Once in a Black Moon With Dennis J. Leise
Barry Dredze
Posted On December 29, 2016
Dennis J. Leise is a stalwart on the greater Chicagoland music scene, from doorman to performer, for the likes of Fitzgerald’s Nightclub where the venerable Berwyn roadhouse has hosted the galaxy of Chicago luminaries, including the Waco Brothers, Neko Case and 2016 Grammy nominee Robbie Fulks on up to 35 Fourth of July American Music Festivals, and counting.
Leise has played with the Flat Five and started his own outfits, including the Possum Hollow Boys and the Sons of the Pie Owners. Now he has recently released his first EP of all original material, recorded this past September and produced by multi-instrumental Flat Fiver and NRBQer Scott Ligon.
The tunes and sounds on Once in a Black Moon are consistently good old timey music in traditions the likes of Hoagy Carmichael and George Gershwin. The songs are tastefully fleshed out in the studio by Ligon and his NRBQ and Flat Five bandmate Casey McDonough, Marc Edelstein, Joe Camarillo, Brian Wilkie and John Rice in the spirit of the subtly casual sets Leise performs in his regular solo gigs around the greater Chicagoland metropolitan area, like Honky Tonk BBQ in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood and downtown at the House of Blues.
The EP starts off sizzling in “El Pilsen De Ayer,” an infectious rhumba finger-picked on a National guitar, perhaps in homage to the neighborhood, and then into the bouncy lament of “My Dreamboat,” in which the combo shines on solos from John Rice’s fiddle, Brian Wilkie’s pedal steel guitar and Ligon’s piano as Leise’s “dreamboat’s got a hole in the bottom, and all my love is leaking out.”
Leise allows a darker and sharper perspective to emerge from the sweet smokey air of this set in “The Ballad of the CEO,” that takes off from Waco Brother Joe Camarillo’s mimicking of the old familiar drum roll of the Sgt. Barry Sadler pop-marshal classic “Ballad of the Green Berets.” The statement is spiked with Wilkie’s pedal steel and gently stirred by Rice’s fiddle into an antidepressant elixir for our current state of brutal income inequality and medieval economic policy priorities.
With the art he crafts, Leise creates a space he has also been known to transport to his further flung gigs at Sydney, Australia’s Midnight Special in Newtown and The Bearded Tit in Redfern over the past two years running. So, there’s plenty of room for all of us.
Find Once In A Black Moon at CD Baby: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/dennisjleise
