Welcome to REELtoREAL, where ReelChicago contributor, music producer and musician Lou Carlozo takes on the city’s vibrant recording and music scene.
The three gals in Me You & Her are all high school age, but their creamy vocal blend and sublime style make them sound as though they’ve done a few lifetimes worth of crooning in that lil’ ol’ church behind the honky tonk, as heard on a new Christmas EP.
Olivia Harris, 15, Hannah Rand, 17, and Alaina Stacey, 17 are not only longtime friends, but also attend Chicago’s LaSalle Street Church (where Hanna’s father, Gary, is associate pastor of worship and the arts). And for Christmas, they decided to team up for a six-song EP, “A Lil’ More Christmas,” at Gravity Studios, featured in our first REELtoREAL column.
A seventh song, “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” is available for download, with all proceeds going to the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Click here to watch the making of the EP.
The acoustic-folk EP includes Christmas standards (“O Holy Night” and “Let It Snow”) with an original Hanna co-wrote with her parents (“With Nothing”). This music goes down smoother than a gingerbread latte, and captures the spirit of the season with all the gentle glimmer of a twilight snowfall.
You can buy the EP, and catch Me You & Her, 7:30 p.m. Sunday Dec. 23 at Wishbone Restaurant, 3300 N. Lincoln Ave. There’s no cover, though it is a restaurant, so bring an appetite for food as well as music. Call 773/549-2663 for more information.
Spectacular holiday spectacular for Milne
REELtoREAL would be remiss not to mention Richard Milne’s Local Anesthetic Holiday Spectacular, which will air a 20-year “best of” special on WXRT-FM 93.1 on Sunday, Dec. 16 with a re-broadcast on Sunday, Dec. 23, 2011. Showtime both weeks is 7 p.m.
The entire show is composed of short musical Christmas messages from Chicago bands and artists, and Milne—a longtime champion of local music—has more musical messages in his file than Santa has elves.
Expect to hear holiday greetings from the famous, the gone-but-not-forgotten, and the just plain strange. While you’re at it, thank Milne for being a local music Santa these past 20-plus years via his Facebook page.
Polyphonic history at the Logan Square Auditorium
Call it odd—and certainly cramped—but Chicago music history was made Tuesday night at the Logan Square Auditorium, where the Polyphonic Spree played an incredible “Holiday Extravaganza” show for a packed house.
At one point, the Spree—which numbered 17 members for this show—was joined by Windy City circus punk marching band Mucca Pazza, whose members number around 30.
So let’s do the math: 1 band + 1 band = 47 members (give or take a few Mucca Pazza cheerleaders with pom-poms). And that makes for likely the largest conglomeration of two bands ever in one Chicago rock show.
A former Chicago Tribune music editor/writer, Lou Carlozo is also an accomplished producer and studio musician who landed a remix in Disney’s 2011 movie “Prom.” He’s also a co-owner of Kingsize Sound Labs (Wilco, Neko Case, My Morning Jacket).
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