Chicago Hope

 

Sweet home Chicago: The band is prepped to play at the Turning Stone Resort and Casino this week.

 

The tandem tour, currently traveling through a 30-city national sweep, is also supporting World Hunger Year (WHY).
Fans can chip in $3 or three cans of food in order to receive a
download card good for accessing three free songs of exclusive joint
performances: both bands contributing to the new track “You,” while
Chicago covers EWF’s “I Can’t Let You Go,” and EWF delivering their
version of Chicago’s “Wishing You Were Here.” (The Web site
www.EWFandChicago.com will accept more WHY donations.)

Chicago arrived in Boston in the
pre-dawn hours of June 15 in preparations for a June 16 gig at Agannis
Arena, so Pankow managed to carve out a few minutes for a phone
conversation with The New Times. He chatted about the iconic
Chicago logo that has graced the covers of the band’s 30-something
albums (Pankow says with a laugh, “I’ve been able to hide behind that
for years; it’s the logo that’s recognizable, not the individual.”),
the reason why he’s not in the 1973 movie Electra Glide in Blue,
directed by then-Chicago guru James William Guercio and filled with
cameos from his bandmates (“I was originally cast as a young LA
plainclothes cop but I didn’t get down to the Arizona location in time
to get the part in the movie—which turned out to be a cult classic!”)
and even hinted that an overseas tour might be in the cards. But he
began with answering the quintessential chicken-or-egg question: Who
came up with the inspired double bill?

“It was a mutual, back-and-forth thing.
We would run into Earth, Wind and Fire on the road several times along
the way and we bounced the idea off each other, and management finally
got the green light from both bands. Since we’re both with CAA
{Creative Artists Agency}, the same management company, it’s all in the
family now. 

“The very first production rehearsal in
Los Angeles was an in-depth look at this huge catalog of hits by both
bands. Then we researched the material, created joint arrangements and
picked songs we figured would present both bands together most
spectacularly. Both bands are historic pioneers in terms of horn-driven
pop music—Earth, Wind and Fire are the r’n’b version, we’re the pop
version—so it’s such a great fit. And little did we know that when we
were writing this stuff that it would be timeless music that appeals to
all generations. The audience knows the lyrics and, I’m tellin’ ya,
they sing them louder than the band! The audience range is from 10 to
60 and they all get it, what the songs embody lyrically and
melodically. What I see happening in the current pop that is hitting
the scene is a lack of melody, that song hook that people carry around
and hum. It’s forgettable {music} without that melody. 

“If there was any sticky aspect to this
package it was getting 21 people on stage and not having them knock
each other over. When you have that many bodies on the stage it’s like
organized chaos, so the production rehearsals involved a lot of
choreography and being in the right place at the right time. The
logistics were the big problem because we come on together for the
opening and then they do a set and then we do a set, and then we come
back for a grand finale which is just cosmic. This being the third
installment, everything has become very smooth and seamless, and that
adds to the snap of the show. Between both bands there are 63 hit songs
and we address just about all of them, so the audience is definitely
getting the big bang.

“Not only are we back, in light of the
dismal times that we all live in now, we decided it was essential to
give something back. So we’re interfacing with WHY, founded by the late
Harry Chapin in 1975. We didn’t realize that there was over 30 million
people starving in this country and 12 million of them are kids, so
we’re doing something positive to benefit the less fortunate. We’re
seeing great generosity {from concertgoers}; the WHY people who have
tables set up at all the shows are ecstatic. We’re raising significant
dollars and collecting barrels of food and we’re putting a dent in the
country’s hunger situation. It’s a heckuva great feeling to be doing
that.”

—Bill DeLapp