Chicago's Cosmic Bull to perform at Martyrs' in Chicago with new album in tow

 

 By ERIC SCHELKOPF

 

Chicago's own Cosmic Bull explores new musical horizons on its latest album, "Band Substances."

"Band Substances" is the first full-length album for Cosmic Bull and its first release as a four-piece band. Mark Vickery had started Cosmic Bull as a studio project, releasing two EPs – "27x2" and "Hangin' in the I.P."

Cosmic Bull will perform May 4 at Martyrs', 3855 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago, as part of the 50th anniversary party for WZRD 88.3 FM, Northeastern Illinois University's radio station. Also on the bill are Charlie Otto & His Gear, Sons of Ra and Silver Abuse.

The show starts at 7:30 p.m. and tickets are free.
I had the chance to talk to Vickery about the album and the upcoming show.

Q – Great talking to you again. Do you see yourself taking another step forward musically with “Band Substances”? What were your goals for the album and do you think you achieved them?

Thanks. For sure I see this LP as another step forward musically with Cosmic Bull. In fact, it’s the very reason for making the album in the first place.

 

In fact, it’s right there in the title: "Band Substances." Because this is a band effort, not a solo one with me playing to a click track and having a producer create the rest of the stuff. And we performed most of what you hear on this album, like 85% of it, live in the studio.

Have we reached our goals? Too early to say. For sure, getting a show at Martyrs’ was part of the plan. Cosmic Bull has a lot going for it as an original showcase group — at least we think so — so getting on some of the best stages in this city and suburbs is a true goal of this recording effort. So far so good, but we haven’t yet achieved everything we intend to achieve.
 
Q – I know that Jim Dinou, who had played in your band Word Bongo, plays on the album. What was it like reuniting with him? How did the rest of the band come together?
 
Jim and I would run into each other here and there throughout the quarter-century or so in between being in a band together. Thankfully, neither of us has changed all that much — musically, especially — so what he brought to our initial jam session together was as good or better than I hoped it would be.

 

What I needed was a musician — keyboardist, in particular — who could take up lots of space, and that’s again because I had started out Cosmic Bull doing recording projects. It didn’t make sense to me to bring a straight-up garage band together for this.

Getting Patrick (Dinnen, bassist) and Ben (Domhoff, drummer) on board came from Jim. He had played with both of them in the Talking Heads tribute band “This Must Be the Band,” which was organized and fronted by Charlie Otto.

 

Interestingly, Charlie Otto headlines this upcoming Martyrs’ gig we’re on May 4th. Anyway, it again came down to how we wanted this band to sound.

 

My guitar-playing style is…less than virtuoso. Much less.

 

In fact, you might say my guitar-playing is rather minimal. So I wanted guys who could really fill up space, like Jim does.

 

And Jim found two guys who fill up tons of space AND can coexist musically with Jim. It’s a very fortunate situation for me personally.

Q – I understand that his daughter, Penny, is singing harmonies on the song “neoromanticism.” That is pretty cool. I watched a video of the band performing the song at Lizard's Liquid Lounge in Chicago. It seems like you guys have fun playing the song live. 

 

Yeah, Penny Dinou sings on a few songs for this album. Nothing overbearing; she’s like a light watercolor accent that helps make the dark lines of my voice into complete compositions. 

 

For “neoromanticism,” that’s one of the first songs I introduced to the band, because it was so simple. And when I wrote it, it was one of those great moments where the whole thing comes together in a very short time.

 

I remember having the song written — lyrics included, although I needed real French people to help my français later — in an hour and fifteen minutes.

Q – I heard that the single “Once the Dust Settles” started out as a jam session. Was it a surprise how the song came together? Has that happened to you before?

 

It’s another great moment that many people who play in bands will recognize. I wasn’t even playing any real chords, just goofing around before rehearsal one day, and the guys are like, “What’s that?”

 

I’m not positive, but I think it might have been the first of the songs we created as a band that didn’t come from an earlier sketch I had put together on my own. From then on, everything I wrote musically — and still do to this day; I sent the drummer six new song sketches a week or two ago — I think of in terms of how this band will interpret it.

Q – Is it true that the FCC flagged the song because it contains the word “balls”? Has anything like that ever happened to you before?

