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Studio5’s musical director/owner Steve Rashid loves jazz, and the shows that he produces at his wonderful performance space reflect his passion. This is a man who has big ears, however, and his fondness for Americana music has inspired him to put together a “bonus” weekend now that Studio5’s spring season is complete.
Rashid is calling this new three-day series of shows the Studio5 Down Home Weekend. He enlisted singer/songwriter and banjoist Jonas Friddle to assist in the organization of the weekend’s programming. The festivities open on Friday afternoon with six local singer/songwriters, and the closing on Sunday will be a Cajun dance party. The evening concerts on Friday and Saturday feature Chicagoland’s top bluegrass/folk/Americana acts.
The weekend is part of Studio5’s 10th anniversary celebration. It’s a mini-festival that will serve as a great warmup for the Evanston Folk Festival coming up in September.
All Down Home Weekend events will occur in the Studio5 performance space at 1938 Dempster St.
5:30–6:30 p.m. — pre-show salon performances by local singer/songwriters:
Jacob Parker: Parker plays his own music and covers some songs that acoustic guitarists generally won’t tackle. This singer/songwriter presents much of his music online. He looks like he will put on an entertaining show.
Robin Bienemann: Bienemann writes some hilarious songs, and his guitar chops include some jazz touches. He often performs as a duo with his wife, Jenny — you can catch him at Fitzgerald’s in Berwyn. Bienemann tours the country, and he won the 2024 Songwriting Competition at the Kerrville, (Texas) Folk Festival, one of the longest-running festivals of Americana music.
Peggy Browning: Browning performs frequently with an acoustic folk trio called The Bubs. They have played around the Chicago area for quite a while, and the three members of the group are instructors at the Old Town School of Folk Music.
Chuck Cox: Cox has been playing guitar and writing songs for more than 30 years. He is a respected figure on the Chicago Americana scene, often referred to as “Cousin Chuck” by his fellow folkies. He has led a traditional string band called Cox’s Army since 2016. Cox appears on 12 records as leader or key collaborator.
Rebecca Jasso: Jasso is a classic folk singer with a pleasing finger-picking style on the guitar. She is a Chicago native who started playing guitar at age 10. She began performing in public during her college years. Jasso is also a fine visual artist.
Tisa Batchelder: Batchelder is a long-time teacher at the Old Town School of Folk Music — she also met her spouse, Gregg Ostrom, at the school. She started in the Old Town School’s Wiggleworms music program for children. In addition to her work at the Old Town School and her performances around Chicago, Batchelder sings for senior citizens with memory loss in assisted living facilities. Her songs are clever, creative constructs.
7 p.m. — Jonas Friddle Trio: Friddle is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and songwriter who has dug deeply into the traditions of old time and bluegrass music. He is not a hidebound musical historian, however — his songs incorporate surprises like falsetto vocalizations and jazzy, unexpected chord changes. Anna Jacobson, who plays the trumpet in addition to her fiddle and provides backing vocals. Friddle started out on an old Harmony six-string guitar that he bought at a yard sale when growing up in North Carolina. When he got to Berea College in Kentucky, he added several other instruments to his arsenal — banjo, mandolin and upright bass. Banjo is his primary instrument these days, and he is a highly accomplished clawhammer player. Friddle arrived in Chicago in 2007, and he’s been an important member of the teaching staff at the Old Town School for many years (the Sullivan Sisters studied with Friddle). Friddle’s Appalachian roots are apparent — he uses lots of alternate tunings and can improvise fluently. I love the stories that unfold in Friddle’s lyrics, and his song Belle De Louisville won the John Lennon Songwriting Contest award for Song of the Year in 2012. In 2014, Man Was Made To Fly won the folk category at the Great American Song Contest. He celebrated the release of his newest album, When the Water Was the Sky, in early 2025 at Evanston SPACE, and he had a sellout crowd for his inspired performance. Andrew Wilkins will play upright bass with Friddle and Jacobson to round out the trio performing at Studio5.
