Wednesday, June 26, 2024

Jeehye Ham of Precocious Neophyte plays her last show as a Chicagoan

a highly abstracted band portrait that appears to be mostly blue and orange stripes, curves, and overlapping transparent scales, but among all this you can sort of see the shape of a guitarist, part of a microphone stand, and a kick drum, among other things
Precocious Neophyte Credit: Matthew Cruz

Precocious Neophyte has become a vital part of Chicago’s growing shoegaze scene since singer-songwriter Jeehye Ham self-released Home in the Desert in 2022. The project began as a solo effort that Ham developed in her apartment, and she still records almost everything herself—but these days Precocious Neophyte also has a full live band with bassist Ethan Waddell, drummer Clinton Weber, and guitarist Brenden Romanowski. When they play the Logan Square Arts Festival on Saturday, June 29, it’ll be Precocious Neophyte’s last gig as a Chicago act. “I’m moving to Colorado for personal reasons,” Ham says, “but I am quite sad to be moving. Chicago is such a great place for artists. I’ll miss Chicago a lot.”

Before moving to Chicago from South Korea in 2018, Ham had been ingrained in Seoul’s indie scene, playing with psych-rock unit JuckJuck Grunzie and shoegaze group Vidulgi OoyoO. When she got here, she had no desire to be in another band, but her songwriting impulse hadn’t left her.

“I lived a very busy life when I was in Seoul,” she says. “But since coming to Chicago, especially after COVID-19, I had a lot of time on my hands, and naturally I started using it to make music.” She tried her hand at acoustic tunes, but they didn’t satisfy her. “Later, when I went back to the familiar music style of shoegaze, it became relatively easy and more natural for me to make music,” Ham says. “I just feel like it suits my emotions well.”

Earlier this month, Precocious Neophyte headlined Sleeping Village to celebrate the new EP Stonyreleased via Longinus Recordings—a Michigan label that works with exciting young shoegaze acts from around the globe, including Seoul’s Parannoul and São Paulo’s Sonhos Tomam Conta. Stony gives Ham’s atmospheres a darker tone than they have on Home in the Desert.

“I usually reminisce about the past when I make songs, and I went more deeply into a more limited range of spaces and characters for Stony,” Ham says. “I constantly thought about my hometown of Daehwa in the countryside of South Korea, surrounded by mountains, and about the old pharmacy where I grew up, which feels like a dead space to me (filled with cigarette smoke). I tried to capture the atmosphere, and it naturally went towards the darker side, towards death.” Precocious Neophyte perform on the Monument Stage on Saturday at 7 PM.

Jeehye Ham recorded Stony mostly herself, with bassist Ethan Waddell on four tracks.

In the early 2000sNonagon singer-guitarist John Hastie and drummer Tony Aimone played together for the first time, starting a punk band that went nowhere. “That band ran its course very quickly,” Hastie says, “but Tony and I decided we were gonna keep playing.” In 2004, Hastie recruited bassist Robert Gomez, a friend from the Champaign scene, to start what would become Nonagon. The three of them have kept the band going for such a long time that their 20th anniversary almost snuck up on them. Nonagon celebrate the occasion by headlining the Burlington on Saturday, June 29.

Nonagon never set out to conquer the world—and they’re convinced that their decision to treat music making as a hobby has helped their longevity. “It’s been crucial to keep it away from our meal ticket,” Hastie says. “It’s been crucial to keep it away from paying the bills—I know it’s a punk-rock cliche, but when that starts happening, that’s when you start making decisions that are based more on the income or your status than on what’s on hand at the moment.” Nonagon have issued a small but mighty catalog of recordings over those 20 years: three EPs, a single, and one LP, 2021’s They Birds.

“We’ve never been a ‘looking back’ kind of band,” Hastie says. “The set we play now only includes maybe two or three songs from [They Birds] anymore. Anything else is new—newer, certainly.” The band will perform some older material for the big show, though remembering their deep catalog cuts hasn’t been without its challenges. “We don’t remember ’em,” Hastie says. “We had a lot of trouble trying to get the muscle memory back and remember the lyrics.”

Hastie knows that Nonagon’s indifference to commercial success isn’t an approach that everyone will or even can take, but it’s worked out for him. “I think each of us realizes that we are gonna be making music probably until the day we die, even if it’s not with each other,” he says. “But if this is the sustainable thing—and surprise, surprise, it actually is—this is where we are, and it’s really exciting to be doing it.”

Nonagon released their only full-length to date via Controlled Burn Records.

Cre8ive Sessions is a “vibrant community of artists, visionaries, and enthusiasts coming together to celebrate the endless possibilities of creative expression,” explains Ruby Hunt, aka Rubes, head of operations for the artists’ collective. Multihyphenate creative Kehari, who runs the group with Hunt, founded it to foster healthy collaborative environments and help local creatives make connections and find success. Cre8ive Sessions kicked off by hosting a series of photography events called Cre8ive Photography Sessions, then began hosting social events under the name Cre8 the Vibe.

One of the collective’s newest ventures is the regular Cre8ive Nights Happy Hour at Bar 22 in the South Loop (2244 S. Michigan). This free weekly Friday-night gathering promises to be a great place for creatives to network with like-minded folks. The Cre8ive Nights Happy Hour on Friday, June 28, doubles as the official afterparty for the Over the Rainbow Music Fest in Dan Ryan Woods, which is curated by Cre8ive Sessions team member Heartbreak Homie. The afterparty will feature sets by Cre8ive Sessions residents DJ God Mode and VerySpecialEd plus an appearance by a surprise DJ. Doors open at 7 PM.


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