Hideout acts to back Barack's D.C. hoopla
INAUGURATION | Club plans Jan. 19 ball
The Chicago music community is preparing to have a ball on the eve of Barack Obama's inauguration in Washington.
The Hideout roadhouse will co-host "The Big Shoulders Ball: Chicago Celebrates Change" at 7 p.m. Jan. 19 at the Black Cat, D.C.'s premier independent music club. Featured performers include Andrew Bird, Tortoise, the Waco Brothers, Eleventh Dream Day, Jon Langford, Sally Timms, David "Honeyboy" Edwards, Ken Vandermark, Freakwater, Icy Demons and Judson Clairborne, plus guests to be announced. The ball is co-hosted by Interchange, a Chicago-based nonpartisan, volunteer effort to engage citizens in the democratic process through underground music and art.
(AP file)
Proceeds will go to Chicago marching bands from King and Dunbar high schools who are traveling to the inauguration. Tickets, $50, may be purchased at the Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, or at blackcatdc.com. Ballgoers are being encouraged to wear funky thrift-store formal attire, recalling Jimmy Carter's administration.
Two buses transporting 110 musicians, friends and family will depart from the Hideout at 7 a.m. Jan. 19. They will drive nonstop to the D.C. area.
"Goose Island will provide us with beer," said Hideout co-owner Tim Tuten.
The Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW, is in the historic U Street Corridor. Jazz legend Duke Ellington's boyhood home is in the area, and singer Pearl Bailey called the neighborhood "Black Broadway" because of all the theaters and jazz clubs.
Interchange volunteers registered more than 1,500 voters at the Pitchfork Music Festival and the Hideout Block Party. The Hideout hosted fund-raisers for Obama and weekend voter registration carpools to Wisconsin and Indiana.
"Jon Langford went door to door with us on registration drives in Wisconsin," Tuten said. "Andrew Bird raised $10,000 in an Obama campaign benefit concert at the Hideout. ... Our city's musicians, artists, writers and volunteers were part of the first wave of this groundbreaking campaign."