March 25, 2016

Friday night live at Transistor: Lee & Andy Ketch and singer-songerwriter guitar & drums duo Zapruder Point. Sound by Jon Monteverde. 

Lee Ketch is the front-man of Chicago powerpop band Mooner. On acoustic guitar and accompanied by drummer Andy Ketch, he performed songs off of Mooner's recent debut album "Masterpiece."

Dan Phillips has been writing and recording as Zapruder Point in Chicago for over a decade. Singing simple yet heartfelt songs, he performs both as a solo acoustic act and as a duo with drummer Larry Brown.  Originally from Cleveland, over the years Dan has shared bills with Bill Fox, Jason Molina, Bowerbirds, The Rutabega, Anders Parker, Franklin Bruno, Justin Roberts, Canasta, Scrawl, Whitehorse, Coed Pageant, Dag Juhlin, Flat Duo Jets, Terrible Parade, Earwig, Benjamin Francis Leftwich…and others (just ask him).  A first-time father in 2015, Dan is currently recording new songs for an acoustic solo album, as well as writing material for a rock musical. He plays out when he can.

As a teenage R.E.M. obsessive, Dan played with his twin brother Scott and childhood friend Greg Eyman in Rotary Ten.  In the mid-'90s they moved to Raleigh and became The Boy Wonder Jinx.  In 1998, “cheating” on his primary band with a four-track machine led to Zapruder Point’s hushed debut The Limitations of the Source Tape, followed by a move to Chicago and the sprawling watermark of Low Resolution in 2001 (described by Sound Opinions’ Jim DeRogatis as “much too good to remain overlooked and under-heralded”). In the early noughties, after playing bass for short-lived Feelies cover band The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness, Dan snagged husband and wife Tom Millard (drums and vocals) and Casey Riordan-Millard (violin) for sporadic Midwest touring and a pair of well-received recordings (Spirit of 91 and It’s Always the Quiet Ones.)

After the trio’s dissolution and during a brief bout of unemployment in 2008, Dan recorded his first Garageband solo album, Soda & Sympathy. He then formed an electric version of Zapruder Point with Steve Frisbie (guitar and vocals), John Aselin (bass) and Larry Brown (drums). A successful crowd-funding campaign led to 2012’s Zapruder Point Record Club, wherein subscribers were mailed a 7” of new songs every three months (since collected in 2013’s Clicks and Whistles). Splitting amiably with Aselin and Frisbie in 2015, Dan now enjoys playing as a duo with Larry Brown whenever possible, as well as the occasional solo show.  He’s also working on songs for a play written by fellow Chicagoan and former college roommate John Henry Roberts, as well as embarking on his first not-home-recorded album in years — a solo/folk collection tentatively titled Coyotes in Decline.

Though technically on Facebook and kind of on Twitter, he encourages you to join his email list, as he gets a bang out of writing goofy monthly newsletters. To find out if you like his music, cruise around his Bandcamp page.  For the odds-n-sods side of his output (instrumentals, incidentals, covers, demos and live stuff), check out his Soundcloud page. And of course you can really get a load of this guy on YouTube.

Also available: previous Zapruder Point Transistor recordings from:
January 10, 2014
July 6, 2012
May 27, 2011