The indie rock band Dickie will perform a live concert on Friday, March 28th at Bishop Hill Creative Commons, located at 309 N. Bishop Hill St, Bishop Hill, IL. The show will begin with a potluck dinner at 6PM, with music starting at 7PM, and is open to guests of all ages. A $20-30 donation is suggested. Trevor Sensor will open the show.
Dick Prall, the band leader of Dickie, is a master of what a recent interviewer called “self-deprecating indie rock.” For almost a decade, the 55-year-old Iowa artist has been best known as Dickie, the loving nickname that his late mother bestowed on him before she passed away in 2013. Dickie’s newest release, the Headful of Hiss EP, is a gleaming testament to his ever-strengthening gifts as a songwriter, spanning lush folk, irresistibly catchy pop, yearning alternative, windswept heartland rock, and the timeless sensibility of ’60s classics. Produced in Des Moines by Bryan Vanderpool of illustrious folk-pop duo The Well Pennies, the record comprises five exquisitely well-wrought songs that cloak ruminations on anxiety, substance abuse, and depression in majestic, sweetly tuneful, aw-shucks beauty.
Prall grew up in Sheffield, Iowa, and he lost both his father and his older brother at a very young age. A youthful admirer of the Beatles and R.E.M., he didn’t take up guitar until he was 25. Four years later he had already released his debut (as Dick Prall Band), 1998’s Somewhere About Here, which the alt-country bible No Depression celebrated as a “track-by-track monster.” He became a linchpin of the Chicago scene, and his next album (as Starch Martins), 2001’s Dressing Up the Failure, won praise from the Chicago Sun-Times for achieving “a brand of rootsy power-pop that is smart, introspective, and filled with great hooks.” His solo debut, 2005’s Fizzlebuzzle, was “a box of chocolate for your ears” (Performing Songwriter), while 2007’s Weightless featured Glen Phillips on one of its “daring, original songs” (Chicago Tribune). Dickie’s self-titled 2015 debut album topped several year-end “Best Of” lists. The follow-up, 2019’s Minus Thieves, was “delightfully out of step” (Little Village) and co-produced by Pat Sarsone (Wilco). With Headful of Hiss, the group’s latest release, Prall says, “My goal is to write a song that I like and I’m confident enough to share with other people. And that’s really it.”
Known for his distinctly husky vocals, intellectual lyrics, and atmospheric folk-laden, punk-infused indie rock, Trevor Sensor is an American singer/songwriter from Sterling, Illinois. Growing up in the small city (occasionally deemed the “former hardware capital of the world”), the abandoned factories and working-class bars that adorn the rust belt landscape ultimately fed into what the young songwriter would use to fuel his musical creations. This, alongside the elusive idea of pop culture and stardom, inspired Sensor to try and escape the city himself. He eventually relocated to Iowa, where he studied literature and philosophy at college. The words of great minds such as Marcel Proust, Søren Kierkegaard, and beat generation authors William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, would be some of the vital elements to Sensor’s art. He went on to discover his musical voice in a number of bands before penning his own songs, and after a number of live performances, he caught the attention of Indiana-based indie label Jagjaguar.
For tickets and more information please visit xroadscc.org.
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