By ERIC SCHELKOPF
The Chicago area is blessed to have so many talented musicians who want to work with each other to achieve their musical visions.
Such is the case with Chicago musician Steve Dawson's latest solo album, "Ghosts," released on June 7 on Chicago record label Pravda Records. Dawson got together with a few of his fellow Chicago-based musicians to record the album.
Dawson will perform June 16 at SPACE, 1245 Chicago Ave., Evanston as part of an album release party. The show starts at 8 p.m. and tickets are available at ticketweb.com.
The show will feature special guests Alton Smith, Nora O’Connor, Gerald Dowd, Brian Wilkie, John Abbey, Chris Greene, Diane Christiansen and Tommi Zender.
I had the chance to talk to Dawson about the new album.
Q – Great talking to you. I guess it's kind of a coincidence that I had the pleasure of hearing two of the musicians in the band on your new album – Gerald Dowd and John Abbey – perform last month at The Venue in Aurora as part of Jenny Bienemann’s haiku concert.
That was a pretty cool night, actually.
Yeah, Jenny is great. We have done some songwriting workshops together, including at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago.
And you also collaborated together on the song “Oh Sunshine," with all the proceeds from the song going to My Block, My Hood, My City, a non-profit organization in Chicago that mentors underprivileged youth through educational programs and field trips.
Yeah, that was during COVID. We did that remotely.
We passed the recording back and forth and put it out on bandcamp.com during COVID.
Q – It does seem like one of the great things about the Chicago music scene is that everybody knows each other and it’s such a tight knit group of musicians. Would you agree with that?
What do you like best about the Chicago music scene?
I think what you just said. Everyone is friendly and supportive and likes working with each other.
Everyone is really open minded and supportive and super talented.
Q – I know you're a big fan of Gerald Dowd. It does seem like he's everywhere. He's in high demand, as they say.
Obviously a lot of people appreciate his talents, including yourself.
He's crazy talented. He's also a very good singer-songwriter.
I helped him record his last album. It was just a joy to work with that guy.
Q – How did you go about choosing the musicians that perform on the album? I understand that for this album, you wanted to have a dream band, unlike your last album, which was mostly just you.
After helping Gerald with his record, it made me think that I wanted to record with him. I played live with him a bunch, but I had never made a record with him.
So he was definitely the first person I asked. The other person was Brian Wilkie, a pedal steel player who plays with dozens of people in town.
Q – On a sad note, Ingrid Graudins passed away unexpectedly shortly after the recording of the song “Weather in the Desert," a song on your new album. That must have been shocking.
Yeah, completely shocking. It was hard to accept, for sure.
Q – What do you think she brought to the music scene?
She had this incredible clear voice that got right into your heart. I sang with her a bunch before she moved to Nashville.
So she was a friend and someone I really admired who was just a total pro and super funny.
I just learned a lot from her. She was an important person to me and to a lot of people.
We're actually doing a celebration of life thing at SPACE in Evanston on Aug. 11. And people are just coming out of the woodwork who want to come and pay tribute to her and talk about her and play music in celebration of how much she meant to everybody.
Q – I was listening to an interview you did and you were talking about how your last album, “At The Bottom Of A Canyon In The Branches Of A Tree,” originally was going to be a double record and that some of the songs that appear on “Ghosts” were originally going to be on that record. In hindsight, are you glad that things worked out the way they did?
Yeah, I am. I think it worked out for the best.
I think a double album would have been satisfying on some level artistically, but in terms of people actually hearing everything, this is a much, much better approach.
I think a lot of that stuff would have gotten lost. And I think I improved the songs.
Because like we were saying, my last album was all me. I played all the parts on all the songs.
The way they are played on this record with all these talented musicians, they're much better.
Q – In sitting down to make the album, what were your goals and do you think you achieved them?
One of my goals was to record live in the studio and for the recordings to be documents of the performance rather than a collection of overdubs.
That was a big goal. And for me, it's about always trying to play and sing as good as I possibly can, trying to push myself to do my best work.
Q – You were talking about the arrangements on “Ghosts” being created on the spot in the studio. Is that something you have tried before?
A little, yeah, with a band called Funeral Bonsai Wedding. It was with this trio of musicians who are experimental improvising jazz musicians.
For them, it was a case of the less rehearsal, the better. And that stuff was all recorded live as well.
That was exactly 10 years ago.
Q – I know your wife, Diane Christiansen, also appears on the album. But along with being a musician, she also is a noted visual artist. Have you gotten any inspiration from her artwork?
That is an interesting question. Not directly, but I think the spirit of it for sure.
She views art as exploration. And that definitely has been an influence.
So you start with nothing, play around and see what happens. And her creative spirit and her drive to create is very much an inspiration.
Q – And just being able to work with your wife as a fellow musician, is that a plus?
Oh, yeah, very much so. She and I sing great together.
We've been doing it since the late '80s. It falls in very naturally and organically.
She has the ability to just sing harmonies very effortlessly. It's something I think we sometimes take for granted.
It really is a pretty special thing. Occasionally we stop and acknowledge that.
Q – It seems like you're always working on new projects. Any chance of you revisiting some of your past projects, such as Dolly Varden?
It's not impossible. It could happen.
We're all spread out now. We don't see each other very often. That's one of the big problems.
We played a show for a private party not that long ago. We're still very much friends and we still play together occasionally.
As far as making a new Dolly Varden record, maybe we will.
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