Ha ha. No, but that’s not necessarily because I’ve been super-clean, lyrically, throughout the years. There’s some pretty “blue” stuff I did when I was in Zo and Sumo back in the day, but those bands weren’t really suitable for radio play anyhow.

 

When we decided “Once the Dust Settles” — the band always refers to it as “Bull Balls,” by the way — would be the first single, the only tinge of concern I had about the word “balls” vanished as soon as I remembered Pink Floyd used that word in its song “Mother” from “The Wall,” and that still gets played on The Drive and elsewhere with regularity.

Then, once we got the news — if I recall this correctly, the DJ had to stop the song in the middle, right as it was being played live on the radio the very first time — I thought maybe the problem was the repeated usage of the word. But then I remembered hearing “Big Balls” by AC/DC on the radio as a kid — that song was a hit!

 

So I’m not sure what the real issue is, but I guess what it comes down to is I’m somehow not as clever as Bon Scott was. Ha!
 

Q – Unfortunately, we recently lost Mars Williams. I know you had been a a live guest vocalist for the band before joining the acid jazz/trip-hop groove collective Zo. Did Liquid Soul have an impact on your own musical journey? Where do you see your musical journey taking you next?

You know, when Mars passed away, I thought about this interview I’d done with you some months prior. I didn’t have the slightest idea that he was sick back then, and I think my impression was still that Mars was enjoying one of the great careers on the local Chicago music scene. 

 

He most certainly had. But I wonder about whoever may have read that interview at the time, knowing Mars was ill, and seeing me expressing no remorse or whatever. It’s only because I was unaware.

I went to the glorious send-off show for Mars at Metro early this year. In fact, that show was planned as an event to help Mars out, as he was still alive at the time, back when we were working on “Band Substances” with Rick Barnes, who was very close with Mars.

 

Obviously it changed to a memorial by the time the show came around. But seeing that full band again after so long — clearly Liquid Soul had kept operational even without Mars being available, they were so razor-sharp and forceful — really did bring me back to a grand time on the local Chicago music scene, the mid-to-late 90s.

Even more, I saw more clearly than ever before that what Mars had created with Liquid Soul is a truly original sound. It’s not “acid jazz” the way that sub-genre was initially conceived: bop records gleaned for jazzy loops put over deep back beats with rappers free-styling over the top.

 

Liquid Soul is a big, muscular live group — also very precise, as Mars insisted on. In a way, it’s how Chicago is: lots of brawn, lots of deep grooves.

 

I think about all those great authentic blues bands I would go see when I was younger — that’s Chicago. And that’s Liquid Soul, and that’s what I hope Cosmic Bull will one day be: a Chicago institution.

 

 

Acclaimed blues guitarist and singer Sue Foley releases new album paying tribute to female guitar pioneers, will perform at SPACE in Evanston April 17

By ERIC SCHELKOPF

On her new album, "One Guitar Woman," acclaimed blues guitarist and singer Sue Foley pays homage to the female pioneers of guitar who continue to influence her own music.

Those used to hearing Foley play her pink paisley Fender Telecaster will hear a different side of her as she dons a nylon string acoustic guitar for the album. Foley will play a few songs from the album – along with playing with a full band – when she performs April 17 at SPACE, 1245 Chicago Avenue, Evanston.

Also on the bill is Nikki O'Neill. The show starts at 8 p.m. and tickets are available at evanstonspace.com.

I had the chance to talk to Foley about the new album.

 

Q – Great talking to you again. We last spoke in 2022 about your album “Pinky’s Blues.” And now you have a new album out, “One Guitar Woman.”

What made you want to make this album and was it a dream project of yours?

I've been working on a huge sort of volume on women and guitars and it's got a lot of offshoots. It really started out when I was a kid and I wanted to be a guitar player.

I was influenced by my older brothers and my dad, who all played guitar. When I include someone like Charo in this volume of music, she's the first woman I ever saw play guitar. 

She has just kind of been with me this whole time. And these women pioneers, I just really wanted to pay tribute to them.

Memphis Minnie is another one who has been with me my whole career as a blues artist. When I was starting out as not just a guitar player, but as a blues guitar player, I came to realize Memphis Minnie had been doing it in the 1930s and 1940s.

