![]() ![]() It is here, not within the accursed confines of the Metro or the Double Door, that the Chicago punk scene was spawned in the early ’80s. However, when going to see great rock bands, nothing quite compares with the history and the ambiance of the Fireside. And, as a rule, the brash sound system gives everyone within its battered doors a headache that lingers for days. While the bathrooms are clean, there’s always a rather loud conference on human sexuality going on in one of the back stalls. The beer is always flat and warm the bartenders are always surly. Stranded out in the midst of the West Side jungle, the Fireside is almost inaccessible by public transportation, and it smells vaguely like a hobo encampment. The concert area is tiny, consisting of the thin sliver of floor in between the lanes and the wall. In person, it’s worse.Ī Chicago legend that is, by day, a beat-up Naugahyde nightmare of a bowling alley/seedy lounge straight out of the bowels of the ’70s, the Fireside transforms under the cover of night into an all-ages concert venue-successfully combining the short-comings of both types of venues into one massively improbable structure. With their powers combined, Sweet Undertow is pulling fans worldwide out to float in the soft soft sea.On paper, the Fireside Bowl is a terrible venue. He met Jim Semitekol and Dave Tavel and the three of them formed the bedrock at the bottom of the Sweet Undertow sound. Til one day he landed penniless in San Francisco and started writing songs, working out the parts alone at night on Ocean Beach, singing into the wind over the Pacific Ocean.įrom there he built a band and became a fixture of San Francisco's music scene, headlining clubs and building a community. In Vietnam he played guitar in nightclubs with The Apollo Band, cruising around Ho Chi Minh City on the backs of motor bikes. He spent his nights knocking back moonshine shots with communist construction workers in the basement, chasing them with bites of raw pork. ![]() In Ukraine he lived in The Barracks, a rough housing project in a town near where the war would start. He was stalked by a leopard in the Himalayas and his story nearly ended in a four dollar per night room in Calcutta. He held onto the roof of a truck racing down a mountain road getting washed out by a storm in Sohra, the rainiest place on Earth. With that gumbo in his musical mind, he took flight, traveling the world for years with his trusty guitar Darlene in tow.Īlone in India, he spent nights in Parvati Nagar, a slum in Mumbai, where he ran through the corridors throwing colors in a country-wide paint war called Holi. ![]() And when he was 16 he heard Johnny Cash Live at Folsom Prison for the first time. He discovered punk rock and spent nights stage diving at the Fireside Bowl. Like Joe Cocker singing with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the heir to Tom Waits, Sweet Undertow's modern musical cousins include The Raconteurs, Wilco, Nathaniel Rateliff and Jason Hawk HarrisĮddy Undertow was born & raised in Chicago with a steady diet of blues on his daddy's stereo. ![]() The band has been called a mix of soul-blues, art-country and folk rock. Sweet Undertow is a modern explosion of new sound, boiled in blues and simmered in shakedowns. ![]()
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