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As the railyard bled into dark warehouses, the stranger found
himself alone. Street after street he walked with night taking
control of his senses until his ears perked at the music of sirens.
The dulcet tones of violin, bass, and the female voice spiraled
through the darkness from the sole source of warmth in sight.
Helplessly drawn in, he found the last lit trailer in camp that
seemed to have sprung forth from another time, and there--in the
form of three women--was both the past and the future in one.
He introduced himself as Sam Random and explained that his path
and his name were inextricably linked. Sensing a kindred spirit,
they proffered their names: Marielle de Rocca-Serra held the violin,
Stacy McMichael propped up the bass fiddle, and it was Candace
Washburn's voice that had beckoned him. As Sam sat at their fire
and opened up his tattered guitar case, another man, his elder,
stepped forth from the darkness having been drawn in from afar.
Armed too with a guitar, he announced himself as Kevin Rush and
sat with no concern as to whether he'd been invited - simply knowing
he was home. Fueled by coffee black as the night they found themselves
in and so dark it could have been wartime, they played through
'til the sun began painting the eastern horizon red.
Winding their caravan through the windiest of cities, lePercolateur
has spent the time since this fateful night sweeping in to transport
concert-goers to a time where music was a liberating and cathartic
respite from persecution-- where the frenetic energy of struggling
to simply 'be' coalesced with the unbridaled spirit of gypsy music
and burgeoned into swing dancing. The troupe transforms Katerina's
into a sold-out Parisian dance hall circa 1937 on a monthly basis.
Their high-energy sideshow has made Percolateers of attendees
of the Jazz Institute of Chicago's 2011 & 2012 Jazz Tours,
Hard Rock Cafe Chicago, Martyrs, Schubas, the 2012 Deer Park Jazz
Festival, the 2010 and 2011 Chicago Cultural Center's "Music Without
Borders" series, and Purdue University's Swing Dance. They were
Featured Artists in both 2009 and 2011 in the Windy City Lindy
Exchange, through which they flaunted their uncanny ability to
seamlessly fuse two different eras via their reinterpretations
of modern pop through the medium of hipster gypsy jazz. Along
the way, these temporally displaced merry-makers placed 3rd at
the Chicago Bluegrass and Blues Festival's "Last Banjo Standing"
contest.
The coming March of 2013 finds lePercolateur slated to release
their debut album "Pop Manouche", and thus becoming
the latest band to join the Chicago Sessions record label. Between
now and then, many more are sure to wake from a dreamlike daze
wondering in which year they find themselves, and wishing it was
what their senses told them.
"a sly and surprising gypsy-jazz quintet who apply that idiom
to modernistic pop tunes, as well as vintage jazz compositions"
-Neil Tesser, Chicago Examiner
lePercolateur - Chicago's hipster gypsy-jazz
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