First Fridays: Love Is Love

All Evening

• **Love is…

Soup & Bread**

6–10 pm

Soup & Bread is a community meal project and a fun, grassroots way to raise money for hunger-relief and other good causes. Launched in 2009 by Martha Bayne and Sheila Sachs, Soup & Bread has raised over $40,000 for food pantries. Tonight's proceeds go to the Chicago HELP Initiative. Thanks to our generous soup makers: Mana Food Bar, The Drake, Fleming's Steakhouse: The Pub, Goddess and Grocer, Marriott Hotel, Blue Door Farm Stand and bread makers, Publican Quality Meat, and Crumb Bread.

• **Love is…

Write Club Love/Hate Letters**

6–10 pm

We love Write Club, “the world’s greatest competitive reading series” and all-volunteer enterprise that showcases the mind-bending talents of local writer-performers. Born at The Hideout, the series has spread to six North American cities. For Love is Love, writers from Write Club come together and let their defenses down to help patrons compose love letters or break-up letters on vintage typewriters.

• **Love is…

Joyce & Judy**

6–10 pm

Joyce and Judy are widowed Jewish best friends (like sisters) with beards. We love gaudy fashion with lots of sparkle and big jewelry. They are the glamorous hostesses for the night.

• **Love is…

Only a Paper Moon**

6–10 pm

Local multi-media artist and musician Andrea Jablonski creates a romantic backdrop using the iconic paper moon image, recalling the sentiment of the 1933 song “It's Only A Paper Moon”—where a lover longs for love to be real, not make-believe like the paper and cardboard scenery often seen in early twentieth-century theater. Commemorate this special night with a photograph!

• **Love is…

Madame Strawbridge, The Love Goddess**

6–10 pm

Have your tarot cards read by Madame Strawbridge, the Love Goddess, and see what 2014 has in store for your love life.

• **Love is…

H/O Lovecraft**

6–10 pm

Get into the crafting spirit and make someone who catches your eye a beautiful Valentine. The lovely ladies Petie and Jodie will assist you with your special valentine.

Scheduled Events

• **Love is…

Sanctified Grumblers**

6–7:30 pm

Eric Noden, Rick Sherry, and Mike Hogg are the Sanctified Grumblers. They love to play original acoustic music reminiscent of antique rural scenes in juke joints, front porches, and box cars. Their resonator guitar, washboard, banjo, harmonica, and sousaphone is the vehicle by which their tales are driven. We can’t help but smile; we can’t help but dance.

• **Love is…

Chicago Girl Group DJs**

6–7:30 pm

From riot grrrl lovers to girl group record collectors, to members of a punk rock marching band, to a doom metal bassist, we love the talented ladies of Girl Group Chicago, the first all-female orchestra of such magnitude. Tonight they DJ 1960s love songs with special guests the go-go dancing Revelettes.

• **Love is…

The Aluminum Group**

6–9 pm

The Aluminum Group loves life, liberty, and the pursuit of “Happyness,” “More Happyness,” and even a “Little Happyness.” Named in honor of a line of furniture designed by Charles and Ray Eames, Chicago-based chamber-pop outfit the Aluminum Group is led by brothers John and Frank Navin. These early contributors to the Wicker Park music scene first surfaced in 1983 as members of the hardcore band Women in Love. Eventually their secret affection for the buoyant music of the Carpenters and Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66 surfaced when the Navin brothers formed the Aluminum Group, stubbornly crafting their own singular brand of lushly orchestrated pop long before the genre became newly “re-fashionable” during the mid-1990s.

• **Love is…

The Interview Show**

6:30–7:30 pm

Mark Bazer loves to talk, and loves to laugh. The Interview Show, hosted by Mark, features guests from every walk of life—musicians, authors, comedians, community activists, chefs, CEOs—sharing their world views and talents in a laid-back, intimate setting. Guests for tonight’s show include Sarah Urist Green and John Green of PBS Digital’s “The Art Assignment;” Goodman Theatre’s Artistic Director Robert Falls; Maril Gagen MacDonald, CEO and Founder of Gagen MacDonald; and rapper Psalm One.

• **Love is…

Jon Langford, Sally Timms, and Martin Billheimer: Love Letters from a Lost Balloonist**

7 pm/8:50 pm

Langford, Timms, and Billheimer, The National Theater of The Hideout, presents a radio play using excerpts from works by Gertrude Stein, Jaime D'Angulo, Paul Celan, Walter Benjamin, and other remnants of last century. The play is inspired by Joachim Koester's installation Message From Andree, on view in the exhibition The Way of the Shovel. Performances take place inside Koester's installation.

• **Love is…

Ronnie Kuller's Piano Bar**

7–9 pm

We love Ronnie Kuller's ethereal voice supported by her enchanting piano accompaniment. For Love is Love she performs her own settings of love sonnets by Edna St. Vincent Millay and the poems of Baudelaire, and attempts to do justice to the dark romance of several chansons by the celebrated local songwriter and word-cobbler Tom Musick. Ronnie Kuller is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, teaching artist, and member of local marching band performance group Mucca Pazza.

• **Love is…

Jefferey Thomas Orchestra: Rumour**

7:30–8 pm

Jefferey Allen Thomas conducts a 16-piece chamber orchestra in the world premiere of his Second Symphony, Rumour, from The Work of Jack Daedalus Edwards; a large-scale project featuring four symphonies and a fictional music theory book about the life of his maternal grandfather.

• **Love is…

Bobby Conn & Monica BouBou**

8–8:30 pm

The lovely musical misfits and culture warriors Bobby Conn and Monica BouBou have equally delighted and annoyed hipsters since first appearing on the Chicago music scene in the mid 1990s. Blending aggressive showmanship with an omnivorous love of musical genres, from Suicide to Streisand and The Sweet to Stravinsky, Bobby often irritates and provokes audiences, but never bores them.

• **Love is…

Jon Langford, Sally Timms and Martin Billheimer, The Moon Men of the Moon**

8 pm/9:20 pm

When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon for the first time was he a futuristic explorer, brutal conqueror, cultural imperialist, or all of the above? How was indigenous Moon Art influenced by this traumatic encounter with the “heroic” Astronaut? National Theater of The Hideout performers will cast a dim light on this and other weighty issues in the poetic, heartwarming crowd-pleaser “The Moon Men of the Moon,” with its dark sub-texts and expensive costumes.

• **Love is…

The Makeout Party Orchestra**

8:30–9 pm

Jefferey Thomas conducts an orchestra whose members include Hideout employees and musicians who perform regularly at The Hideout. Performing at The Hideout near Valentine’s Day for the past seven years, The “Makeout Party” Orchestra will present new arrangements of romantic standards which include classic love themes by Bernard Herrmann, Ennio Morricone, James Horner, and Burt Bacharach.

• **Love is…

Chicago Girl Group DJs**

9–10 pm

From riot grrrl lovers to girl group record collectors, to members of a punk rock marching band, to a doom metal bassist, we love the talented ladies of Girl Group Chicago, the first all-female orchestra of such magnitude. Tonight they DJ 1960s love songs with special guests the go-go dancing Revelettes.

• **Love is…

The Revelettes**

9–10 pm

Meet the Revelettes, Chicago’s tailfeather shakin’est dance troupe. These go-go girls’ fab moves, ‘dos, and threads have raised spirits and roofs all over the city since 2007. Tonight they turn up the heat and bring on the love.