The Empty Bottle puts up a lot of flyers. Some blur together. Yours didn't. I found your album "Charmed" put it on, and it struck me differently than anything I was listening to at the time. Nostalgic and current. Vocals sweet and melodic on the surface but underneath them something kinetic and barely contained, chaos adorned in fuzzy garage tones that didn't know yet how loud it wanted to get.
I didn't have a word for it then and I'm not sure I do now, but its impact was made.
That sound is what made me reach out to a band directly for the first time in my life. I was a confused wannabe photographer with no real business doing it, but your music made me try anyway. I showed up jittery before every single show, starstruck before I even knew what hit me. After that first portrait in a greenroom, I realized I would champion you all no matter the reason. For every reason.
When you said yes, you weren't giving a photographer a chance but giving a fan one.
A venue full of friends and a growing crowd of people who shared an affinity with that exact intersection of nostalgic doo-wop and punk found a band that lived there to the fullest. I watched you give that year after year and it was never anything other than exactly who you are, even through musical shifts and members.
My photographs from those early days had wonderfully ragged edges because we were all still figuring things out, chasing something we loved with more heart than experience. Your sincerity about what you were making was never in question, and I felt every bit of that in what I was doing too. Your potential was palpable.
Watching you as "wide-eyed rats" grow into something real in this city and take it across the country was one of the great privileges of having a camera in my hands.
I'm going to miss having you on the calendar more than I can properly say. Everything you built together deserves every good thing coming your way.
Motoblot June 20th. I'll be there, camera up, so proud of everything you are.
The Chicago scene just got thinner for me, but I'll always choose Hello for the next time I see you over Goodbye for the time being.