That's kind of what this project is about.

Q – The first single is “Oh Babe It Ain’t No Lie," a song by Elizabeth Cotten. I understand that is one of your favorite songs to play on guitar.

Her guitar style is really fun to play as a guitar player. It's not easy to learn because it's a finger picking style.

It's technically challenging, but once you get it, it's really fun to play because you can do it by yourself. And it sounds like a full band. All these parts are going in tandem, the rhythm and the melody. 

It's just very rewarding to learn and to play. And it's kind of beautiful music, too.

Q – You must have been pretty happy with how the song turned out to pick it as your first single.

Yeah, I'm really happy with all the stuff on this album. And the feedback has been really positive. 

I'm really thrilled. I'm not just thrilled because people are receiving it well.

I'm thrilled because I was execute it all. It took me a lot of years to learn all these guitar styles.

Q – Of course, you decided to play all the songs on a nylon string acoustic guitar. What made you want to do that and was it hard making the transition from a Fender Telecaster to an acoustic guitar?

It actually wasn't. I've been playing a nylon string guitar for a couple of decades now.

And the reason I play a Spanish guitar – it's a flamenco guitar – is because of Charo. So this all does date back to early female influences.

And I think a flamenco guitar is a really versatile guitar. First of all, it's beautiful sounding.

I just wanted to demonstrate the versatility of that kind of guitar. And you can use those techniques on a Telecaster.

They're very compatible. 

Q – How did you go about choosing what women to feature on the album or what songs to feature on “One Guitar Woman”?

The songs I picked resonate with me personally. As a longtime interpreter of blues music, I've always found that the lyrical content you sing about needs to be honest.

So it's got to be something that you can relate to. I can't sing about working on the railroad or being in prison, you know. 

And as far as the women who are featured, I really picked, I think, some of the preeminent pioneers of women in guitar.

Q – What were you looking to bring to the songs on the album? How did you go about interpreting what you wanted to bring to these songs?

I wanted to bring my own story, at least have some kind of cross narrative somehow to make their story my story in a way.

It's definitely biographical/autobiographical. 

Q – Are you hoping to bring a new audience to some of these artists? Perhaps some of the people listening to the album are not familiar with them.

Absolutely. I think that's what it's all about. 

That's why I do this. Because people might not know who Memphis Minnie is, for example.

It's to keep their memory alive. These are important figures.

We're walking in their footsteps, literally. I walk in Memphis Minnie's footsteps.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe has gotten a lot more notoriety in the last 10 years. Now she's pretty well known.

And she was a phenomenal guitar player. It just goes to show you that there's been female guitarists the whole time.

They're technically proficient. It's not just a male dominated culture.

There's a whole rich history of female guitarists. There's just not as many of them and that's because women's roles were more dictated to being in the home back then.

Q – Of course, you've made your own impression on the music scene. You have won the Blues Music Award for Traditional Female Artist of the Year three consecutive times. Can you see yourself someday being honored like this by an artist in the future?

That would be interesting. The funny thing is, the only woman on this record that's still alive is Charo.

So if somebody did do something like that, I probably wouldn't be alive to know about it. Maybe I would be.

But it's interesting. Especially with Memphis Minnie.

I don't think she had any idea what kind of impact she had. She died in obscurity. 

And she has had such a huge impact.

It's a strange tragedy and victory all at the same time.

Q – I guess that goes to show you that you can still make your mark even though physically, you might not be here any more.

I think that's why we do art. I think it's kind of a way to transcend our lifespan, because we know we're only going to be here physically for a certain amount of time.

Q – You said you have been getting good feedback about the new album.

Yeah, we're getting really good feedback. Because it's just me on the album, it's so kind of intimate.

It's almost like I'm just sitting there with you in your kitchen or wherever. In our world right now where everything is so overblown and we've got so much coming at us, I really wanted to do something that was just immediate and kind of simple and just stripped down.

And if you come see me live, it's going to sound exactly like that. There's no bells and whistles, there's no tricks.

Q – During your show at SPACE, will you be playing a lot from this album?

I'll be playing a portion of this album, but I'll also have my band with me. We'll be doing both, electric and acoustic.