Roots Salon Presents
Beau O’Reilly and Edward Reardon
Deep Ballads and Odd Blues
With Special Guest Willa Moore
Saturday February 25
8 PM
Roots Salon
773.203.7661
or email roots@jamieoreilly.com
Private address call for reservation
“I am at my most joyful on stage, in a band, singin raw or sweet.” Roots Salon presents a full evening of provocative and original music, with Jamie as Salonnaire. Older bro Beau O’Reilly covers Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan and Greg Brown, and dances through his own dense and magical material, while poet-composer-improvisational artist Ed Reardon accompanies on keyboards. And contributes his own stuff.
Willa Moore opens the evening with a set of original songs: highly theatrical compositions with brainy lyrics and surprising notions that fire-up the senses, and engulf the heart. With Ron Scroggin on guitar.
Beau O’Reilly
Beau O’Reilly is a founding member of the Curious Theater Branch, The Crooked Mouth, and Maestro Subgum and the Whole. He is co-curator of the Rhinoceros Theater Festival, a frequent contributor to This American Life and a professor of playwrighting at the School of the Art Institutes of Chicago. The author of over 75 original plays, he is also a working actor who appeared most recently with Victory Gardens Theater and Stillpoint Theater Collective. Beau was named producer of the year in 2006, and his production of No Danger of the… Spiritual Thing was awarded best ensemble by the Orgie Committee. He has produced, curated and directed work at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Steppenwolf Studio and Links Hall. http://curioustheatrebranch.com/about/
http://www.facebook.com/thecrookedmouth
BEAU and JOHN STARRS appear in The Boho Dance
at the Poetry Foundation on March 10 and 11. Read more.
LISTEN TO BEAU, Dancin Round in Your Bones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b15Wwx4zF4
Beau O’Reilly Illustration by Luke Armitstead
Edward Reardon
Edward Reardon is a composer, arranger, pianist, and keyboardist and versatile improviser. LISTEN TO ED: http://edwardreardon.com/
Willa Moore
Willa Moore’s highly theatrical compositions intersperse fast-paced spoken word passages with snatches of sublime melody, and erratic rhythms–conjuring up images of a Brechtian heroine on the edge of a battlefield, or a melancholic waitress in an all-night diner. Accompanying herself on guitar and violin, Willa music was forged in the startling world of nursing homes. She’s been called the “Kurt Weil of Macomb, IL”, by the Director of Pest Control and Senior Living. Another “fan” describes her as “Christine Lavin from Hell.”
Listen to Willa
“There is something quite astonishing here a mystical blend of Bertolt Brecht, Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits, and something completely and remarkably different. Willa’s lyrical and musical gifts have coalesced around a group of songs that convey a deeply poetic spirit, sometimes bleak, sometimes joyful, sometimes both simultaneously.” (Stuart Rosenberg, SPACE)
Willa’s next recording Griffith Park is being recorded and produced by Stuart Rosenberg. LISTEN HERE: Hippodrome © Willa Moore
Ron Scroggin
Guitarist Ron is heard on Willa’s newest recording, and will join her on some tunes at the Winter Roots Salon. Ron played, recorded or jammed with Bo Diddley, Al Kooper, Berry Oakley, Steve Goodman, John Prine and Bonnie Koloc. He is the only performer in the world who opened for Blue Cheer and W H Auden.
