By ERIC SCHELKOPF
Noah Gabriel’s emotionally driven songs add to the vibrancy of the Fox Valley music scene.
The Aurora native will celebrate 20 years of making music by performing at The Venue in Aurora Friday night. The show will feature The Noah Gabriel Band, Noah's Arcade, Dave Ramont, Dave Nelson and his latest collaboration with Ryan Carney and Chris Palmerin.
His artwork will also be on display, including portraits of artists featured on the Bluebird Records label who made recordings in the Sky Club situated on the top floor of the Leland Hotel in downtown Aurora.
Doors open at 7 p.m. and the show starts at 8 p.m. The Venue is located at 21 S. Broadway Ave. in downtown Aurora.
General admission tickets are $10, available at themusicvenue.org.
I had the chance to talk to Gabriel about the upcoming show.
Q – It makes sense that you’re going to be playing your 20th anniversary show at The Venue for many reasons. Of course, Aurora is your hometown and you also played at the grand opening show of The Venue in 2019.
So how does it feel to do your 20th anniversary show at The Venue?
I’m excited. It’s a beautiful stage and the room sounds great.
They’ve made a point of keeping that room as a listening environment, which is nice. People go there for music and they are there to sit down and listen.
It’s not just music for the background.
Q – And I understand that one of the first shows you took in after you first started playing the guitar was Aurora’s Blues Fest. How old were you?
Oh, I had to be 12 or 13. It might have been the first year they were doing it. It was definitely at the very beginning of the Blues Fest.
We didn’t have a lot of money to go to a lot of big concerts, so having that event for free so close by was awesome.
Q – Do you remember who you saw?
I remember Shirley King, B.B. King’s daughter, was one of the featured performers. And I was lucky enough to meet her just a couple of years ago.
Q – Do you think that the fact you saw Blues Fest at such an early age at an influence on your artwork and/or your music?
Definitely the music. I grew up on popular radio and stuff like that, so seeing Blues Fest and watching guys really play the guitar was awesome.
And right around that time is when Jonny Lang was coming out and Kenny Wayne Shepherd. There were all these guys a couple of years older than me that were burgeoning stars on the blues scene.
It definitely inspired me. I picked up my first Jonny Lang CD at the blues festival at the Kiss the Sky tent.
I went home and I listened to that so many times.
And then the artwork thing, before I even touched a guitar, I always wanted to be an artist. I used to do a lot of pencil sketches and stuff like that.
Before I was dragging a guitar around with me everywhere, I always had a sketchbook and a pencil and I was just drawing everywhere. And it has grown since then.
I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing with it, but it’s another great way to get out some of the things in my head. Art is always like for me a meditation. You start doing stuff like that, you disappear and become part of the creation.
It’s a good way to clear the head.
Q – Are you going to be playing songs from all your albums during the show?
I wish that I could. With a two-hour show limit and the fact that I can only gather so many people to squish into that time slot, I think we’re doing a good job representing the music from all the different albums and eras, if you can call it that.
I’m hoping to play at least the title track from my first album, “In Aurora,” somewhere in the show, probably as a solo piece, just to kind of all bring it back to that.
My hope is that the show goes well. I’ll be doing a similar show with some different people not too far down the line.
I like doing stuff like this. I spend most of my time doing solo gigs or duo gigs.
I want to do something different and give people a show that they’re not used to seeing.
Q – Now, you also teach guitar lessons at Music Matters in Batavia and as I understand, you are still striving to become a better guitarist.
Oh, yeah. I’m always trying to become a better guitarist and a better songwriter.
To me, if you’re not trying to get better and do something different, what’s the point? I don’t think there is an end goal, per se, when it comes to art and stuff like that.
Whatever I do, hopefully someone else sees it, hopefully they take the baton where I drop it and run even further down the line. I’m always trying to figure out how I can better myself and push myself to do different things.
If you’re comfortable in your art, you should try and do something different. I feel like these things have been gifted to me and I need to do something good with them and push to do my best with them.
That’s all I’m trying to do. I’m trying to figure out my life and the world around me and art is the vehicle with which I navigate those roads.
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