Lissie was born in Rock Island, Illinois, one of the Quad Cities on the banks of the Mississippi River. It's the city that inspired Rock Island Line and that bore Bix Beiderbecke; it's the stuff of spring floods and pick-up trucks and bona fide blue-collar country music. She's a straight-talking Midwestern girl, all flaxen hair and big blue eyes, and this girl is smart and gutsy and tough, with a big old voice to match it: Laurel Canyon prettiness stewed in campfire and bourbon.

Lissie was always musical. Inspired by her Grandfather, a former international barbershop quartet champion, she would sing along at her Lutheran church but she was never a choirgirl. She scored the lead in an 80-date production of Annie for the local dinner theatre at the age of nine. "I was always humming," she says, "making up these little songs and melodies, writing these poems and putting them to music. I know if I'm feeling bummed out just the vibration of singing is kind of soothing to me."

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Kastle’s forward-thinking music results from his long-time love of hip-hop and R&B, fused with the magnetizing effect that dubstep, garage and bass-heavy music has had on him. Last year, his track “Stay Forever” from the eponymous EP reached the iTunes Top 10 Best Electronic Songs of 2012, and he embarked on his highly successful ‘Stay Forever’ tour across North America, and into Australia and New Zealand.

Having spent his youth in various bands xxxy finally decided to hang up his guitar and mic and began producing electronic music fuelled by his love at the time of drum and bass and techno. Through the influential record shop Pelikan Neck he picked up on the early forms of dubstep and began focusing his productions on bass heavy garage influenced tracks. This led to his first release as “forensix (mcr)” on Revolution music in 2006 with one of his first productions.

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This show will take place at the Athenaeum Theatre (2936 N. Southport).

It’s considered lazy journalism, or just plain old cliché, to say that an artist’s work gives you “the chills.” Or to describe how saltwater wells up in your jaded Internet-era eyes as you listen. But in the case of Laura Marling’s ambitious new LP Once I Was an Eagle, these things really do tend to happen. After seven years of playing music professionally, three albums, one BRIT Award (UK Grammy equivalent), two Mercury Prize nods, and one move across an ocean and a continent, the precocious and preternaturally talented British singer-songwriter has attained what sounds undeniably like vocal, emotional, and artistic maturity. It’s a record for the ages. Released at the age of 23.

Eagle is a concept album, sort of. It follows a thread of mythology, lyrically and metaphorically. An eagle and a dove, the devil, and the sea populate her cast of across he States. The loose narrative is this: A character, or perhaps alter ego, Rosie, journeys from heartbreak to defiant temptress to vulnerable lover to confident, contemplative woman. Through it all, a bird flies in and out of Rosie’s consciousness, attempting to show her the way as she grapples with her place in the world.

The songwriting process, to Marling, is less about musical conceits than about weighty life questions. “I was focusing a lot on the frustrations and the walls I was coming up against, whether I consider myself an artist,” she says. “Being an artist doesn’t necessarily mean you are aggrandizing yourself. It’s just taking what you’ve seen and what you’ve learned and translating the experience for other people to see and learn from.” The dance between independence and codependence, and issues of modern morality, were on her mind too. “I really wanted to question, in retrospect, the conventions of what it is to be alone or what it is to be in love or what it means to be a good living human person,” she says. “How do you continue to improve yourself as a human being if all you’re focusing on is not being alone?”

Appropriately enough, Marling has just decamped from East London to lush, hilly Silverlake, in Los Angeles, having fallen in love with the western U.S. on her tour. It’s that facing-the-fear thing again. She’s availing herself of the natural wonders of the West Coast—Big Sur, Joshua Tree, Sequoia National Park. Marling likes to tell a story about meeting a shaman in Oregon who directed her to the headwaters of Mount Shasta, where the water is said to have magical powers. She drove out in the pitch black, alone, and wandered into the stream, which she could sense only by its icy touch. Scared senseless, she collected a bottle full of water, and drank it. It tasted as pure and delicious as was promised, “like what regular water would taste like if you were on mushrooms, but I wasn’t, “ she says. “It’s the collection of these vulnerable experiences that allows you to have a different perspective.”

