By ERIC SCHELKOPF
The members of Chicago band The Soul Avengers: A Tribute to Classic Soul know the impact that soul music continues to have on the music scene.
The band, comprised of Steve Dawson, Alton Smith, Bill Brickey and Chris Greene, will perform at 7 p.m. Oct. 31 at SPACE, 1243 Chicago Avenue, Evanston.
Doors open at 6 p.m. Tickets are available at https://www.ticketweb.com/event/the-soul-avengers-tribute-to-space-tickets/14316204.
I had the chance to talk to Bill about the upcoming show.
Q – Great talking to you. The upcoming show at SPACE in Evanston will be The Soul Avengers’ first show at the venue since the band performed an Al Green tribute show there prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Are you looking forward to getting back to SPACE?
SPACE has always been like home to us. We, each of us, have played there under multiple names, myself as Come Sunday (Cross Currents), vocalist and rhythm guitarist for the Bear Williams Band (Waters of Love), as well as the Soul Avengers; Alton Smith with Steve Dawson, Come Sunday, Soul Avengers, Trigger Gospel, and more.
John Mead is Soul Avengers' musical director and a renaissance man. He writes, paints, creates posters and comes up with show formats to celebrate genres and artists.
I can’t even count the number of specials he’s done alone, and with others, to celebrate Dylan or Van Morrison, or his own works. Steve Dawson has performed at SPACE as a solo artist, as part of a duo, and with his band, Bonsai Funeral Wedding.
And Chris Green has played with almost all of the above, and as the leader of The Chris Greene Quartet, which has released albums on Pravda Records.
Our drummer, Lenny Marsh, plays with Alton and I in the Come Sunday Gospel Jazz Band and hosts a MLK Day celebration at the Chicago Historical Society.
Our trumpeter, John Moore, has played and recorded with Steve Dawson.
But for me, especially since my heart transplant, it’s like touching home base, so that I can start again. The pandemic days were the days when venues in the Chicago area were on fire making space for the next great unknown.
And we are the products of that synergy. And if you trace any of our musical roots, they go back decades.
When I asked John Abbey, the bassist for this upcoming Soul Avengers gig but also a guitarist and the recording engineer and producer at Kingsize Sound Labs, for his pic and bio he said, “I’m not the front man for this gig, I don’t need a pic," but he has played with more people than I can name and recorded even more than that.
We are verbally engaging with one another and with the audience. Each of us has reverence for the soul genre.
I believe that we give this genre its due by imbuing our performance with a sense of joy and humor. Humor elevates virtuosity by making it accessible – playful. We’re not just covering soul music, we're living it.
The Soul Avengers are very playful and funny – not in lieu of virtuosity but because of it.
Q – Why do you think soul music is such a timeless musical genre?
R&B/soul is the definition of emotional integrity in music. It is what lives in the heart of the bluegrass, country, jazz, and classical genres.
I see it as the great predecessor of all other genres in it’s kinship with Fado, the melodies that inspired classical composers from the very beginning. Even today, country music adorns itself in the trappings of R&B (blues), hip hop, and soul.
Soul music is the most raw example of a musical form equaling it’s content. Just listen to Albert King’s “I’ll Play the Blues for You” or “Yesterday” by Paul McCartney, which sounds strangely similar to Segovia playing Bach’s “Sarabande,” or George Jones’s “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” or my personal old timey favorite traditional song, “Storms Are On the Ocean” recorded at King Size Studios by John Abbey and featuring Lindsay Weinberg, Dan Fulkerson and myself on guitar and vocals.
The western world experienced soul music in the birth of the blues as it was ripped from from the arms of gospel music by Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, and it became R&B.
And after over a century of being haunted by the folk melodies of Africa, Ireland, the Middle East, we are finally able to say that the blues is significant because of melismatic singing, Iambic pentameter, AAB structure of verses, the ability to make an instrument, usually a guitar, sound like a voice and emotional integrity.
"Melisma" essentially means "to sing more than one note on a single syllable." The fact that the technique was heavily employed to speak to the suffering of a person or persons, and the fact that we hear it so clearly expressed in the blues became what we call soul music.
When we say soul, I believe we refer to big sounds, emotions expressed out loud, and, quite often, joyfully in homage to the fact that the blues softened it’s truth through humor and added some haughty and playful rhythm and now you’ve got soul music.
Q – The four of you have played together over the years in several bands. Why do you think you gel so well together?
It’s how we were raised together. We meet each other at various points in the late '90s as teachers at the Old Town School of Folk Music.
What I am telling you about soul and blues is basically my opinion of the great think tank of music that the Old Town School was in during the early years: one bubbling thesis of human musical experience bumping into another and becoming a synthesis of understanding.
We are brothers and sisters. We drink, eat, sleep, and play together.
We have raised our kids more or less together and we mourn the loss of our loved ones together. When one of us gets sick, we circle the wagons the best we can.
When one of us is offended, we all take offense to varying degrees. These guys are part of my tribe – my tribe is huge and ridiculously diverse. The Soul Avengers are one facet of who we are. And the respect and regard we have for one another is immense.
Q – You have been a teacher at the Old Town School of Folk Music for 36 years and you work with a wide range of students, from toddlers to adults. Is there an age group that you like working with the best?
My Wiggle Worms are my favorite.
