After 11 years as one of Chicago’s most consistently acclaimed purveyors of creative, supercharged guitar pop, Busker Soundcheck is taking its final bow. The threesome bids farewell to fans Friday at Metro, Busker’s longtime home club.
Metro also hosted Smashing Pumpkins’ December swan song. But unlike their fellow Chicagoans’ endlessly hyped — make that just plain endless — goodbye (which finally reached “how can we miss you if you won’t go away?” proportions), Busker Soundcheck’s exit is positively low-key.
Of course, the trio hadn’t attained anything near Billy Corgan and company’s superstardom. But guitarist Paul Kamp, drummer Dan Sopher (who shares lead vocals with Kamp) and bassist Chris Klein amassed a substantial, enthusiastic national fan base over the years; the 1,000-capacity Metro expects a full house, complete with out-of-towners.
When painted in the broadest strokes, Busker’s portrait isn’t all that different from those of innumerable local favorites anywhere who, despite superb self-released records (the band’s most recent, late-’99 “Welcome to Buskerland” drew particular accolades), favorable press, diligent touring and a fervent following, never do ink that major-label deal.
Yet their breakup is unusually rancor-free, especially considering that a single member precipitated it.
It was Klein who’d finally — understandably — had enough of the maximum-energy, minimum-income indie-rock life.
“I realized that [doing this] for another 10 years would take double the amount of effort and a total rethinking of how we operate,” Klein says, sharing a corner table at a convivial Roscoe Village tavern with Kamp and Sopher. “I didn’t think it’d be possible [for me], so I gave them the option of finding another bass player.”
But band members agreed that Busker Soundcheck’s essence could be distilled only from all three together.
“It was over,” says Kamp, though not without regret: “To me, everything was going great; I still loved being in the van and driving somewhere.”
Kamp had particularly savored Busker’s fall tours, “going up the East Coast, leaves changing color before our eyes, eating in tiny little places called, like, Guns & Ammo & Breakfast.”
With Klein wanting out, though, it was time “to close the book, concisely,” Kamp says.
“If we hadn’t had so much fun,” Sopher reflects, “we’d be pissed-off, angry guys, and we’re not. … We’ll still be creating music in one form or another [including Kamp and Klein with their respective side bands Ruth Buzzy and Bondo], so it’s gonna be a new chapter.”
And when all is said and done, as Kamp waggishly observes, “We were a band longer than the Beatles.”
———-
Busker Soundcheck plays its last show Friday at Metro, 3730 N. Clark St. 773-549-4140 or 312-559-1212.
