Report from the Fort Information about shows you missed!
8/12 - Michael Eck's playing is great. His songs are good, too. His performance style is vital and he's such a friendly guy on-stage, which is hard to do. Moreover, the man is HUGE, so I'm never gonna say anything bad about him.
On after him was Alexa Witt, who is cute, so I'm not gonna say anything bad about her either. She played exclusively funny songs, with names like, "Lanky Girl," "Thinkin in an English Accent," and "Mystery Sister." She played really well, and was a lot of fun to watch, even though she was really nervous. When she hit herself with the microphone, it was pretty funny. I'd like to see her again, if you know what I mean. (Jonathan Berger)

8/14 - When Monique St. Walker played the AntiHoot just a couple of days before, she wowed the audience with "I Didn't Eat the Apple," a solo acoustic funk-folk outing that - I don't know what. It was soulful. It was grooving. It was acoustic. It was everything right with the audience, and you could hear people talking about it, and her, for scores of minutes afterward. It seemed like every single person at the club that night was talking about heading back on Thursday to see her.
They didn't, of course, lazy slobs, but it's probably just as well. When she sat down, crouched over her guitar on Thursday, she was not alone. Backed by piano and drums, all of her strengths evaporated.
Her powerful voice was mired in the volume of the other instruments. Her muscular guitar sound was equally lost.
The band wasn't bad -- well, they weren't untalented. But they played some loud parody version of what made her so special. They made a very strong solo player a mediocre rock player. The show was interminable. The one thing I found myself jotting on my notebook as I sat there was: THE DEATH OF SOUND. (Gustav Plympton)

8/17 - Lee Chabowski played a great set on Sunday. Who is Lee Chabowski? "He doesn't play guitar too well, and his voice isn't that strong, and his songs are kind of cute," someone told me, "but he's really good!"
With that kind of a recommendation, how could I miss it?
A bunch of his songs are cute, and his performance style, very simple, with a fair amount of speak-singing, sounds somehow like Alex Chilton. Not the soulful Chilton of the Box Tops, or the pure-pained pop Chilton of Big Star, but the solo Chilton, the lost boy, who's spent the last twenty years trying to recapture something with simple lyrics and simple playing. That's what Lee Chabowski sounds like. His songs are funny, and sweet, and sometimes seem harder than they are, and they're cool.
I want to see him again. (Stephanie Biederman)

8/19 - Listening to Jerome Rossen will make you feel like a man.
His songs are not for youth. In fact, you might think you heard them on some middle-of-the-dial station, but they're good. They're mature.
Jerome'll sing about meeting the girl of his dreams, then building a family. Of eighteen boys.
He'll sing of how, "You and me are just not right for each other; you and me don't get along," and you almost wish we could get back together, despite he problems.
And, as you're almost touching knees with the beautiful girl to your left, one of the others bouncing along to his soulful material, he'll sing, "We're all looking for a little understanding, but that's bullshit... cuz we're in a bar and we're all messing around."
A quickly painted scene of dancing and drunkenness will suddenly appear before you, as you look around the bar, and see an attentive audience of ten get into that groove, and you'll think, at least for the length of the song, that you're living it.
These are not childish visions. These are visions for adults, for the mature.
While listening to Jerome Rossen, you hear about adults. While listening to Jerome Rossen, you feel like a grown-up. (Gustav Plympton)

8/19 - Piano Night began with two guitar acts, both of whom learned piano first.
When there was no one prepared to go on-stage until 9pm, Sidewalk sound people Anne Husick and Lenny Molotov filled in.
First Husick, playing to an audience of three, started the show. She played songs that her band Shameless do well, and she played songs that haven't been heard much lately. She played "Voices," which is beautiful, and she played "Girlfriend," which is also beautiful. It was a good set, a short set, an intimate set.
Lenny Molotov had a bigger unintentional draw, maybe from people arriving early to see the next the act. He played some of the cuts that his band doesn't do anymore, like "MK Ultra" and "Frame 313," his history songs. The audience was into it, and the few regulars in the room couldn't help but sing along, adding what parts seemed missing. His songs are really good! (Jonathan Berger)

