Dave Miller

Luna Blues Machine & Dave Miller

Homeroom joins forces with Comfort Music, Comfort Station’s weekly music series to curate musical performances every Thursday for the month of May. Improvisers from Chicago’s jazz scene split bills with R&B and hip hop artists in four unique evenings of music that highlight Homeroom’s ability to facilitate artistic dialogue between artists and performers across genres.

Luna Blues Machine

The Luna Blues Machine fuses acoustic hip-hop with soul, folk, and any other genre that moves them. Fronted by Sisters Belinda and Maritza Cervantes (Mandolin and Guitar), LBM Stands out as one of the most experimental acoustic music acts working in Chicago today.

Combining major stints in both New York City and Chicago and numerous tours abroad, Dave Miller has cultivated a truly unique, exciting, and inviting approach to songwriting, improvisation, and the guitar. After releasing three albums to wide acclaim with his experimental rock band, Algernon (Cuneiform Records), Miller has once again redefined his parameters and formed Old Door Phantoms with some of the most creative musical minds in Chicago, yielding fascinating results. This time around, Miller has drawn influence from the elegant melodicism of The Beatles, the psychedelic folk of Neil Young & Crazy Horse, and the raw power and improvisational spirit of guitarists Link Wray, Gabor Szabo, and Charlie Christian. The music, although fresh, forward thinking, and avant garde, is grounded in the art of classic songwriting. The melodies linger and the sounds are warm. The songs play out as mind-expanding textures, but always with an air of compassion and familiarity.

Tracked live at Steve Albini's famed studio, Electrical Audio, the album has the sound and feel of being in the same room as the band. At times, this off the cuff quality to the recordings recalls the instrumental swagger of The Band or Booker T & the MGs, while juxtaposing this element with the pulsing experimentalism of Sonic Youth and ambient textures of Brian Eno.

"I count Miller among my favorite modern guitarists. His ability to garb complicated development within lyrical melody fits as comfortably within a traditional organ trio as it does in the subtler compositions he has turned out for his own post-rock projects..." - Grammy award winning music journalist, Neil Tesser