CD

Rearick's new CD, Up The Wall, is a return to form, four years in the making after 2007's Democracy. Side A is the political and economic side, side B gets personal. Part rock and roll, part sweeping beauty with some quirky ditties and jazzy piano numbers mixed in, Up The Wall is another remarkably original and fresh offering from Rearick. While primarily original songs, the covers here come from Dusty Springfield, Nina Simone and Yoko Ono.

Piano driven songs range from simplistic melodies to complex layers of looped trumpet, vocals and keyboards.

We are to pleased present the debut release by The Crooked Mouth. Beau O'Reilly and Jenny Magnus (Maestro Subgum & The Whole) are joined by Matt Test (accordion, banjo, piano, backup vocals), Troy Martin (guitar, banjo, uke, backup vocals) and Vicki Walden (bass, backup vocals, shaky egg.)

The result is a string band cabaret that is folksy, honest and, at times, brutally beautiful.

Notes on The CROOKed MOUTH.

Ritt's fifth album, POP, is a great collection of songs that show a more rocking/pop side to Deitz' songwriting. The songs pop, funk and slink through classic rock hooks and jams. As is his habit, Ritt invited friends and family members to the recording sessions and clocks in with his most organic feeling disc to date.

For the last decade Barry Bennett's been best known as leader of the iconic group MiLkBabY, whose alien world music made them a fixture of Chicago's left of center music scene. He's also a frequent creator of soundscapes and scores for Theatre and dance. His music has been heard at The Goodman, 16th Street Theater, CBDC, Chicago Moving Company, Chicago Dramatists, and with his own improvisational performance group The Impending Behavior Orchestra. Through it all, Bennett's music has been strange, exciting, fierce, and hypnotizing with "fiendish percussion chops and otherworldly vocalese. (Chicago Reader)"

Bennett has now decided to go it alone and is releasing his first solo CD, Death to Death! and Other Tales of Uneasy Harmony.

Creative improvised music by The Hanah Jon Taylor Artet.

Rose Polenzani with Session Americana

One of our favorite artists, Rose Polenzani, clocks in with a great set of tunes recorded with Boston's Session American. The whole thing has a nice laid back feel with mandolin, harmonica, accordion and, of course, Rose's lovely voice and beautiful song writing.

This is Katie Todd's 3rd studio CD. It features a wide array of instrumentation - piano, guitar, horns, strings and extra vocals.

Katie's music has always had a maturity beyond her years, with a voice that has seen the world. Mumbled Speech combines that with a sense of playfulness that comes across as an artist grown comfortable with herself - as a musician, writer and producer.

Residing solidly in the world of pop, Ms. Todd proves that the genre still has room for a creative voices.

Ritt Deitz releases his fifth full-length CD of original and traditional songs, Upstream, on Uvulittle Records. Ritt spent the winter in the studio with longtime collaborators bassist Joe Meisel and guitarist / dobro player Craig Totten, sons Wilder (piano, percussion) and Mitch (percussion) and hammered dulcimer player Dave Foss. Singer-songwriter Sara Pace guests on backing vocals on four songs, including a lovely duet version of the Southern gospel standard "Wayfaring Stranger." Ritt's neighbor Andy Ewen, frontman of the Madison psychoblues quartet Honor Among Thieves, sits in on "Cloudy," an early Dire-Straits-like meditation on living by a road the highway department keeps widening every few years.