Silkworm: Night Four

Silkworm’s reunion shows got booked like this: They got an invite to play GonerFest in Memphis (on a Saturday); they booked a Chicago show (on a Thursday); and this meant they could potentially play a show halfway inbetween on a Friday. Turns out that way back in 1995, Silkworm was the opener for part of Hum’s You’d Prefer an Astronaut tour, so they’d known Matt Talbot of Hum for 30 years. And he happens to have a studio and a bar in Tolono, a place you’ve very likely never heard of, because it’s got a population of 3,600.

And so Silkworm, on the fourth night of their dramatic return, wound up playing an insane capacity 100 bar in rural Champaign County. K & I came down for our fourth straight night, joined by Ruymal & Keane, and we found Ruzzmo & Jajake there, and several people who also went to all four shows, and also a trickling of weird locals. And we wound up standing about six feet from the band. It was bonkers. It was Loose Cobra.

We arrived about halfway into Dianogah’s set, many apologies to Dianogah. We walked in and… well, I wish I could draw a schematic layout of this place to help explain it. It’s a long (but not very long) building, and you walk into the bar area which is maybe 12’x12’, and then it’s like a corridor to the back, except the corridor is also where people stand when they’re playing darts, and the dartboards are in a recessed spot tucked past the bar, and that’s where the band is at. So when you walk in you can’t actually see the band. And from the “stage” line to the wall straight ahead is no more than 8 feet and I’m probably understating it. I can just try to tell the story with pictures.

You walk in and… the band is all blue, and you can’t really see them:

You go outside and go in the back door and then you can see better:

There are three video gaming machines jammed into the back, behind the vantage point of the above shot. And yes, what you can see behind the band is a dart board. And yes, above the “stage” cut-in, you can see two JBL house speakers, and they are LOUD.

So the bar is capacity 100 but that means the whole place. No more than 40 people could possibly have seen the entire band.

After Dianogah’s set we went outside and chatted a bit. I didn’t get pictures outside so I’ll have to do my best to describe this. The merch tables were outside - luckily it was a warm September night. I’ll euphemistically refer to the large barren outdoor space as an alley between the bar and what seemed like a small warehouse. To the south is a street and beyond that train tracks. To the north is Main Street. But the overall nighttime vibe of all this felt like some kind of very pleasant indie-rock hobo encampment.

We went back inside and got situated just under the left speaker, about as far over as we could get and still be able to see the entire band. They seemed smashed into the space, but… seemed to thrive in it?

Silkworm played a different set each night, though by night four there were no new surprises. But when they started in the main surprise was HOW LOUD it was. And it was LOUD the two previous nights at Sleeping Village. But because of where we are and the particulars of the layout, it was immersive. And the blue light added to the wildness of it all. It also somehow made my camera act weirder and led to some very strange shots. For a good chunk of time I was directly behind a guy about my size, which was fine for being able to see but which meant I was taking pictures at odd angles…

By the fourth night we were familiar with not only the set list but even the arrangements, so in a musical sense, we weren’t going to be surprised, but unlike night one and the line of thought I can’t believe this is really happening, night four the line of thought was more like How on earth is this happening? There were several people there who had been at all three Chicago shows as well, but then also just random locals who, I don’t know, thought this was a normal night at Loose Cobra?

SKWM 9/26/25
Couldn’t You Wait?
Treat the New Guy Right
Insomnia
Raised By Tigers
Garden City Blues
Don’t Make Plans
Raging Bull
Swings
Don’t Look Back
Yen + Janet Forever
Ritz Dance
Give Me Some Skin
Pilot
Tarnished Angel
Plain

That’s Entertainment
Little Sister
Dirty Air
(I Hope U) Don’t Survive

Bones

As of the time of finishing this, Silkworm also played their fifth reunion show, at GonerFest in Memphis, so although we weren’t quite psycho enough to go all the way there, I think I’m coming in at a good time to wrap up the week’s triumphs.

One crazy thing I’ll note first is that there’s seemingly more uploaded video from these five days than from the entirety of the band’s original run, like this from Friday night:

After the show on Wednesday, I commented on how, looking around the room, the four members of the band were scattered around but if you didn’t know who was who, you’d have no idea they were the band. There were no airs.

Wednesday I had been able to chat with Tim some, and Thursday I was able to meet Joel, and Friday I actually got to chat with all four guys for a bit, and they were so happy. Whatever apprehensions there may have been going on, I got the impression they were exceeding their own expectations. Joel explained to me that there’s essentially a rule to not do anything they don’t want to do, and I’m paraphrasing greatly but the idea is to not think ahead and instead savor the moment.

One of the things I’ve long been curious about in seeing established rock bands is how it feels to play songs that are 10, 20, 30 years old, songs from a very different time, from a different set of vantages and emotions. What’s been wonderful about the week is how clearly they treasure the material and the opportunity to revisit it. It’s also a testament to how much they care about the songs that they had clearly practiced the hell out of them. And yet even at that, you could see the band cohere just a little bit more night after night. When they dropped “Little Sister” on Friday night, Joel and Andy seemed like there’d been no gap in time, that they’d been singing it together for 35 years. It was extraordinary.

The greedy fan could imagine new full tours, and a broad expansion of what might make it onto the set lists each night. These are songwriters with breadth and depth and could have rolled out sets three times as long with no drop in quality. But I’m heartened by what Tim and Joel said this week, by the prospect that maybe they will from time to time play again, for as long as it still feels right. And even if it doesn’t work out that way, I have to believe that they’ll still keep on creating something.

This being META-SPIEL I’d be remiss if I didn’t riff off of that idea a bit. Over the course of the week I was able to see several people I don’t see a whole lot, which was itself wonderful. And I’ve managed to put together four of these pieces, which have gotten shared out among other SKWM devotees. (Special thanks to Jon Solomon for sharing these on BlueSky!)

There are a lot of themes which META-SPIEL revisits (music, baseball, politics, parenthood, flags, etc.) but befitting the name, the meta is perhaps the most prevalent. Indeed I’ve probably written as much about the process of writing as almost anything else. As it so happens I’m not a musician (even though I guess I’ve had three bands and saw most of my former bandmates this past week), and I’m not an artist (even though I’ve got supplies on hand and very specific ideas about abstract art I want to work on), and I’m not a dancer (except when the Elephant Stomp is called for), and I’m not really much of any kind of builder of things. This here, whatever all this might be, is my primary outlet as a creator.

It’s been inspiring this week not just to see Silkworm, not just to understand how this all came together for them, but also to be able to be a very small part of it, to have something meaningful to contribute to a slightly larger than usual audience, to feel like part of a community in a way that has been lost for quite a while. I don’t want to lose that inspiration as this week comes to an end, and I expect that I’ll be revisiting it, through META-SPIEL and otherwise, in the near future.

Andy, Jeff, Joel, Tim, and everyone else that made it possible, thank you for this week, and thank you for all you’ve ever done to brighten this crazy planet.

We will never give it up.