First up was Katey Red, in her Chicago debut at the Empty Bottle May 23. After DJ sets from Darren Keen, Teen Witch Fan Club and Swagarilla, Red hit the stage with her dancing Red Team and ignited the packed house with a fiery mix of dance, pride, swagger and naughty pizzazz. As one of the emerging stars of the “Sissy Bounce” scene, which has made New Orleans the ass-shaking capital of the world, Red rammed through a set that included “Ugly Buggin’ Me,” “Come On” and “So Much Drama” while her talented dancers took the idea of the “pelvic thrust” to a sweaty and spiritual level. (Bob Fosse would have been proud.) There was an onstage audience dance-off as well as a hearty helping of naughtiness that inspired the mixed crowd of club kids, clubbers and rockers, gay and straight, to “express themselves”—at least from the waist down.
One night later, Chicago’s own Vanessa Davis Band threw a blues-soaked birthday bash at Fitzgerald’s in Berwyn—which inspired an entirely different, though just as impassioned, reaction from the capacity crowd. Still blunt, fiery, confrontational and soulful as ever, out lesbian blues woman Davis ripped through a set that included her classics “Wild Child,” “Blues on the Dime” and a particularly brutal “Since You Been Gone” with a searing cameo from harmonica alchemist/radio personality Buzz Kilman. The couples at this show hit the dance floor and did the pony, the twist, the foxtrot, the watusi or whatever they felt like doing. But whatever dance this crowd did, they did it with passion and abandon.