What a weekend we had at saki

We could hardly keep up with everything last weekend at saki! Even though we're pretty exhausted today, we have plenty of new memories to kick off our week thanks to ROOKIE, Tavi, Tiny Fireflies, everyone who came out for Creative Control, Joe McAdam, Owen, everyone who participated in the After Hours Concatenating Pedals show, especially Ben from Glad Cloud, Human Elephant, Jack & Ace, and Rob from Numero Group! And definitely everyone who came out to twiddle knobs, zine with us, or take in some music. It was really pretty cool. Read the nitty gritties and check out some pictures after the jump!





Friday, June 29 3pm: ROOKIE Road Trip Meetup with Zine-Making and Tiny Fireflies

We kicked off our weekend with ROOKIE, who have spent the past week on their road trip. A crew of  about 40 amazing badass ladies that came out from all over Chicago to make zines while Tiny Fireflies played their gorgeous dream-pop. The vibe was perfect, popsicles were eaten, and like-minded ROOKIE readers got to meet one another! We cannot wait to work with ROOKIE again once their road trip winds down.

Check out the photos and update from ROOKIE's blog post!

Friday, June 29 8pm: Creative Control with James Fritz, Liza Treyger, Bob Palos, Jason Earl Folks & Mar'son

The last Friday of every month, saki hosts Creative Control with Joe McAdam. The show gets wackier every time we have it, and we're always looking forward to the next installment! Our host, Joe McAdam, brought the heat with a solid lineup (as he always does). We were already fans of Joe's and the headliner, James Fritz (you can often hear Joe on James' You Could Be Dead podcast), but now we've got a few more favorite Chicago stand ups. We've had some amazing musical guests for Creative Control thus far, including Mannequin Men & Geronimo!, but this time around we were exposed to the realest hip hop crew in Chicago, Mar'son. Definitely check them out if you get the chance!

Saturday, June 30 2pm: In-Store with Owen

Lots of people rolled out of bed and into this free Owen show early in the afternoon! Despite some "technical difficulties" Owen (Mike Kinsella) played a beautiful & intimate set to a gracious crowd. Hopefully, enough of the tracks will be salvageable from the recording and we'll post them on Epitonic in a few weeks! If not, Mike promised he'd come back and play another Owen set soon!

Saturday, June 30 8pm: Concatenating Pedals II

Concatenating Pedals was highly anticipated by us saki folk. Dreamed up by our own Tyler Cannan/Mark Jumper, and having done pedal show #1 last fall, we now had a specific direction to take this one in, and we knew which cables we were missing... Collaborating with Ben Mjolsness (curator of the monthly Glad Cloud ambient series at the Whistler), we wrangled up musicians including Tim Kinsella (Cap'n Jazz, Joan of Arc), Jordan Martins (Plastic Council), and Cinchel for this experiment. There were tens of pedals for people to futz with, along with a noise orchestra pit. Participants followed Tyler's conducting cues, along with the slideshow in the corner with notes like "slow: marching," "slow: cold," and "fast: chaos." The show was recorded and will be released on tape on saki's new in-house record label.


Sunday, July 1 12pm: Hung "Soul On Paper: The Posters of Scott Williams"

As with every month, we were so sad to see the art on our walls changed. Usually it leaves us with at least one day of art-less walls, and that bums us out. But this time around we were well-coordinated...hardly 30 minutes after Shawn Stucky's exhibition "The Sun Will Rise With Me" was taken down, Scott Williams started work on "Soul On Paper: The Posters of Scott Williams." And dang it looks good.

We're really looking forward to the official opening this Friday 7/6 from 6-9pm. The Soul On Paper opening will be rounded out with DJs Dave Mata and Duke Grip of Soul Summit and some hors d'oeuvres and cool beverages from saki! Please please join us...what's a funky dance party without fellow dancers?