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Pokey LaFarge is a musician, songwriter, bandleader, entertainer, innovator and preservationist, whose well-rounded arsenal of talents has placed him at the forefront of American music. Over the last decade, Pokey has won the hearts of music lovers across the globe with his creative mix of early jazz, string ragtime, country blues and western swing, all while writing songs that ring true and fine in both spirit and sound. His music transcends the confines of genre, continually challenging the notion that tradition-bearers fail to push musical boundaries. Cleverly striding between numerous forms of traditional American music, Pokey has crafted a genre all his own, marked in its accessible ingenuity.

Rather than merely conjuring up half-forgotten imagery of days past, Pokey is a lyrical storyteller, the plotdelivered smoothly through his dynamic vocals. One moment he shouts a line and the next he croons above his archtop guitar, backed by an often ornate, acoustic instrumentation that allows for nothing less than masterful instrumental skill. Both on stage and off, Pokey’s effortless wit and approachable demeanor never fails to charm audiences, giving way to a live music experience that manages to be grandiose and unassuming all at once. Born in the heartland of America and based in St. Louis, Missouri, Pokey’s Midwestern appeal and infallible charisma welcomes his audiences with open arms.

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Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr is a Detroit-based based recording and songwriting project created by Josh Epstein and Daniel Zott. The project’s inception was the result of a simple idea many of us get regularly, but often fail to act upon.

In late 2009 Josh Epstein picked up the phone and dialed Daniel Zott. He had just seen Zott playing a show in Detroit, and was impressed by the performance, songwriting and charisma he had witnessed on stage. A musician himself, Epstein recognized his style wasn’t entirely similar to Zott’s, but felt their two differing headspaces would form an interesting combination. As such, even though they were both fairly busy with other musical endeavors at the time, he suggested they join forces and attempt something together. The next day, the two got together and worked on a song Epstein had been kicking around in his head… a track called “Simple Girl”.

Creativity can be an endlessly difficult thing to harness on one’s own terms, and thus the creative process can be a difficult thing to share with another human being. But, If there is a lesson to be learned in the formation of Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr it is to not be afraid of reaching out to a complete stranger and seeing where it might take you. Epstein and Zott quickly learned the two had a great deal to offer each other in the studio as the project meshed almost instantly

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DePaul Men's a Cappella, better known as DMaC, was founded in the spring of 2003 at DePaul University in Chicago. Though it started as a quartet of guys merely searching for a causal outlet to sing, DMaC has since transformed into a rather random, high-octane, and passionate group of urban fellas.

Music is their passion. “Urban rustic” is their style. DMaC Love is their mission. What exactly is DMaC love, you ask? Catch one of their live performances and you’ll understand. From a broad array of Chicago events to different schools across the country, this scraggly and lovable collegiate group loves nothing more than to perform. Their favorite place, of course, is for their fellow DePaul peers. No musical genre is off limits, and no place is too serious to have some fun.

This spring marks DMaC's tenth year. With a strong alumni presence, a senior spotlight, a new album, a professional rock venue, and a wave of new vocal performances, DMaC's spring show at Lincoln Hall will one you cannot afford to miss. Please join DMaC on May 25th, 2013 as they honor a rich and growing history of musical fusion.

As DMaC alumni Vasilios 'Bill' Katsibaros once wrote, “They're a group of guys that sing.” And sing they shall.

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The birth of Anamanaguchi must have taken place in the middle of mankind's greatest sugar high. Oh, there could have been 'shrooms there too, but we're betting that it had more to do with loads and loads of pure cane sugar, swallowed in liquid, cubed, granulated or processed form, in copious amounts. It was Jolt soda, cake, ice cream, candy and everything else in between. It was on the sunniest of days and all colors were vibrant and searing.

