Author Archives: blacksheepspringfield

SAME FEST Happening at Lincoln Library January 28th

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We’ve never posted about any events happening at The Lincoln Library downtown on our site before. With new renovations taking effect this year and a new communications coordinator – Elizabeth Buctha working hard to reach out to Springfield communities, new things are in store for our downtown library in Springfield. Be sure to check out our episode of The Black Sheep Radio Show with Elizabeth as our guest to hear more on big plans for the Library.

The Library recently announced plans for “SAME FEST” happening one week from today on Saturday, January 28th from 1:00 to 3:00 pm. They are fitting a lot of activities, conversations, workshops, and more into that two hour block. SAME FEST stands for “Springfield Area’s Many Ethnicities” as the festival will focus on different ethnicities and cultures that call Springfield home. You can check out a more proper breakdown of everything going on on that flier above, or on the facebook event for the fest right here. Also check out our Springfield Shows page for more events like this one happening in Springfield outside of Black Sheep (we are updating the page this weekend!!!).

Tonight at The Radon Lounge: Rebecca Rego & The Trainmen, Bed Bedford, Mike Butler, Johari Idusuyi

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What do you know about The Radon Lounge? Did you know that it is a top notch premier Springfield basement venue, and there is a show going on down there tonight? Nothing going on at Black Sheep tonight too, so we can all go! For this show the lounge has great musical act Rebecca Rego & The Trainmen lined up from Champaign, Illinois. You can stream some of their music on the player below. In addition to that they also have solo artist Ben Bedford from the area performing. Looks like there is also a solo performance by Mike Butler (of Vonne and Starlorde). How nice. And The Radon Lounge appears to be mixing things up a bit for this one and featuring poetry peformed by Johari Idusuyi! And there is also a book performing! Cosmic Fate by Jonathan A Meyer will be taking the big stage!

All of that over at The Radon Lounge will be starting at 7:00 pm tonight for just $5. For The Radon Lounge’s secret location you will have to dig around their website a little bit. Check out a facebook event for this one right here. Also check out our Springfield Shows page for (maybe) a look at some shows happening in town outside of Black Sheep.

New Pages: Springfield Album Archive

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At the beginning of the year we announced that a new project for us on this site would be to try and build a more accessible archive of Springfield albums, demos, and releases from years past. The project began on a forum we had created when we launched this site close to five years ago and has been growing off and on over the past four years or so. More current years have been easy to document thanks to our year-end polls on this site, earlier years have been coming together thanks to the Some Things Can’t Be Ignored music blog and a few other friends.

Today we are bringing you a brand new page to this site to house the Springfield Album Archive. You can check out that new page right here. Right now we are at 289 releases listed off (most have links to stream or download the release along with artwork) and that list is growing. You can help us out by emailing us any additions at blacksheepspringfield@gmail.com (we would prefer if you can provide a name and date for the release and also artwork, photos, or even bring a physical copy to us at Dumb Records or Black Sheep so we can get it uploaded for the public)!

We will continue to be updating this list as often as we can! You can head over to this page and check back on it on our site by hovering over the “about” tab -> and then “history” and then from there a pull out tab for “Springfield Album Archive” shows up.

Tonight at Black Sheep: Drool, Pryss, Lincoln’s Tomb

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Tonight at Black Sheep we have a short and sweet three band show lined up on this Tuesday night! It’s our third show of the year (fourth if you count the show in Dumb Records), and so far all of the shows that have happened this year have been a hit! Let’s keep the streak going tonight. Tonight we have the experimental rock fusion band “Drool” playing from Chicago. Check out some of their music on the player below. We also have heavy hitting hardcore band (as featured in Springfield’s Own Magazine), Pryss. Opening things up is ongoing band lotto group- Lincoln’s Tomb.

The show tonight start at 7:00 pm, admission is $5. Check out a facebook event for the show right here. Also be sure to check out our shows page for a good look at what else is coming up at Black Sheep and Southtown in the next few months.

Calling Bands for Black Sheep Cover Show Part 6 This May

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It’s that time of the year again. Well, not really that time of the year yet, but time to start thinking about that time of the year. If your band is interested in our annual Black Sheep Cover Show then it’s time to reach out to us to let us know what you are interested in doing and start getting that set together. This year we are looking at the weekends of May 12th and 13th and the 19th and 20th as potential dates for a Black Sheep Cover Show at Black Sheep and also at Bar None. Check out photos of last year’s cover show at Black Sheep right here. In all previous years the cover show has also been a benefit of some sort, which will likely continue this year. Last year we were able to raise enough money to be able to support a free show at Rock N’ Roll Hardee’s as part of last year’s Dumb Fest.

