Fri, Oct 19 - 9pm - $15adv/$17door

 Dead Rider Trio Featuring Mr. Paul Williams features Mr. Paul Williams on words and performance on top of Dead Rider playing their wicked, rumbling inspirations.  Let's assume that if you're reading this, you got the Dead Rider part covered: three guys making a THICK-ASS sound, dipped in corrosive and absinthe and still steaming from the bath; pulsing funkily, flashing blue desperate images! Whipped up by the tour dates and promo cycle of Crew Licks, Dead Rider were feeling hot enough to jam, and just let the tape roll! This is where the intrepid Mr. Paul Williams came in. An occasional character in Todd Rittmann's life over the years, a ghostly presence since they first met back in Hamburg in the late 90A mad man bound to convince the people around him of something beautiful that exists only in his mind. Mr. Paul Williams thinks big, with no concern for the details, a living testament to the supernatural, transformational power of belief. This is his art.  Dead Rider Trio Featuring Mr. Paul Williams, while rife with intention, is an automatic/exquisite corpse four-car pile-up, improvised in three different spaces at three different times. Basically, everybody involved was hearing it for the first time when they did it. Put it this way, you'll only have ONE chance in your life to hear this for the first time - and chances are, you won't be playing an instrument when you do!  Matt, Todd and White Christmas - walking the crooked path of rock with a mutant gusto belonging to no one but Dead Rider (well, probably to the people listening to Dead Rider, also!). Williams' words that you think might be the point are probably not - Paul's as much a fan of misdirection and displaced accent as the Dead Rider Trio, and their meeting is therefore one of shared causation and correlation! It's a jammer, a butt-bouncer, a tad oblique and a little hallucinatory - but it's definitely all about things. And it'll rock ya.

 The broad outlines of the story are by now familiar. How a certain young man from Clarksboro, NJ, one Daniel Smith, having for a time turned his back on the culture and musical milieu in which he was raised up, which is to say having (temporarily, to go off to school) turned his back on impeccable folk and gospel bona fides in the person of his father, and having left behind the aggregation of his family, a large, singing musical brood, headed out into the world to see a few things. And yet in the course of doing so this Daniel Smith realized, with the kind of suddenness that we might associate with insight or revelation, that his family was a blessing, and that he needed to sing about this family. And not only did he need to sing about his family and the faith that sustained it, he needed, again, to sing and play with his family. The year of this revelation was 1994.  Daniel Smith, had drunk deep of the dark fringes of indie rock and outsider art, including and not limited to the likes of Sonic Youth, Captain Beefheart, Yoko Ono, Pere Ubu, Andy Warhol, Howard Finster, et al. And on the other hand he was not kidding about the purity and complexity and seriousness of his faith. He wrote (and writes) fearlessly about spiritual experience, in a way that ought to be the envy of all these gauzy and simulated gospel artists you hear out there. This Smith was loaded down with paradoxes. He was alpha and omega, he was light and dark, he was sacred and entertaining, he was folk/gospel and he was indie/prog/punk.  

 Nick Alvarez has been fixated on drumset since grade school band throughout his musical experience and education. He prefers using a small, minimal drumset of a particular make and sound alongside a minimal percussion set up as a launching pad for musical conversation. Rhythmic navigation, improvisation, instant composition and health have been an avenue for Nick approaching on 26 years, and is no different to him than playing in the woods, swimming, skateboarding and bicycling in mind, spirit and economy of motion.A music lover in general and being in multiple bands of different genres at the same time he finds extreme joy in the abundance of searching, process and sound. Experimental, Jazz and Improvised music of many kinds are usually first on his list of desired musical scenarios.Chicago has been home for almost 20 years yet there will be moments he shows up at places all around you're not expecting; very much a mysterious running theme in this instrumentalists' outgoing independence. Playing music with everybody as much as possible every day. You can find him also taking the interesting social rewards and risks of busking with a band on the street daily and weekly. Demonstrating elements of defiance and abundance all in one. Having studied with percussionist Chad Edward Taylor upon arriving in Chicago in '99, Nick also draws constant inspiration from guitarist Jeff Parker, as well as independent music venues and recordings from all over.His apartment in Pilsen has been a fixture for friends to improvise weekly. All of which can be found on his YouTube channel. The Ghost and Bell Ensemble is a continuing representation of the working and thriving improvised music community in Chicago that many of us call upon daily for performance, touring and recording desires and needs.