★ Friday Fireworks ★ Helicopter Rides ★ Wine & Craft Beer Garden ★ Food Trucks ★ Craft & Retail Marketplace

20 illinoisentertainer. com june 2018

★ Family Stage ★ Saturday Car Show

★ Frank’ s Annual Kraut Eating Contests

★ 50 / 50 Raffle with chance to win up to $ 10,000

We ' re Not in Oglesby Anymore

By Kelley Simms photo by Marisa Klug Morataya hicago-based punk / blues band The Claudettes pull out all the stops on their third full-length album, Dance Scandal in the Gymnasium!, released last month. The 12 eclectic tracks are a musical melting pot of sound that mines various genres, including piano-driven Chicago blues, improvisational soul / jazz and heartfelt punk / rock, all delivered with a quirky, tin-pan alley, neo-vaudevillian swagger. The band consists of heavy-handed pianist Johnny Iguana( aka Brian Berkowitz), endearing and seductive vocalist Berit Ulseth, versatile bassist / singer Zach Verdoorn, and spaztastic guest drummer Michael Caskey, who’ s filling in for regular drummer Danny Yost, who recently suffered a stroke.

When Philadelphia-born Iguana wasn’ t listening to punk rock growing up, he was playing classical music on an old acoustic piano. When he was 15 years old, his uncle sent him two influential cassette tapes; Chicago bluesman Junior Wells’ Hoodoo Man Blues and jazz organist Jimmy Smith’ s Organ Grinder Swing, Iguana’ s been hooked on the blues. After moving to New York City at age 22, Iguana met his idol, Junior Wells, joined his band and relocated to Chicago where he’ s lived ever since.

Iguana formed The Claudettes as a two-man house band( piano and drums) and secured a residency at Claudette’ s Bar in Oglesby, Illinois in 2010. Their titular namesake germinated from the extraordinarily eccentric bar owner, who put the band on wages, then schlepped them out to other dive bars after she sold her establishment. Straight out of a whacky burlesque show, Claudette would often interrupt the band on stage to take drink orders. And at one time, the group even donned scrolling name tags that advertised drink and chicken wing specials.

“ We’ ve broken free from those whole dark early days for several years now,” Iguana admitted.“ We used to pay homage to that by continuing to take these scrolling drink special licenses with us as just sort of a reminder of the shitholes we’ ve played in the past. How easy it is to be profound with what you’ re doing when you’ re competing against TV and chicken wing specials. I sort of got away from doing that because we’ ve been writing a lot of really emotional songs. I think at the time that made sense; we were making a comment with that. But with the material that we’ re doing now, it would be a distraction.”

The material Iguana is alluding to is on the band’ s latest album, Dance Scandal in the Gymnasium!, which was produced by Mark Neill, the Grammy-winning producer who was responsible for tweaking the knobs on The Black Keys 2010 commercial break-through album, Brothers. Dance Scandal was recorded using vintage equipment- nostalgic microphones, Marxophones, Mellotrons, rare fuzz pedals and an array of percussion instruments. Neill was very precise with what he wanted to capture during the recording process. He even mixed and mastered the album because he didn’ t want anyone else messing with his creation.

“ It was a very interesting experience,” Iguana said of working with Neill.“ He has all this vintage equipment and a really strong concept of what’ s the right way to record and what’ s the wrong way to record. He called us an acoustic jazz-piano punk band, so he recorded us like an acoustic band. He had us playing at a very quiet volume. It was a real challenge for our drummer because he had to barely hit the drums. Because by doing so, you can use vintage mikes, and you can use your vintage pre-amps and really turn them up. And that’ s where you get a big, fat, round sound. It separated the men from the boys to record that way.”

Aside from the band’ s immense musical chops, Iguana’ s social commentary and character-based storytelling are equally impressive. From the heartfelt“ Pull Closer to Me” to the desperate yearning of“ Death and Traffic,” to the absurdness of the information super-highway with“ Naked on the Internet” and“ Give It All Up for Good,” to the endless flag-waving political barbs of“ Bill Played Saxophone,” the band covers a broad musical spectrum.“ Generally speaking, people say it’ s hard to define what the band is,” Iguana said.“[ We’ re ] not trying to be one of those [ obvious genre ] bands, which is why a lot of head-scratching happens. Like,‘ What is this?’”

When it comes to the business aspects of the band, Iguana is multifaceted. He writes all the music and lyrics, maintains the band’ s vehicle, books the gigs, and coordinates public relations and radio promotions. But he lives for the live shows.“ What’ s important is pouring your heart into your performance,” Iguana said.“ We put so much heart into our live shows. All I can do is try to do that more- to put the heart out in front of people and to write good, entertaining, moving music. To me, getting to travel to great cities of the world, playing our own music is the most enriching and rewarding thing in the world.”