Owen Cleasby of The Lepers tells me that he and drummer, Ken Brock, are recording a new album at Steve Micek's home studio. Owen said this one will be more fleshed out instrumentally than the last Lepers CD, The Love from Above, which was released on Caulfield Records. Very unlikely that Caulfield will release this one, Owen said, as the guy behind the label, the legendary Bernie McGinn (ex-Sideshow), has moved to San Francisco. Someone else had told me that McGinn moved to S.F., then I mentioned that news to someone else, who said it wasn't true, then Owen told me the same story at the Okkervil River show. I guess I could try e-mailing McGinn via the Caulfield website, which is still live. Anyway, Owen says their CD should be done in early 2006 and then they'll shop it around to labels.

Tonight, Brother Ali returns to Sokol Underground with Swollen Members and Buck Bowen. Fellow Reader screed Jeremy Schnitker did an interview with Ali last week (read it here), where race again became the center of the discussion. Sounds like he's getting tired of the same questions over and over. I'm lucky I got to interview him waaay back in June 2003 (read that one here), before he caught fire with the critics and was more open about those sorts of questions. That didn't stop him from calling me out on stage about my article, however (you can read about that uncomfortable night in the June 13, 2003, Lazy-i blog entry). $10, 9 p.m.

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