8/21 - "... Dave Foster!"
We clapped in response to the intro. But Dave Foster was not just Dave Foster tonight, nor was he Bubble, though the original members of Bubble were sitting behind him on stage, along with a host of others. Foster featured a back-up crew of four, featuring additional vocals, percussion, and guitar.
"We're gonna do something a little different," Dave said, and went into a cover-heavy set. "Featuring selections from CBS-FM," he explained later on, but threw on the Bubble hit, "Human Question Mark," just to shake things up. The feel was very country, very low-key. The band sounded great and mature, appropriate, since most of the songs were born in the sixties.
The final number, a relatively new Foster original, "Thank You, Goodnight," normally a fairly funky electric experience, still sounded good in its new sedate interpretation, but somehow uprooted. An interesting change from what's expected from Mr. Foster, though, hopefully, not a permanent one. (Jonathan Berger)

8/22 - I was told it would happen, but I'm still surprised to hear the humans rocking so hard. With their seemingly permanent addition of Joe Bendik to the ranks, they sound like a band, and even that ridiculous reverb they insist upon doesn't sound so bad, now that there's some hard-core background to their Goth.
When Joe Bendik followed with his band, he did what he always does, only a little bit more. The middling-sized audience in the place began grooving to the punk sound of the Heathens, then started standing, and, by the end of the show, there was dancing. Dancing in a seating-only club. Some girls even pogo'd for a little while. The crowd didn't end up sweating as much as the band, but it was close.
Zane Campbell played with Ross Owens at the end of the night to only hard-core fans. Zane threw out a whole bunch of new songs, and dropped out twice to let old friend and East Coast émigré Danny Scherr play a couple of songs. Zane was better It's good to hear one of the greatest AntiFolk players ever out there. I wish more people knew about the gig. (Stephanie Biederman)

8/25 - It started with a bang, and ended with... well... I didn't stay that long.
Jesse White was one of the first people on stage. She explained she was going to do two new songs, and went into them. The first started out sweeter than her usual fare, or seemed that way, when the fight broke out.
Two huge guys were playing pool, until one of them tore the others shirt, and threw him on the pool table. Lots of tiny guys looked on, wondering if they should do anything. Jesse, on-stage, played on, though virtually no one was paying her any mind at all. Still, she played her two songs, and the audience reaction was astounding. Dollars to donuts, no one there would be able to remember two lines she rubbed together, but they clapped and clapped and clapped.
"Girl, you've got FOCUS!" someone called out, and,. embarrassed, the leader of Ruff grinned.
"Thanks," she said, "What happened down there?"

Hours later, a slight girl named Elizabeth sat down with her violin, and moved the microphone far away from her. She sang while plucking her tiny instrument, and singing in the sweetest, innocentest voice in the world. Everyone had to strain to listen, but the thing is, they DID. They listened.
At the end of her two songs, and the big audience reaction, the girl seemed upset.
"You're gonna come back, right, Elizabeth?" Lach asked.
"I screwed up," she said.
"No," people called out, and clapped again.
She didn't seem to feel any better, but she'll be back. I know it. (Arnie Rogers)

The only distraction at the Dan Emery & his Mystery Band CD fundraiser the other Tuesday were those kids poking my shoulders, selling booster tickets.

