Silkworm: Night One

The world’s greatest rock band impossibly and triumphantly returned to the stage on Tuesday night, and I’m going to try some minimal documentation of each of the first four nights.

Originally they scheduled one show on a Thursday, then added another on Wednesday, then another on Tuesday. So the first show wound up being at Chop Shop in Wicker Park. Chop Shop bills itself as "Chicago’s only sustainable butcher + deli + restaurant + bar with a 6,000 square foot event space and concert venue", whcih is a very Chicago thing to say.

My compatriots this night were Karla and Carlo, with other compatriots joining me for subsequent shows.

The night one opener was OUT, a four-piece from Kalamazoo, label mates on Comedy Minus One. OUT definitely fits into the Silkworm adjacent ouevre as a guitar-centric band, loud and noisy but not exactly heavy, not particularly concerned with pop hooks. Really, the description of a band as being “guitar-centrist… loud and noisy… not concerned with pop hooks” is probably enough to send some of you to the doors, and a smaller number of you wanting to know what effects pedals and amplifiers are being used, and that’s about right here. But I’m not able to speak to effects pedals and amplifiers. Sorry!

I’d not been to Chop Shop before. The music room is a nice space, surprisingly wide, maybe also surprisingly shallow. There’s an extended doorway separating the music room from the bar area and there’s also a balcony. It wasn’t a large space but it was nevertheless the largest space I’ve ever seen Silkworm in, their typical haunts of yore being Schubas, Empty Bottle, Hideout… not big places.

As a brief recap of how we got here: Silkworm formed in Missoula in the late 80s. Joel, Tim, and Andy all moved to Seattle, where they met Michael. They released three albums and some singles. Joel left the band in 1994, and the band continued, releasing seven more albums / EPs. Most of the Silkworm catalog was engineered by Steve Albini.

Michael died in 2005. Andy and Tim wound up forming Bottomless Pit, which lasted a few years. Andy released an album with Light Coma, and Tim formed Mint Mile, most notably with Jeff, who had been the drummer for Songs:Ohia. There are a lot of releases there across all of those projects. And also Joel’s project The Downer Trio released six albums over time. So there’s over 20 albums of material across these guys, across almost 40 years.

Steve Albini’s memorial service last year was an occasion for a lot of bands to play short sets, and when Tim learned Joel would be there, they decided to work up some Silkworm songs, asked Jeff to sit in, and that became the seed of this week’s shows. Truly, this was a week borne from layers of tragedy, making it all the more emotional.

We got pretty near the center, about 10-12 feet back from the stage. There did happen to be a large dude right in front of me, but I was at a vantage where I could still see everything. From audience left to right, it was Joel, Tim, Jeff, Andy.

Silkworm was always a band with an interesting array of personalities. Tim has always been the one who talks to the audience more, Andy has a certain kind of cool / detached manner. Jeff has a certain calm presence, and to the small number of you who might understand what I mean, this is one of the many reasons why he was the only logical person who could have been behind the kit.

I’d been waiting thirty years to see Joel, and the man seemed nervous at first, and why wouldn’t he be, I was just part of the audience and I was nervous about the whole thing, and four songs in he went up to the microphone and they started in on “Raised By Tigers” and it was for me, in the crowd, one of the most emotional things I’ve ever experienced at a show, and I’ve been to over 400 of them. I’m not overstating it to say that finally seeing Joel satisfied one of my life goals. It is a goddamn miracle.

I was able to get my hands on Jeff’s set list at the end:

It did vary a little though. Hey, I found a way where beehiiv sort of formats well:

Couldn’t You Wait?
Treat the New Guy Right
Insomnia
Raised By Tigers
Garden City Blues
The Old You
Raging Bull
Dremate
Don’t Look Back
Don’t Make Plans This Friday
Little Sister
Give Me Some Skin
Swings
Nerves
Dirty Air

Never Met a Man I Didn’t Like
Pilot
Bar Ice
(I hope U) Don’t Survive
Clean’d Me Out

Slow Hands
Bones

Onto night two at Sleeping Village. See some of you there!