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cSHORTY’S R & B BLUES BAND West- side promoter Henry L. Survillion (aka Shorty) puts together a rotating crew of accomplished blues, soul, and R & B sidemen for this weekly Friday night gig. Many of them have done road work with well-known names, and among them they’ve got just about every old-school style at their disposal. That’s the idea: for the band to be able to effortlessly back an eclectic parade of vocalists, from veteran crooner Still Bill to feisty soul-blues singers like Lady Kat, Miss Jesi’, and Z.Z. Hill Jr. (Cicero Blake, an established contemporary soul-blues star, has also been known to make an appearance.) The music and the format are designed to evoke a vintage Regal Theatre revue, but this is no exercise in nostalgia: the commitment and chops of all concerned make everything feel immediate. a 10 PM, Natural Rhythm Forty Plus Social Club, 2000 W. 59th, 773-776-9285, 30+. F –David Whiteis
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cCHRIS FOREMAN & DAN TRUDELL When Green Mill owner Dave Jemilo bought a second Hammond B-3 last year, he must have had nights like this in mind: the city’s two leading jazz-organ men going head-to-head, pedals to the metal. Dueling organs come up a lot less often than almost any other instrumental matchup, since a single B-3 (with its multiple keyboards and timbres) can mimic half an orchestra. But Dan Trudell and Chris Foreman make fine sparring partners. Foreman, anchor of the Deep Blue Organ Trio and Henry Johnson’s Organ Express, was inspired by Jack McDuff and Jimmy McGriff, the iconic “second wave” organists who followed the pioneering Jimmy Smith, so his florid lines simmer with blues. That contrasts neatly with Trudell’s expansive solos, which emphasize the less ornamented, less bluesy approach of Larry Young and, more recently, Larry Goldings. They’ll be joined by Andy Brown on guitar and Greg Rockingham on drums, but I’m guessing those guys will be lucky to get a solo in edgewise. a 8 PM, Green Mill, 4802 N. Broadway, 773-878-5552, $10. –Neil Tesser
cpony up! Now that the Organ has split up, this Montreal four-piece looks like the top contender to become the next all-gal Canadian indie-pop phenomenon. Pony Up! attracted the patronage of Ben Lee early on–he signed the group to his Ten Fingers imprint and in 2004 released a split single with them. Dim Mak, which absorbed Lee’s label, adopted the band and released their self-titled mini LP the following year. The first proper Pony Up! full-length, Make Love to the Judges With Your Eyes, which came out last spring, benefits from clean, unfussy production by two big-name indie engineers, Brian Paulson (Slint, Wilco) and Howard Ian Bilerman (Wolf Parade, Arcade Fire), who leave plenty of breathing room for the poignant melodies and dewy-eyed lyrics of front women Laura Wills (keyboards) and Sarah Moundroukas (guitar). The band has a sound that people are more likely to call charming than awesome: the singing misses a note here and there and the drumming is sometimes a bit shaky. But with memorable tunes like “Only Feelgood” and “Dance for Me,” Pony Up! doesn’t exactly need to worry about ruthless technical precision. We Will Eat Rats to Survive opens. a 10 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276-3600 or 866-468-3401, $8. –J. Niimi
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crhys chatham guitar trio Rhys Chatham’s brand-new release, A Crimson Grail (Table of the Elements), is beyond epic. The composition that gives the disc its name was scored for 400 electric guitars and performed only once, in October 2005, under the towering dome of Paris’s Basilique du Sacre Coeur, which acted as a resonating chamber to generate huge clouds of sound that swooped and spiraled like an albatross riding an updraft. It’s a logical extension of his 1989 composition An Angel Moves Too Fast to See, scored for 100 guitars and staged 20 times to date, but Chatham laid out the basic vocabulary of A Crimson Grail–the use of overtones as melodic material and the combination of classical rigor with rock’s wall of amplified sound–30 years ago, in one of his very earliest pieces for the instrument. Guitar Trio is the essence of simplicity. On record it lasts for eight minutes, with three guitarists methodically strumming first one, then three, then six strings to create an enormous tension that’s only partly relieved by the myriad overtones that swirl around the relentless pulse of the rhythm section; on this tour Chatham plans to beef up the size of the ensemble and play two 20-minute versions of the piece, one with the drummer on hi-hat only and another employing the full kit. In each city he and guitarist David Daniell will be joined by several local players–in this case Todd Rittman, Robert Lowe, Doug McCombs, Jeff Parker, and Ben and Adam Vida on guitars, Josh Abrams on bass, and John McEntire on drums. White/Light and Good Stuff House open. a 10 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276-3600 or 866-468-3401, $10. –Bill Meyer
