friday23
cJIMMY BURNS From the 50s into the 70s, this guitarist and singer performed in doo-wop, folk, and soul acts (his 60s and 70s discs on USA, Tip Top, and other local soul labels are collectors’ items). That kind of resume might make you wonder if Burns isn’t just a stylistic opportunist, but it’s helped give his blues work–his primary output for nearly 30 years now–the range that’s its strongest suit. His well-tempered baritone can sound alternately vulnerable and harsh, and his guitar playing combines the pop-tinged jauntiness of his soul days with a pungently bluesy mix of declamatory chords and sharp-toned, string-bending leads. He’s been making records for Delmark since 1996, and while the latest, Live at B.L.U.E.S. (for which I wrote the liner notes), focuses on mainstream modern-day blues, there are also some rootsy flashbacks (“Miss Annie Lou,” “Country Boy in the City”) and savory dollops of fatback soul (“No Consideration”). It’s all held together by Burns’s ebullient personality and unassuming craftsmanship. He’s got a regular engagement Wednesdays at Kingston Mines; see separate Treatment item for details. a 9:30 PM, B.L.U.E.S., 2519 N. Halsted, 773-528-1012, $10. –David Whiteis
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cmartin carthy, eliza carthy, and tim van eyken The surge of interest in British folk music over the past decade has led to the resurrection of several careers, including those of fascinating artists like Vashti Bunyan and Bert Jansch. But the music never really went away, and few have so steadfastly carried the torch through the lean times as the superb family band Waterson: Carthy, members of which will be performing as a trio in this rare Chicago appearance. (Singer Norma Waterson, who’s been playing with members of her family in various combinations for more than 40 years, has unfortunately dropped off the bill.) Guitarist and singer Martin Carthy, perhaps best known as a member of Steeleye Span, has long trafficked in obscure, traditional songs, but he doesn’t get hung up on preserving every period detail. With daughter Eliza Carthy on fiddle and mandolin and Tim van Eyken on melodeon, the focus instead is on impressively lean arrangements and lovely vocal harmonies. a 7:30 PM, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln, 773-728-6000 or 866-468-3401, $20, $16 kids and seniors. A –Peter Margasak
a 8 PM, Orchestra Hall, Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan, 312-294-3000 or 800-223-7114, $35-$79. –Steve Langendorf
cindigo trio This group’s new Live in Montreal, recorded in 2005, captures the first time its members–flutist Nicole Mitchell, bassist Harrison Bankhead, and drummer Hamid Drake–performed as a trio. That’s astonishing, not just because they’ve collaborated so often in other groupings over the decades, but because on the CD they sound like they’ve spent years absorbing the material (four collective improvisations and two Mitchell originals), hovering together in that sweet spot between detailed lyricism and airy spontaneity. Mitchell is one of Chicago’s most talented improvisers and well on her way to becoming jazz’s greatest living flute player–great enough to redeem the notion of jazz flute for people who’d otherwise think of Will Ferrell. Here she threads skeins of melody through long-form harmonic structures and terse motific variations, while the rhythm section nonchalantly follows her complex lines as if they’d memorized the schematics beforehand, tugging and tightening where needed. Though Mitchell largely runs the show, there’s plenty of space for Bankhead and Drake, whose extended solos effortlessly maintain the music’s snap and swing. Live in Montreal is the third album in the online-only Paperback Series on Dave Douglas’s label Greenleaf. This early show is a release party; the Jazz Jam with Isaiah Spencer begins at 9. a 6 PM, Velvet Lounge, 67 E. Cermak, 312-791-9050, $15. –Peter Margasak
These days PRIMORDIAL UNDERMIND main man Eric Arn (late of Crystalized Movements, the 80s New England psych band that also spawned Magic Hour) lives in Vienna, Austria, but he’s still got a second home of sorts in Austin, his favored haunt for most of the past eight years. That’s where his band recorded its latest album, last fall’s Loss of Affect (Strange Attractors Audio House), which covers all your basic flavors of mind alteration: trippy and spacey, heavy and crunchy, jarring and dissonant. (The current tour features the American players from those sessions.) Primordial Undermind’s lush psychedelia seems to hail from an alien opium den, where avant-garde films screen on the stamped-tin ceiling, rusted-out robots learn folk dances, and the proprietor–who likes to tell the story of how he stowed away on Sun Ra’s spaceship as a kid–is constantly changing the wallpaper by snapping his fingers.
a 8 PM, FitzGerald’s, 6615 Roosevelt, Berwyn, 708-788-2118 or 312-559-1212, $15. –Peter Margasak
