Freshly blessed by the New York Times, Gabriel Kahane arrives in Chicago Wednesday night as part of his Tour with No Name. He plays and sings at the St. Paul’s Cultural Center up at 2215 West North Avenue, a venue I know nothing about, but hey, if you aren’t up for a little exploring, you never find what you’re looking for, right? It’s all of $12, and parking is not so very inconvenient around there, if memory serves, and there’s an El stop not three blocks away, besides.
So now you know why it’s no problem to go, and once you listen over here, you know why you should go even if it is a problem. And did I mention he played piano on Sufjan Stevens’s “You Are the Blood” on the killer Dark Was the Night compilation that just came out and that everyone who’s anyone is raving about? He did. And they’re so cool that they’ll even allow classical people like me to post free streams of their songs.
In the past: In a monster post from 2007, I wrote about Kahane’s late-night set at Ravinia. “His vaguely scatological Craigslistlieder overflows with puckish wit, but he can be nice, too[.]” This post also presaged my dropping out of the 2007 Chicago Marathon due to some knee pain that ceased only when I stopped running up and down the lakefront for hours on end.