Joni Mitchell, if you’re reading this, please report to the House of Blues on Friday night. The Bacon Brothers will be waiting for you.
“I’ve always wanted a female singer,” says Michael Bacon, the slightly less-famous half of the folk-rock band the Bacon Brothers. “I would love for her to just come up and play acoustic guitar with us.”
Kevin Bacon, better known for roles in “Footloose,” “Apollo 13,” and “A Few Good Men” than for singing and strumming a guitar, is the other half of the Bacon Brothers, and he dreams of sharing the stage with a slightly different artist — or two.
“Mozart,” he says. “Or maybe John Lennon. Or Marvin Gaye.”
Aside from a small difference of opinion regarding collaborators, the brothers, in a phone interview from their New York homes, were mostly in agreement. They started singing and playing instruments together in their Philadelphia basement as kids, and they still share a love of music and a love of live performance.
Michael, who plays the cello, banjo and guitar, pursued a music career; he formed a folk-rock band, Good News, in the early ’70s, and later earned a degree in music. He has worked in New York since 1985 composing music for films and TV shows, including “The Kennedy’s,” for which he won an Emmy in 1993.
Music was more of a hobby for Kevin, who’s been in so many films that “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” a parlor game that trades on his ubiquity, became something of a cult pastime among celebrities and mere mortals alike.
“I was kind of lazy when it came to practicing,” he says of his music career. “That’s why I became an actor. So I could do something I didn’t have to learn.”
Nevertheless, despite his busy film career, Kevin found time to record with his brother, and the Bacon Brothers released their first album, “Forosoco” in 1997. The name is short for “folk, rock, soul, country” — a nod to their numerous influences. “Getting There,” their second album, was released in 1999. The album is an eclectic mixture of trips down memory lane, blithe observations about the opposite sex and celebrations of life’s little pleasures — subjects not exactly rare among pop-rock bands. But songs like “Arm Wrestling Woman,” “K9 Love” and “Woman’s Got A Mind To Change,” give the Bacon Brothers a playful, melodic feel that still manages to reflect their maturity.
A third album is in the works and should be released “sometime this summer,” Michael says.
“We try to play it as much as we can live before we record it,” he adds, noting that the new material will be on their set list this weekend. “We’ve pretty much maxed out the new stuff in our shows now.”
“I like playing the new stuff,” Kevin adds. “One song called `Lava Lamp” says `Don’t leave the lava lamp on for me.’ It starts out with a sense of humor, but it gets tremendously personal.”
Friday’s House of Blues show is the Bacon Brothers’ fourth Chicago performance. Their first Chicago appearance was a free show at the now-closed Planet Hollywood in 1998.
“I love Chicago,” says Kevin, who filmed “She’s Having a Baby,” “Flatliners,” and “Stir of Echoes” here. “I like to walk, and it’s a great place to walk. The waves crashing on the lake, the buildings, the neighborhoods.”
Saturday night the band will travel to Merrillville, Ind., to perform at the Star Plaza Theater. The brothers agree they would like to become big enough to fill large concert venues like the United Center, but they both think that size doesn’t really matter.
“When you’re on stage, you don’t get a sense of how big the place is,” Michael says. “You just feel like you’re playing your songs for your audience.”
Besides, how much bigger can they get — when they’ve already played Carnegie Hall.
“We opened up for the Band,” Michael says. “Dave Mason was supposed to open for them, but he got sick. So they asked us.”
“We never got asked back,” Kevin laughs.
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The Bacon Brothers will perform at 8 p.m. Friday at the House of Blues (312-923-2000) and 8 p.m. Saturday (219-769-6600) at the Star Plaza Theater in Merrillville, Ind.