"Please, sir," one child lisped her memorized speech, "Dan needs money. Don't let his wonderful talent go to waste." Then she'd pretend to cry and I'd get a dollar out.
"Don't you have any candy bars, kid?"
I'd already signed onto some pyramid scheme Emery'd set up; I was supposed to be rich in 15 months. I was suspicious, out at the Sidewalk to check out my investment. I sat and drank, slowly, buying tickets every fifteen minutes.
The preceding act did something with guitar and vocals. Hard to tell if it was any good, what with all the talking I was doing.
The Intermission exploded with a carnival atmosphere; hucksters setting up ring toss stations, conning the poor country rubes who milled about there out of their last nickels.
"Get yer Dan-A-Matic Special Edition!" barked the paper boy, "Get it now!"
I ran into Mystery Band piano, shortwave radio, electric tennis racket player Steve Espinola at the dogboy exhibit in the freak show. We traded jokes.
"What kind of doctor does an Egyptian go to?"
"What? I can't hear you."
"Cairo-practors."
Steve laughed and told me some joke of the "goat sex and the Rolling Stone" genre. The he turned to a mysterious red haired woman in a sombrero.
Before the show the Mystery Band plastered the walls with glittery brown paper. It was explained to me these sheets contained the names of Donors to the Emery cause. Was this the end dividend of my contribution? It made a nice, unifying backdrop though, shimmering down behind that string of white booths. White booths. Would Dan be introducing a horn section tonight?
Bag pipes, rather. Amy Pearl led the band regally to the stage, that bizarre beast of an instrument wailing, reminding us all that it's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll.
Erika Belle gave a short and tasteful introduction, only hinting at the need for clean lucre. Then Dan Emery gave a few words expressing thanks, excitement, and financial need.
Then they pounded into a hard thumping "Shake your Bootie on the Dance Floor," or some title that's miles away from that. Then someone important to the process detailed a sober monetary breakdown of CD production costs. Then came a bouncing number about financial distress.
Dan broke a string, inspiring a bluesy lope through a contribution pitch. I looked around, and then back at the stage.The white booths were peopled not by trumpet players, but volunteers at a phone bank. This fellow Emery has his fundraising science down. Fortunately, his songwriting, his rock and roll, also down he has.
"I am the only one who loves you!" Dan and the band bellow, rending Tower Record sales and uphill fiscal battles moot. They're loose and they're cool; they don't care and they mean business at the same time.
Steve Espinola glided into a sweet rendition of "Right out in the Street." My favorite aspect of this band is how they mix it up. Espinola and Robert Smith take turns at the mike, their disparate styles unified by Mr. Emery's astute band-leading instincts.
It's a crying shame as authentic and honest a performer as Dan Emery has to hold out his hat at all, let alone auction chest hairs, wedding rings and promised first-born. I'm suspicious of capitalism, but in the long run we're all dead, and in the short run, I want to somehow get rich off the Dan Emery Mystery Band.
"Leave that Man" and " The Bra Song" are true and funny songs. Anyone can write a campy novelty song about food or sex. Dan is funny because life if funny. Money isn't funny. He dedicates his humor to his sister and his love to his wife. Even if I get afraid when he sings on "Leave that Man," "Kawm, ka ka ka kawmm, kawm with me!"
When he sings, Dan Emery doesn't need money.
Dan Kilian

There is nothing worse for a performer than an audience. Maybe theyıre necessary, but wouldnıt it be easier without?
The Novellas were just releasing their Women in Space cassette with their percussionist MIA; and the audience that was there was not the biggest.
But then there was this... woman, this woman in the audience, who wouldnıt stop talking. Worse, she wouldnıt stop talking OVER THE BAND.
She was rude, she was loud, she was right in front of the performers, and me. She may have been there for an earlier act, or a long-gone Happy Hour, or she and her stupid friend may have just walked in from the East Village night, or they have been there to see the band, which seems inconceivable, as they didnıt stop talking, even as they perfunctorily clapped at a songıs end.
I stared at this woman, hoping sheıd feel my heavy gaze upon her. I tapped noisily to the beat, to get their attention. I clapped excitedly, to be a proper role model. The big old woman was oblivious. It was unbelievable.
Finally, I jumped over my table, leaping onto their table, sat with the inconsiderate couple, clapped and sang along, and, between songs, yelled out, ³DO YOU MIND? WEıRE ALL TRYING TO LISTEN!² They didnıt make a sound after that.
Well, I did nothing of the kind. But I kept staring at them until they left, at the end of the set. I think I showed them.
Customers should show proof that theyıre attentive before sitting down at free clubs. Itıs awful to have to sit next to a nightmare in shorts like this woman, worse, I imagine, to play for her. Next time, I swear, Iım saying something!