The band, an instrumental electronic band from New York, was drawn to Nintendo game consoles, arcade games and all of the plinking and high-score sounds that were coming out of them, ringing in its ears like magical coos. It immediately set out to write punishing and inspired music that would comprise a mixtape that would be the chosen composition of the sky to accompany every plane jumper, skydiver and parachuter. It's a little known fact that the second anyone takes a leap out of the open hatch of an airplane, thousands of feet above ground, for any recreational purpose whatsoever, the music of Anamanaguchi is suddenly blasting into the ears of those plummeting folks. It's louder and more exhilarating that any of us down here on the safe ground could ever imagine and it's a secret that those jumpers keep to themselves, having signed a binding Anamanguchi non-disclosure agreement before pulling the chute cord. The bronzed music was chosen for such an important placement, in part, because as those jumpers land on the run, often on a beach or an open field, the only thing they want to do is jump up and down and rage out with some freaky dance moves for 5-to-10 minutes. The music, as contractually obligated, continues on - at obscene volumes - for that amount of time and these people do their dances.

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If there is one person, who has been causing a stir on the international club circuit recently, it is Barcelona’s John Talabot. Already his debut “My Old School“ (which is meant literally by the way) on Permanent Vacation in 2009 and shortly after that the single “ Sunshine”, which he put out on his own Hivern Disc imprint, made him one of the most promising musicians of the Spanish electronic scene. And those two releases also already set the mark for John Talabot’s unparalleled music: raw, loopy, heavy on the kick drum, sample based, moderate on the tempo, distorted on the drums and light years away from the clean and ever revolving house sound of today. This unique style which also blends influences from afro beat, Detroit techno, Chicago house and cosmic disco, but also northern soul or the energy of Flamenco, immediately turned some heads around. James Murphy, Âme and Aeroplane started including Talabot music in their sets like it was the most natural thing. However – and this is quite rare – he not only gained legions of fans in the house and disco community, but also amongst the leftfield pop and indie rock followers. NME and Resident Advisor both had “Breakthrough“ features on John Talabot and he can be proud of a “Best New Music“ dubbing on Pitchfork. (Being rather elusive on showing his face in magazines or the web it also came to some funny rumors that John Talabot was the alter ego of a well-known techno producer from Detroit).

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"In a market place over saturated with corporate created talent, MER delivers a refreshing reminder that musicians with originality and heart still exist!" - CHICAGO TRIBUNE

MER teams up with Chicago's finest for another installment of MER's Music Showcase. With the huge success of the January residency at Schubas Tavern, MER brings together some of the city's finest front-men for an intimate songwriter circle. Hear the stories behind the songs and experience the music in the raw state in which they were written.

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For the uninitiated, Dead Confederate is a five-piece rock band from Athens, GA whose music runs the gamut of infectious psychedelia to a uniquely southern and ferocious dirge. Although, placing labels on a band like this is rather pointless as their sound seems a constant and fluid evolution; they never seem content with abiding by the guides of one sub-genre, so maybe it's best we just leave it at "rock" for simplicity's sake. Dead Confederate, in name and sound, formed in 2006 in Atlanta, GA before moving to Athens shortly thereafter. In these six years, the band has become one of the most revered live acts in the nation by fans and peers alike. Touring relentlessly in the US and overseas, they've been handpicked to join a number of their musical heroes on the road (REM, Dinosaur Jr, Meat Puppets... to name a few) and play some rather high- profile gigs (Bonnaroo to Bumbershoot, SXSW and CMJ, Late Night with Conan O'Brien... also to name a few). Dead Confederate has released two full-length records to-date, 2008's "Wrecking Ball" and 2010's "Sugar", as well as two EP's, a live album, and an eighteen-song compilation of home recordings. Their third full-length, "In The Marrow", will be making it's long-anticipated appearance on April 16, 2013 via Spiderbomb Records/ Redeye.

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Taking its name from novelist Jack London’s 1904 seafaring adventure, Sea Wolf has evolved organically from its hermetic origins in Alex Brown Church’s living room into a muscular, full-bodied musical entity with passion to burn. After adopting the sobriquet, Church burst onto the music scene in two-fisted fashion with the EP, Get to the River Before It Runs Too Low, and the subsequent full-length debut album, Leaves in the River, about which Interview magazine observed, “His music is both erudite and unvarnished, a blend of swirling melodies, literary balladry and damaged art-rock composition.”

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