8 p.m. — Sons of the Never Wrong: This alt-folk trio has graced the stage at Studio5 several times, most recently last October. The three musicians selected an odd name 34 years ago. The group first came together when they connected at a Monday night sing-around at Chicago’s Beat Kitchen. The origin story for the name is a bit fuzzy — Bruce Roper (guitar, vocals and songwriting) claims he suggested Sons of the Never Wrong (SNW) because the members of the trio were all children of the World War II generation (a.k.a. the Greatest Generation), and because that generation “could do no wrong.” Another origin story for the name was wordplay with the title of the 1961 war movie Guns of Navarone. Two of the “sons” in the trio are women — Deborah Maris Lader (guitar, banjo, vocals and songwriting) and Sue Demel (vocals, percussion, various stringed instruments and songwriting). These three musicians have great respect for each other. As Lader said in a 2021 interview, “This is why we’ve been together 30 years. It’s like, ‘How are we going to serve the song?’ and ‘No, I don’t want to be lead, you do it.’ We’re the anti-ego band.” This alt-folk group has a cult following for their incredible vocal harmonies, creative songs and quirky, funny banter between songs. The trio’s harmonies and song structures fall outside of the conventional folk music genre, and the critics love this approach. The Huffington Post wrote that “their lyrics often have the narrative complexity of Leonard Cohen or the nimble wit of Noël Coward.”
Tickets: $46/$58.
4:30 p.m. — open bluegrass jam organized by Jonas Friddle, free to the public: This will be a traditional circle bluegrass jam. Some serious players are expected to participate, including the Sullivan Sisters.
7 p.m. — The Sullivan Sisters: I became well-acquainted with Soraya and Luciya Sullivan when I wrote a piece about them two years ago. Even as kids, these two young women caused jaws to drop among bluegrass aficionados. This “sister act” was on a rapid upward trajectory in 2024, and duo’s momentum continued into 2025 and 2026. Soraya is heading into her junior year at the renowned Berklee College of Music in Boston, and Luciya just graduated from ETHS. She will join her sister at Berklee in the fall on a full-ride scholarship. Soraya’s guitar work and Luciya’s banjo expertise have won them awards at major bluegrass festivals around the country. Not surprisingly, their sibling vocal harmonies are seamless and haunting. The Sullivan Sisters have gained national recognition through performances at MerleFest, Planet Bluegrass FallGrass and the Bluegrass Hall of Fame & Museum. They have appeared at numerous Chicago area venues, including Thalia Hall and multiple sold-out shows at Evanston SPACE. They have also played at the Evanston Folk Festival and the Winnetka Music Festival. The sisters have recruited three excellent young bluegrass players to form a high-energy bluegrass string band (no drums). The expanded Sullivan Sisters group blew the roof off Evanston SPACE in January 2025. The full band includes Sammy Mougin on bass, Gabe Zinser on mandolin and Finn McGuinness on fiddle. All of these players can shred! The Sullivan Sisters were selected as an Official Showcase Artist at the International Bluegrass Music Association 2025 Bluegrass Ramble, and their debut EP, Carolina Bluebird, released in August 2025. The sisters have signed with Nashville-based independent acoustic label Dark Shadow Recording (Chicago’s outstanding bluegrass band the Henhouse Prowlers is also on this label). McGuinness started playing violin at age 4 and has soared in recent years, winning the fiddle competition at the 53rd annual RockyGrass Festival in 2025.
8 p.m. — Don Stiernberg and the Bluegrasstics: Stiernberg is one of the North Shore’s underappreciated musical masters. I think he’s the top jazz mandolin player in the United States. He studied under the great Jethro Burns (of Homer & Jethro fame), who was an excellent jazz player (in contrast to his country music comedy act with guitarist Henry “Homer” Haynes). Stiernberg and Studio 5 impresario Steve Rashid are very close friends, and the mandolin master has played at the venue many times in the past decade. Like almost every mandolin player in the world, Stiernberg began his musical journey in the country and bluegrass genres. He’s a terrific bluegrass musician, and jams with other top players whenever he can, He has recruited a bunch of killer players to play in his Bluegrasstics group. Bassist Jim Cox has played in every genre — jazz (with pianists Earl “Fatha” Hines and Marian McPartland), pop and cabaret (with Liza Minnelli and Rosemary Clooney) and classical (with the Lyric Opera of Chicago and Chicago Sinfonietta). He plays both jazz and bluegrass with Stiernberg and even plays with the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band on occasion. Guitarist/vocalist Ben Benedict is a terrific Americana player. Filling out the group is banjoist/vocalist Ben Wright, a superstar who is a founding member of the Henhouse Prowlers, one of Chicago’s major contributions to the bluegrass world. The Henhouse Prowlers were formed in Rogers Park in 2004 and have toured maniacally across the U.S. and around the world (29 countries on five continents, according to their Wikipedia page). Stiernberg and the Bluegrasstics will not disappoint.
