Urban Djin/ Red Dust

Urban Djin has been a steadily working solo act around Chicago for many years. He has used the name Red Dust from time to time for little band gigs with different musicians since the early 90s.

In 2001 he acquired a Thursday night residency at a Chicago barbecue joint, The Smoke Daddy, famous internationally as a blues bar, and started looking for the musicians who could realize his vision of the kind of band he wanted to lead.

After six months of personnel changes the current line up of Red Dust started to gel with the addition of the amazing Brian Wilkie on Pedal Steel and Gordon Patriarca on bass. Only Urban and fiddler Rick Veras were left from the first night. The lineup was set a few months later when Annalee Koehn joined on vocals. This last piece of the puzzle brought sophisticated vocal harmony to the already rich texture of pedal steel and fiddle, as well as female repertoire and the wonderful, seldom performed male/ female duet repertoire. Soon Urban and Annalee were writing duets for themselves to sing.

Stylistically Red Dust plays a very large range of American music, all of which can fit loosely under C&W, but not necessarily the way the term is understood on contemporary radio. They can play that kind of Country too, but each musician in the band has adventurous ears. They like to stretch out and explore many sides of the genre. Sometimes they stretch into styles that people don't recognize as country, just like Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson have been doing for years. Red Dust plays the occasional Jazz standard as a complement to the Western Swing and Cowboy Jazz material, both original and classic, just like the Western Swing and Cowboy bands of the 30s and 40s did. Urban and Annalee love to sing in Spanish. A country band playing Boleros with all the wrong instruments? Why not? Freddy Fender has been mixing country with songs in Spanish for over forty years. And there's Johnny Rodriguez. Many Norteno artists crossed over into country music a long time ago in Texas.

Listeners who demand the same groove all night will be disappointed, but, fortunately, that's not most people. In fact, Red Dust, as well as Urban solo, does well with a very large range of audiences, from children to retired folks. Black, white, hispanic. Listeners and dancers. They're all about connecting with that audience, regardless of who they are or how many of them there are, and find special joy in connecting with people who think they don't like Country Music and find themselves seduced, nonetheless.

In addition to working with the six piece band, Urban performs constantly as a solo act in a wide range of contexts from Buddy Guy's Legends to the Maxwell Street Market. Recently, Urban and Annalee have been actively working as a duo, featuring the songs they have been writing together in addition to Urban's songs and whatever else strikes their fancy.

On a more personal note--

When possible these stripped down shows are acoustic. Not the "look" of acoustic, REAL acoustic! No microphones, no cables, no sound reinforcement, no sound tech. There are obvious limits on room and audience size, and not every small room has adequate acoustics, but when it is workable, it's the best. And we love to get off the stage and stroll the room. We have had to develop the subtle and, at times, not so subtle art of getting and holding peoples attention, and there's always the possibility of a loud, obnoxious drunk ruining a beautiful quiet song, but it's our favorite format. There's a level of immediacy and intimacy in acoustic music, face to face, eyeball to eyeball, that you simply can't get any other way. Even many hardcore music lovers have never experienced that at a professional level in our heavily mediated world. It's a special joy for us and for our audience.