August 17th, 2012 - The Ace Bar - Chicago, Illinois
Opening For the Malah

The setlist:
Stay>11 Pocket>Stay, At Your Mercy*, March of the Elephants, Something, Feels So Right, High Score@, Sexy Crazy>Alpaca Pocket>Landing Gear!, Belly of the Beast, Halfway, Lift Off, Blink of the Eye@, Interrogation#>Monoceros*
@ w/ Igor Voltchenko of Genome on Guitar
*First Time Played
#Original Lyrics
!Kris's mic cuts out, Brad sings first verse

Hey everyone,

Thanks for checking out "Live at The Ace Bar". 

The Ace Bar is one of our favorite venues to play in Chicago. On this particular night, we were opening for a "jamtronica" group from Colorado called "The Malah". We had a 90 minute set, and since we assumed The Malah would be raging hard all night, we took some risks/liberties and played a lot of mellow and song oriented tunes. To all the fans that allow us to do so, and all the fans that are patient with us between moments of "Raging", thank you. We appreciate you allowing us to be as diverse as we are. We love great songs just as much as we love epic instrumental music and we feel really fortunate to have fans that allow us to do both. 

We started off the night with a Zmick classic, "Stay". We thought it was a good way to kind of display who we are and what we do for all the newcomers and Malah fans who may have never seen us before. In this particular version, we really stretched out some solos and milked them for all they were worth. After "Stay", we debuted a new Wonsy tune called "At Your Mercy". This is a poppy number that kind of just came out of Dan when he was sitting around with an acoustic guitar. While he wasn't intending to make it a Zmick song, his good buddy Brad (who was a fan of this particular piece of music) encouraged him to throw it in the setlist. While it’s not part of the definitive Zmick sound, it’s a catchy heartfelt jingle worth playing at a show like the Ace show (again, the Malah would be providing plenty of "rage" and we had a particularly long set in store for everyone). Following "At Your Mercy", we decided to play one of our instrumental tunes, "March of the Elephants". "Elephants" is one of those groove oriented modern jazz/funk MMW, Scofield influenced kind of tunes. Real simple in its structure, real groove oriented, but very open allowing for Brad and Doug to really stretch things out with Kris. The interesting thing about this tune, that a lot of people don't know, is that it was written by Dan and Brad about a year and a half ago while Dan was playing drums and Brad was playing bass. Kind of wild, huh? Anyways, at that point in the night, we had played a long lyrical/proggy tune, a short lyrical poppy tune, and a jazzy funky instrumental tune. Hmmmmm….what to play next? Why not a cover? We had 90 minutes to kill, right? Why not a cover from a really awesome band that changed the face of music, right? Why not play a Beatles tune? Hey! Great idea! So, we played "Something", a classic George Harrison ballad. Notice how Brad says "Heres something" in the mic right before we play this one. Kind of funny huh? (At least Wonsy thought so). Brad apologizes for his guitar being grossly out of tune during this one! Moving along, we picked the energy up a little bit higher with one of our newer favorite tunes, "Feels So Right", followed by our own electronica inspired dance jam, "High Score". Hopefully, the people that were patient with us through the slower more song oriented tunes were able to get their kicks from one of these tunes. This particular version of "High Score" features our buddy Igor Voltchenko of Genome and the Electric Boogaloo on guitar. We had discussed having Igor sit in before the show and weren't sure where to put him, so we decided….well….let’s just have him rock out one of our high energy tunes and just go with it. So, in the spirit of improvisation and taking risks, we just kind of said "Igor, you play here". Well, it was more like "Igor, you solo with Brad here". Man! What a turn out! Brad and Igor trading solos is one of the best examples of how great art is created in moments where "the pressure is on" and no one really knows what’s going to happen. The pressure kind of forces people to really dig deep and pull out the beauty. Moving along, we wanted to keep the dance vibe going but also get lyrical so we dropped a Kris Ahrens bomb and played our controversial classic pop tune "Sexy, Crazy" segued into a neat instrumental number called the "Alpaca Pocket" and then followed by another Kris tune "Landing Gear" (which Kris wrote with members of Raoul Duke, now "Shapes and Colors"). This was kind of the Kris section of the show. Kris’s microphone cut out at the beginning of “Landing Gear”, so Brad stepped in and sang the first verse and chorus. Following "Landing Gear", we decided to get heavy and bust out one of Dan's newer prog/groove/metal tunes, "Belly of the Beast". Man, we all love playing that one, especially when we have the right audience for it. At Ace Bar, we had the perfect audience for it! After a song like that though, it doesn't hurt to slow things down, so we went into a Brad Miller oldie titled "Halfway". This is one of Wonsy's favorite tunes (surprisingly enough) cause of how heartfelt it is. Following "Halfway", we played our post rock influenced instrumental titled "Lift Off", a very atmospheric tune that displays Brad’s melody making skills and Doug's prowess on the synths. After "Lift Off", we played "Blink of the Eye" with Igor allowing for more great moments of improvisation and dueling guitars. Good times! Who doesn't love dueling shredding guitars?! After "Blink", we had time for 1 or 2 more songs we decided to rock a Zmick classic, "The Interrogation" (with its original lyrics for our good friend Josh Fisher, whose birthday it was and happened to be in the crowd) followed by a new Wonsy instrumental, "Monoceros" (inspired by Metallica's Orion and named by our good friend Brian O'Neil who is getting his PHd in Astronomy/Physics - Apparently "Monoceros" means Unicorn).

All in all, it was a great night! Thank you to all the people that travelled in to see us! Thanks for listening!

Till next time….

-Zmick 

