`It does seem like we’ve been playing for an eternity,” says Phil Smillie of the Tannahill Weavers, a traditional music band from Scotland that’s been playing since the late 1960s. The group’s been touring the United States on and off since 1980.
The Tannahill Weavers will be playing Saturday at Fermilab in Batavia.
“We still enjoy doing it, we still enjoy each other’s company,” he says. They still play music they made popular 30 years ago.
“Well, we depend entirely on audience feedback for that,” says Smillie. “You know, if the audience responds a particular way, we just drop the songs. That’s happened before.”
But it’s not just hard work and a connection with the audience that’s helping the Tannahill Weavers enjoy a surge of popularity recently. According to Smillie, pop culture has been conspiring in their ascent.
“You see, suddenly a lot of movies are using Celtic music soundtracks,” he says. “I’m thinking specifically of `Braveheart’ as having been very good for us, but there have been quite a lot of movies in the last 8 to 10 years which have featured traditional music.”
In fact, the Tannahill Weavers have found themselves writing and playing for soundtracks with more and more regularity.
“I’d like to get involved more in film music,” says Smillie. “Most of our work right now has been for the BBC and a lot of independent TV in Europe. It’s really a lot of fun to do, and it reaches a great number of people.”
The genre’s gotten so much attention that bands that wouldn’t normally leave the British Isles are suddenly touring Europe, Australia, even Latin America.
“This is very emotive music,” says Smillie. “It’s got lots of energy, and you can go from one emotion to the other — from dancing to crying.”
Smillie and the Tannahill Weavers came together almost innocently. They’d gather in pubs on the weekends to play for fun.
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“Then suddenly we were being asked to perform at functions,” says Smillie, still amazed at the memory. “And, well, we progressed from there and became professionals.”
As the years went by, band members came and went; some studied other careers.
“But I think I’d still be in music somehow, even if the Tannahill Weavers didn’t exist,” says Smillie. “The world was there for us to do music.”
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Performance art is alive and well out in the neighborhoods, especially in four short original pieces by Barrie Cole. Personal, text-based and funny, “Hello Neighbor” runs Fridays and Saturdays through Oct. 18 at the Neo-Futurarium.
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You know “The Rules,” that insufferable how-to-land-a-man manual that put feminism back a few thousand years. There’s an African-American counterpart now — more practical, more real, allowing women some self-respect in the process.
Denene Millner, author of “The Sistahs’ Rules,” will talk and sign books at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at African American Images. Millner, a journalist, says her book is for black women but that anybody can learn a thing or two from it.
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When Peter Taub took over as director of performing arts at the new Museum of Contemporary Art, most of last year’s schedule had already been put in place. “Judge me by next year,” he said then.
Taub kicks off his season with postfeminist, postpunk author and performer Kathy Acker and local wonders The Mekons in the Chicago premiere of their collaborative work, “Pussy, King of the Pirates.”
The story of female pirates on a surreal high seas adventure, “Pussy, King of the Pirates” is a bawdy, fractured history in a kind of parallel to modern times.
Saturday night, The Mekons,
without Acker, will celebrate their 20th anniversary as a band.
The facts
Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 7:30 p.m., Kathy Acker and The Mekons, Saturday, 10 p.m., The Mekons 20th anniversary concert, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Ave. Call 312-280-2660. The museum is wheelchair accessible.
Fridays and Saturdays through Oct. 18, 8 p.m., “Hello Neighbor” by Barrie Cole, Neo-Futurarium, Ashland and Foster Avenues. Call 312-409-2117.
Saturday, 8 p.m., Tannahill Weavers, Fermilab, Ramsey Auditorium, Kirk Road and Pine Street, Batavia. Call 630-840-2059. Fermilab is wheelchair accessible.
Wednesday, 5:30 p.m., Denene Millner, African American Images, 1909 W. 95th St. For more information, call 212-261-6565.