Q – What are the main things that you try teaching those students?
Joy and love. I want them to know that they are the coolest humans I have ever met.
I make sure that my students learn something specific in each class meeting that they can use that day. I don’t do cliff hangers.
My people are working people. They don’t have time for me to play games with their time.
When any of my students leave my classroom, I want them to leave believing that the world is amazing and they can do anything because what they have to offer is important.
Q – I understand that you are inspired by the feedback of your students.
Yes, in so many ways. But the thing that is easiest to share is that there is a point when I am teaching something that people struggle with.
Usually music theory or strumming and I see the light of understanding suddenly get brighter in their eyes because something I said worked for them.
Those are my most cherished feedback experiences.
Once I had a Wiggle Worm parent come into my class and ask if it was OK if her dad came and sat with us that day while we played and sang. I said, “No problem! I'd love to have him.”
As he walked in she said, “This is my dad. He was your guitar student in the '90s and brought me to you as a Wiggle Worm and now we are bringing my daughter to be with you as well.”
I still cry in thanks for that moment; three generations! And it has happened to me more than once.
I know I am blessed.
Q – I know you have worked on various projects while you have been at Old Town. Are there any projects that you are particularly proud of?
I am most proud of founding the school's Juneteenth programming that later became World Music Wednesdays. Juneteenth is something that is not just about emancipation.
It’s about the people who made it happen. And that is each and every one of us!
I love reminding people that we are a people. Not because we are the same, but because we are hungry for one another's stories and lifestyles – because we want to protect the richness of each of our cultures.
We hear so much that's negative that it’s hard to remember how much fun we have together when we can. Like the Soul Avengers
Q – The late Steve Albini was the primary inspiration and consultant on your studio, ShooBooty. In starting ShoeBooty Studios, what were your goals and do you think you have met or exceeded those goals?
ShooBooty Studios is my Ark.
Even before I became the co-president of the nation’s first teaching artists union, I understood that the duty of any arts organization is not just to cater to its donors and board members, but to cultivate the development of artists and see to the well-being of artists.
I wish I could say it is an original idea but it’s not. It comes from my experience busking on the streets of Oxford, England.
In the City Center roundabout, my classmate and I sat and played duo guitar and vocals. We played songs by Peter Gabriel, Simply Red, Led Zeppelin, Sam Cooke, Bill Withers, James Taylor, Peter Frampton, and anyone else that one of us could remember the words and chords for.
We made 80 quid that day in 1985. We were ecstatic!
Then, across the road, in the center of the roundabout, there came…a French horn player! I chuckled to myself because I felt sorry for him.
I was sure that no was going to gather around him the way they did us. I was wrong.
He played no pop tunes and yet they seemed to know and appreciate his work – and tip for it. I thought surely we had been duped; that we were just a side show.
Then he took a break and the crowd came back to listen to us – and tipped. Then vice versa for most of the day; four or six hours, I can’t really remember.
I told people about my experience and they began to tell me about how black artists that wanted to be successful quite often went to Europe first because their audiences had a broader musical pallet; not entirely true, but not to be dismissed either.
I learned a lot in England and that dovetailed into things I would learn in Chicago about music audiences and communities.
Places like SPACE, Fitzgerald’s, the Old Town School and the Checkerboard Lounge and New Apartment Lounge kept music alive by being accessible to young musicians.
They were places where you could ply your trade even if you couldn’t draw 1,500 people. In other words, the small businesses are why we have folks like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, John Prine, Ani DiFranco, Tom Paxton, Marcia Ball, Jim Post, Robbie Fulks, Jeff Tweedy, Cat Power and more than I can name.
Without the small venues, we wouldn’t even know who they are.
The small, classy venue is an essential part of the ecosystem of a healthy music community that makes a place for French horns and guitar playing vocalists alike.
There has to be rooms for the Jim Belushi’s and Dave Chappelle's to get their chops, and to learn some manners or not.
Without casting aspersions, sometimes the need to make big profits for big music projects and big music venues requires administrations, concert teams and more that leave the beginning wandering the streets.
There needs to be stepping stones.
ShooBooty is the Ark; my home studio that I have stocked with the necessary audio and video recording equipment necessary to capture the moments that you would not otherwise have seen.
So ShooBooty is dedicated to the development of artists into business partners: musicians of all walks of life who would like to know how to conduct themselves better professionally or build a following or seek out the right collaborations.
I am not the first to think these things at all. It’s just my opportunity to say thank you.
Thank you to the Old Town School, to SPACE, to Gallery Cabaret, to Fitzgerald's, to Friendly Tavern and more who made so many people possible.
When Steve Albini stood in my basement, he didn’t try to drown me in technical jargon. He looked at my space and said, “Yeah, you can do this.”
He was one of those people, you know? The ones with immense talent and a list of accolades one hundred miles long. And somehow, you never feel like less than with them.
Steve was like that when he was in ShooBooty before the studio had a name.
I have survived teaching, being a working musician, two years as a union co-president, CHF, a heart transplant and more and I still want to play music. I still love working with children.
ShooBooty is a living work in process. I am working with artists in whatever shape and or size they come in.
When they get here, there will be a place for them to come and ply their trade in a place that they can afford to do business with; a place they can be proud to work in and share with their friends, families and fans.
