[ATTENDED: June 24, 2023] Illinois
I was looking forward to seeing this show, but I felt bad that I was going out two nights in a row so I asked my wife if she wanted to come along. I never ask her along to show I know she’ll hate, and I know sometimes she’s iffy about going out at all, but she said yes, and that made it all the more fun.
The opening band was Illinois who I had never heard of, but whom the crowd absolutely had. The crowd sang along to almost every song and I’m guessing that if I knew the music a little better I would have had as much fun as everyone else.
As it was, it felt like a fantastic cover band playing covers that I’d never heard before.
Turns out Illinois is from Bucks County, PA, so they’re locals. And the locals were really into seeing them.
The songs had a stomping kinda country feel and I was never exactly sure what vibe the band was going for.
As the show opened, singer Chris Archibald was playing a banjo. According to Wikipedia, the rest of the band is Martin Hoeger (bass), John Paul Kuyper (drums) Jason Buzolits (keyboard), and Andrew Lee (guitar).
The banjo was a touchstone but it didn’t really indicate the nature of the show. Sure, some of the songs were real stompers and “Tractor Show” was a full on almost jokey country song (we don’t play that one very often). And a song like “She’s So Blonde” was another stomping song.
Archie, as he was called, switched to guitar and the conversion to stomping bar band was complete.
The vibe from the band was casual and fun. I enjoyed them enough, and some of the songs were just down right fun like “Queen Flea” with a repeated “Yeah!” as a fun piece of punctuation. “Screen Door” even had a kind of cheesy keyboard solo in the middle which was fun.
Their most recent album cam out in 2021, but interestingly they only played one song from it, “Strumbelina” with is loping bassline. I assume the songs that aren’t on an album are new. They seem about due for a new album.
It was during Mondo Cozmo’s set that he (Mondo) revealed that he was like a younger brother to the guys in Illinois (they’re all from roughly the same place). So like when he was 15 and they were 17 they took him under their wing and taught him how to write songs and such. That made me like Illnois more in retrospect
Although they still felt like a fun bar band.
- Oh Asia ∇
- Tractor Show £
- She’s So Blonde ⊗
- Queen Flea §
- Screen Door ®
- Shoes Off
- Strumbelina ⇑
- Don’t Regret a Thing
- Paid to Wait §
- Charm
- Old Saloon ⊗
- Nosebleed ®
∇ Revenge of Some Kid (2006)
® What the Hell Do I Know? (2008)
⊗ Adventures of Kid Catastrophe (2009)
£ Lemonade Stand (2011) [demos]
§ Shine (2015)
⇑ Shady Lane (2021)
I Just Read About That... 
I like to refer to illinois as the coolest band that nobody has ever heard of. Not that it matters, because very few people outside of Philadelphia have ever heard of them, but The Adventures of Kid Catastrophe was actually released in 2009 and not 2014 and Lemonade Stand was more of a demos/digital release, so they went a pretty long time between Kid Catastrophe (2009) > Shine (2015) > Shady Lane (2021).
It looks like Arch is spending time with Mondo Cozmo now, plus his side project Archawah, so it might be some years before the next illinois album release.