3 p.m. — Old time music jam room, free and open to the public: Studio5 is hosting a free jam focused on old time music. Players are invited to show up and sit in.
3 p.m. — Contra dancing with Fred Campeau’s Old T Blue and the Shipmates: Contra dance is a form of folk dancing organized around long lines of couples. It’s similar to square dancing in one respect — there’s a caller who teaches a sequence of moves before the dance starts, and those moves are called out when the music begins. Contra dancing has mixed origins and probably first emerged in France during the 17th century. This form of social dancing was very popular in North America until the 1930s, when jazz and big band music led to a change in preferences. There’s still a sizable following for the activity, however. In the United States today, folks contra dance to a broad range of musical genres, from bluegrass to techno. Cajun music is ideally suited for contra dancing. Fred Campeau’s Old T and the Shipmates is a “pick-up” band of excellent players (Campeau, Ben Wright, Jordan Wankoff, Marc Edelstein). The band was assembled for this event. Campeau is a multi-instrumentalist and a respected bandleader in Chicago. As mentioned earlier, Wright is a banjoist with the Henhouse Prowlers. Wankoff is a skilled fiddle player who teaches at the Old Town School and Edelstein was the original bassist for the famed Special Consensus bluegrass band. The dances will be called by Jo Mortland.
4:30 p.m. — Cajun fiddle workshop with Brian O’Donnell: O’Donnell is from Madison, Wisconsin, and is the excellent fiddler for the Cajun Strangers (see below). He will be leading a workshop for interested parties on Cajun fiddle techniques and style.
5:30 p.m. — Cajun dance instruction with Louie Stallone: For those who want to dance to Cajun music but have no idea how to do it, Stallone is the man for you. He’s taught Cajun dance (along with ballroom dancing, swing dancing and line dancing) at the Old Town School for almost 30 years. After lessons with Stallone, dancers will be ready for the big Cajun concert later in the evening.
7 p.m. — The Cajun Strangers, concert with open dance floor: I always thought one had to travel to Lafayette, Louisiana to hear authentic Cajun music. Much to my surprise, the Cajun Strangers are based far from the heart of Cajun country, in Madison. This band plays both Cajun and zydeco music. For those unfamiliar with these two related genres of music, Cajun was created by descendants of the French Acadians who were forced out of Canada by the British after the French and Indian War ended in 1763. In modern use, the term “Cajun” generally means white, French Louisianan. The U.S. government recognized Cajuns as a national ethnic group in 1980. The Cajuns homeland is called Acadiana, located in the swampy, rural area of southwestern Louisiana. Zydeco music was created in the more urban areas of the state, specifically New Orleans, and the early practitioners were Black Creole musicians. Zydeco uses more electric, amplified instruments and is more blues-oriented; Cajun music is acoustic and leans toward bluegrass and waltzes. The two genres overlap stylistically (both feature the accordion), and as segregation faded, musicians from the Cajun and zydeco traditions played together and learned from each other. Both zydeco and Cajun are designed to make people dance, and the Cajun Strangers are focused on boots scootin’ grooves. The four musicians in the band are Brian O’Donnell on fiddle, Scott “Boo” Mullarky on guitar and bass, Tom “Big Nick” Nickel on accordion and fiddle and Colin Bazsali on drums. The band won the 2010 Prix D’hors de Nous from the French Cajun Music Association of America, which is given annually to the best Cajun music album released by a band outside of Louisianan and east Texas. These four gentlemen are the real deal, and one of them (Boo Mullarkey) is an actual Cajun born in the enclave of Cajuns in southeast Texas.
Tickets: $25/$35.
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Chris Gillock is a blues harmonica player, vocalist, songwriter, band leader, non-profit board member, freelance journalist and retired investment banker. He is also an occasional blogger – you can find… More by Chris Gillock
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The Evanston RoundTable is the community’s leading source of news about local government, schools, civic and artistic activities, and other important issues facing our city. We seek to foster civic engagement and empower people to address complex issues facing our diverse community, promoting a better understanding and appreciation of people of all races, ethnicities, and income levels.
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