a special place in my heart just for her.

I could go on about patriotism, roots, American pride and the spirit of the red, white, and blue. I could also go on about the heavy shadows hanging over this past July 4; news of a horrific Independence Day Parade massacre in the northern suburbs and those ominous joy-killing storm clouds blanketing much of metropolitan Chicago. Instead I’d much rather talk about how, despite all that intrusive reality, I had the best time in years.

I’m talking of course about the fourth and final day of Fitzgeralds’ Music Hall’s American Music Festival which was hardly dampened by the gloom. I barely made it to the festival without getting doused by an afternoon shower [well just barely] and caught the tail end of Terrance Simien and the Zydeco Experience’s set which could best be described as a ‘nuclear Cajun freakout’. Simien not only sang with heartfelt panache, but he did it with such naked fury that he seemed to revel in flying off the rails. To put it all into context, the Experience surrounded him with a blistering stew of saxophones, washboards, keyboards, trombones, and accordions while managing to boil over into a jolly mess.

It took a long minute for me to recover from that and thankfully I was in the right frame of mind to catch The Cordova’s simmering set in the sidebar. The band has a tidy cohesion that prompted a laid-back Sunday afternoon vibe that was clearly appropriate here. On the other hand, Joe Pug’s set was stripped down, acoustic, and raw in a revealing way; of all the performers I saw in the two days I attended, he embraced the idea of an American troubadour the most.

Local favorite Robbie Fulks with band and a trio of female back up singers hit the stage for a rowdy no non-sense jamboree which kicked off with the snarky “She Took A Lot of Pills and Died” and literally spilled off the stage with the closer, “Let’s Kill Saturday Night.” By the end of his set, Fulks looked like he was in pain from smiling so much.

The big discovery for me this time out was Grammy nominated Marcia Ball who has played in Chicago for years. I was shocked, as was the overflow crowd, when she sashayed out on the tavern’s indoor stage in a clingy red dress with a swagger that promised all kinds of naughty trouble. Granted, Ball didn’t have to play the vamp as her vocals and keyboard work were heavily seasoned with a blues and honky-tonk flavor.

By nightfall I was pretty cooked between the heat from the weather and the various stages but i forced myself to check out the storied North Mississippi Allstars whose reputation for down and dirty southern style blues proceeded them. Granted, they didn’t disappoint as guitarist Luther Dickenson lit a raging fire under deep throated vocalist Lamar Williams Jr. and wouldn’t let go. The Allstars set was alternately brutal, searing, and thrilling and capped off the festival in a grand way.