If you are interested, please email us at blacksheepspringfield@gmail.com (serious inquiries please)! We also prefer already existing original bands coming forward to do cover sets instead of new groups getting together just for this. We will have all of the inquiries down that we hear from in the next few weeks on a list to check back with at the end of March / beginning of April and will determine a lineup based on which of those bands have already started getting sets together.

*Note: no bands actually play any covers of any licensed music inside of Black Sheep. F*#% you, ASCAP and BMI.

Black Sheep Featured in Springfield’s Own Magazine

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Today we are excited to announce that we’ve made it to the January/February issue of Springfield’s Own Magazine! Springfield’s Own is a magazine focusing on happenings of Springfield IL and comes out every other month and goes out to subscribers of the SJ-R. This Jan/Feb issue is the entertainment issue and we are happy to be able to share it with some of our close friends in HISO Music, Lincoln’s Legends, The Studio Show, Boondocks, and more. Also check out Pryss and more as featured bands.

Copies of this issue should be available inside Dumb Records for $4.99 starting today. You can also check out the two of three pages on Black Sheep below.

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New Band Pages: Sammy and The Punk

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This week we are bringing you another band page from a local band that is long overdue, and that is for the three-piece (now four-piece?) and formerly two-piece driving punk rock project “Sammy and The Punk” which has been active playing shows in the area since 2011. You can stream the band’s newest album Alien Abduction and find out more about the band on their new page right here. Sammy and The Punk do not have any shows announced right now but be on the lookout for something from them at Black Sheep very very soon!

That puts us at 45 active bands on our current bands page, you can check all of those out right here, or many more of our past band pages right here. Do you play in a local band that has not yet gotten a page set up with us? Email us at blacksheepspringfield@gmail.com and we will work with you to set something up!

Videos: Nagasaki at Black Sheep 1-7-17

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We’ve had 2 shows so far this year at Black Sheep and they’ve both been hits. Tonight we are bringing you a video of the second show of the year which took place on Saturday, January 7th about a week ago. This video is of a song from new Springfield punk band Nagasaki’s set (also pictured above). Let’s keep that 2017 slamcam rolling! Check out the video of Nagasaki performing below. Also check out a video of their entire set right here thanks to videographer Gordon Chang.

Check out any of our 100+ videos from Black Sheep over the years on our vids/pics page.

Backwards Day: Lost Sessions 1995

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Today we bring you some lost Springfield recordings from the 1990’s recently brought to light from the band Backwards Day. These are the band’s Lost Sessions from 1995, which would have been the last recording session the band took part in before breaking up. This session was engineered and mixed by Lance Reynolds formerly of NIL8, who also recorded a few bands in the early 1990’s above Skank Skates as the name Southtown Studios (which we did not know until after Brandon Carnes started the more current Southtown Studio). Backwards Day featured Scott Faingold (vocals) and Timothy Harte (drums) both who currently play in the band Epsom. Check out those recordings below.

Also our big Springfield Album Master Archive has been under progress throughout much of the first part of this year. We are not working on a page set up for the archive on this site, which you can find right here. There are currently 288 titles listed.

 

Absurdist People’s Theater Holding Auditions for August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean” January 24th + 25th

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The Absurdist People’s Theater is gearing up big for their second week of theater performances after a successful debut this past August with their performances of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe” which was also the first ever theater performances to have taken place inside Black Sheep. The Absurdist People’s Theater is a newly formed DIY Theater Troupe based right here in the capital city. This time around the group will be taking on the play “Gem of the Ocean” by August Wilson. Gem of the Ocean was first performed in 2003, and is set in the year 1904.

Auditions for the new play are from 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm inside Black Sheep on Tuesday and Wednesday- January 24th and 25th. You do not have to be already a member of the Absurdist People’s Theater Troupe to audition. You can look over a list of the characters and find out more about auditions on the Absurdist People’s Theater facebook event right here.

Final performances are set to take place on March 24th, 25th, and 26th this year inside Black Sheep.