Kelly Hogan with Scott Ligon & Joel Paterson

Equally comfortable with indie rock, traditional country, jazz, and pop, Atlanta-born singer Kelly Hogan has explored all those directions and more in her career as a solo artist and backing vocalist for acts such as Neko Case, Mavis Staples, The Decemberists, Jakob Dylan, Andrew Bird, and Alejandro Escovedo. She’s also an in-demand session musician, adding vocals to a long list of recordings from a host of artists like Drive-ByTruckers, The New Pornographers, The Mekons, Amy Ray, Tortoise, Jim Lauderdale, and The Minus 5, just to name a few. Hogan first made a name for herself as a versatile singer in the early 1990s with her indie band The Jody Grind (and as a guitarist/back-up screamer with reverb bummer-punks, The RockATeens) before relocating to Chicago in 1997. She has released four critically-acclaimed solo albums, with the last - I Like to Keep Myself in Pain - released in 2012 on ANTI Records (label home to Tom Waits, Wilco, and other greats.) I Like to Keep Myself in Pain featured songs written specifically for Hogan by a star-studded roster of musicians including Robyn Hitchcock, The Handsome Family, and Vic Chesnutt, and was recorded with a backing band led by legendary musician Booker T. Jones, and anchored by hall-of-fame drummer James Gadson (Bill Withers, The BeeGees.) These days (when she’s not recording or performing with her five-part vocal band The Flat Five in Chicago, or out on tour with other acts) Hogan lives in rural southern Wisconsin and works with writer/cartoonist/teacher Lynda Barry, managing Lynda’s fundraising Etsy shop.

Backing her this evening is long-time bandmember Scott Ligon, a member of the famed NRBQ, and one of the top finger style guitar players in the world, Joel Paterson.