Cross Canadian Ragweed @ Joe's bar.

After Seth James was done with his set, Cross Canadian Ragweed came out to a packed in and sold out Joe's bar in Chicago and again had ole blue eyes, Frank Sinatra's "My Kind of Town, Chicago is" playing over the house sound system before taking the stage and ripping into "Don't Need You" from their self titled CD known as the "Purple" album. They played about half of the songs on their latest release "Happiness and all the Other Things" including "Drag" and bass player Jeremy Plato's version of the Stephen Bruton song "To Find My Love" that Jeremy sings. They also did the songs "Overtable" and the Overture also called "Blackrose" and then went into their tribute to Betty Page with the song "Pretty Lady" before going back to some old songs. After playing older favorites like "42 Miles" and "Brooklyn Kid" inspired by their friend Robert Hanson, they played quite a few older songs and there were the usual obnoxious guys in the crowd that seem to be at every show yelling out to the band to play "Carney Man" and "Boys from Oklahoma" and usually they will not play it unless they feel like it but this time they did. I was quick to judge the guys that were so insistent on getting them to play those two songs but sometimes you learn that maybe you should not be so quick to do that because later i talked to them outside and they told me they were heading to Iraq two days later.

Cody Canada, Cross Canadian Ragweed's lead singer and guitarist split the set up by doing a short acoustic set with the songs "Carry Me Home" and a surprising cover of "It Ain't Easy Being Me" by Chris Knight, plus a few more. The show went on with some more older material like "Late Last Night" by Todd Snider and "Wanna Rock & Roll" by Ray Wylie Hubbard. Seth James and Geoff Queen came out and joined them for the last song before the night was over and Seth and Cody had to catch a plane to perform an acoustic show in New Braunfels the next day. I am writing this one day before seeing Cross Canadian Ragweed again tomorrow night at the Intersection in Grand Rapids, Michigan so look for a write up on that soon too. More color photos. More black & white photos.