Rock and Roll always makes the holidaze go a bit better. So the night before Thanksgiving I run out to Zanies Too for a quick fix of rock power provided by Chicago’s finest, New Duncan Imperials. It was a nice chance to give and get some love from friends and neighbors who brave the mean streets of the Eastside together.


NDI at Zanies

Not long after I get there, Goodtime, NDI’s drummer, was bitching. “I’m not feeling it, guys, I need the audience to get a little closer.” He repeats this all night, even getting offstage and helping people move tables and chairs. Eventually, there are tables and chairs and people on the stage with them, and by the time they do their encore, “We’re and American Band” pretty much the entire audience is onstage with them.


NDI and Co.

Burning through such classics as “Velour,” “Hamhocks” and “White Trash Boogie” NDI front men, Skipper and Pigtail brought back the entertainment to rock and roll. Funny stories about JoJo Gunn concerts and confetti and toilet paper guns all made for one riotous time. Behind all the Jager-fueled whoopin’ and hollerin’, The NDI boys proved themselves to be a tight-ass rock machine, making the music substantial enough to make your ass shake. Bravo NDI, Bravo Zanies Too. Bring us more shows like this.

After the usual gluttony of thanksgiving, I head down to Nashville, Tennessee to see Bare Jr. rock the Exit / In.

Bobby Bare Jr. has a knack for surrounding himself with killer musicians. In the dozens of times I’ve seen him he’s never failed to rock it out and he has never sucked. I don’t care if it’s 5 drunks or 10,000 manic festival goers, Bobby Bare Jr. is the one man who has never let me down. Bare Jr., the band, was where it all started for Bobby, his first and still his greatest band.

When they took the stage after nearly 6 years apart, they didn’t hold back, playing with the kind of glee that overtakes an entire room. Mike Grimey, the pajama-clad lead guitarist, was on fire. He was on the floor, he was jumping around, he was giving it to each and every member of the crowd. His guitar worked magic on songs like “Tobacco Spit” and “Blew Me Off” and added a forlorn beauty to songs like “Loveless.” By the encore of an awesome mash-up of The Car’s “My Best Friend’s Girl” and the Who’s “Baba O’Reily” Grimes was a guitar god. Windmilling, kicking and spinning around on the speaker cabinet all at the same time.

The Many Moods of Grimey.






Bassist Dean Tomasek and Drummer Keith Brogdon held down a funkified bottom and played with the ease and fluidity that allowed the music to step right up to the edge.

On the other side of the stage, Tracy Hackney was playing the electric dulcimer, and rocking it out as much as the pajama god across the way. His lighting-speed attack upon the instrument was jaw-dropping. In his hands the dulcimer turns from a quiet backwood mayberry instrument into a rock and roll axe that transcends genres and helps to shape what makes Bare Jr. so special.

Bobby Bare Jr. was at times a bystander in his own play, but when he stepped up to the plate with his biscuits and gravy vocals, he had ample power to steer the out of control rock machine choogling along behind him. He seemed genuinely surprised and elated at what they were doing and it spurred him on to breathless heights that included a run at The Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” and a fun reading of “Soggy Daisy.” It all came together in the crazed, hard rocking “Mike Tyson” A song which Bobby announced that they had recently recorded.

The room was half full of old fans and younger kids too young to have seen Bare Jr. the first time around, yet the entire crowd was caught up in the hysteria, singing every word and enjoying every bit of the frenzied chaos that swirled before them.

Bobby hinted that this might just be the start of a new era for Bare Jr. the band. Good thing, too, because this is a band that America needs to see and hear.
-–Jeff Napier