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Half Acre’s Daisy Cutter Pale Ale Revolution Brewing Finalists: Apex Predator by Off Color Brewing, Le Tub by Whiner Beer Company, Bourbon County Brand Stout by Goose Island, Schnitzengiggle by 18th Street Brewery

Rescue in Style Hoda Katebi Finalists: Lakeshore Lady, Liz Adams

Otherworld Theatre Company 815-277-7855 otherworldtheatre.org Red Theater Chicago

Ashland Tire & Auto 3737 N. Ashland 773-549-0084 ashlandtire.com Runner-Up: Speedline

R &B singer Bryan James Sledge, aka BJ the Chicago Kid, has the kind of commanding voice most rappers seek out when they’re looking for a guest artist to make a good song great—and to loosen their inhibitions in the process. On Sledge’s second album for Motown, July’s 1123, he turns the tables, showcasing guest verses from several big names in the rap game, including Offset and Rick Ross—but on nearly every track, his own performance is the most memorable....

Courtesy the artist A reasonably recent image of Revenge, who do not appear to care much about promo photos It’s hard to explain why I’m looking forward to Revenge, since I’ve never seen them before—the closest they’ve come to playing Chicago since forming 15 years ago was a gig in Aurora in 2003. But my most devoted metal-nerd friends—folks who’ve forgotten more about kvlt bands than I’ll ever know—all but hyperventilate with excitement at the prospect of a Revenge show....

The premise of the movie, based on Will Kern’s 1995 play Hellcab, is a day in the life of a Chicago cab driver (Paul Dillon). And not just any day, the shortest day of the year, December 21—which of course is only short on light. Throughout its 96 minutes we’re treated to a bevy of cameos from the likes of Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Gillian Anderson, John Cusack, Michael Shannon, Laurie Metcalf, and more than two dozen others portraying passengers of the cab from a few seconds to a few minutes at a time....

Traci Godfrey’s dramedy, now in its midwest premiere at Artemisia Theatre directed by Julie Proudfoot, begins with Ellie (Molly Lyons) pulling her secret stash of booze out of a cowboy boot. That perfect snapshot of a gesture hints at the comedy and drama to come, though neither prove integrated enough in the proceedings to enhance each other’s impact. Ellie is the small-town, bigoted, and generally drunk mother of Kate (Scottie Caldwell), who has grudgingly returned home to Texas from New York City for a visit....

Among the staff at Uptown’s Black Ensemble Theater, company founder and CEO Jackie Taylor is colloquially referred to as “the Queen.” I wonder if that makes associate director Rueben D. Echoles—whose influence and directorial interpretation of the jukebox biomusical is recognizable up and down BE’s roster of original plays—a duke. For better and worse, as writer and director, Echoles’s latest rundown of a diva’s discography exhibits all the cogs audiences have come to expect in BE’s well-oiled machine....

Elly Tier Who’s next:

Free Comic Book Day is upon us again! The 17th annual celebration of independent comic book stores happens on Saturday, May 4, and promises plenty of local programming (and, more importantly, free issues of select comic books). The official website at freecomicbookday.com/catalog lists all the titles that may be available for free. Individual stores are free to make their own rules, so don’t go in thinking you’re going to walk out with a wheelbarrow full of titles....

Dispensary 33 MOCA: Modern Cannabis Dispensary Finalists: Windy City Cannabis, Zen Leaf, New Age Care Dispensary

If you’ve read Jack Riedy’s recent Reader feature addressing the economics of streaming services, then you should also have learned a little about Bandcamp’s sales-based model. (If you haven’t read it, go take care of that now. I’ll wait.) Though Bandcamp is also a middleman, it’s earned a reputation as an equitable player in the online music business thanks to the nakedly extractive tactics of the dominant operations—while payouts from major streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music never exceed half a cent per play and are often much less, Bandcamp passes along 85 to 90 percent of sales revenue, minus processing fees....

Singer-songwriter Meg Duffy started the intimate Hand Habits project in their native upstate New York in the early 2010s, but largely put the project on pause after moving to Los Angeles and linking up with Kevin Morby as a session and touring guitarist. Taking a break seemed to serve Duffy well, or at least helped them get to a place where they could emerge with an indie-rock album as tender and taut as March’s Placeholder (Saddle Creek)....

Art and Science Runner-Up: Twisted Scissors

WGN WTTW Finalists: ABC 7, NBC 5

It’s been six years since boogie-woogie pianist Erwin Helfer has been able to grace the Chicago Blues Festival with his music, and that’s too long. At age 82, Helfer may be Chicago’s last living representative of a tradition whose roots extend back to the late 1800s—boogie-woogie peaked from the 1920s till the ’40s and survived the subsequent “blues revival” era alongside better-known (and louder) blues subgenres associated with the amplified postwar style....

It’s been said that you don’t really notice a heyday till it’s over, and the decade from the mid-1990s till the mid-2000s was a glorious time for modern Delta blues. Artists such as T-Model Ford, Paul “Wine” Jones, and Robert “Bilbo” Walker came into the national spotlight playing blues festivals and rock clubs alike, proving that authentic blues could cross over between audiences and generations—and those bluesmen certainly rocked. Several of them recorded for the Fat Possum label (which also made the occasional odd attempt at incorporating hip-hop and techno into southern trance blues), but sadly most of the musicians were so advanced in age that many passed away within a few years of their newfound celebrity....

For virtually all of the Active Transportation Alliance’s 34-year history, the bosses have been white guys. Like many Chicago nonprofits, Active Transportation’s staff is mostly white, and by its own admission, the organization has made some mistakes when it comes to addressing the needs of communities of color—more on that in a bit. Having a person of color in charge could be helpful for avoiding such tunnel vision in the future....

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