Bach on a Hook with Bill Taft at Railroad Earth

CRITIC’S PICK: A lot of y’all know Chris Verene from his time here in Atlanta decades ago when he played drums in Dairy Queen Empire (DQE) and Rock*A*Teens and taught photography at Emory University. Now living in New York and renowned in the fine art world for his photographic and video chronicling, Verene will be here at the end of the month performing with Bach on a Hook, an ongoing project founded in 1992 with Marty Matteson who plays viola with the DeKalb Symphony Orchestra. Bach on a Hook renders anew the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and a few other classical composers through a lens of urban beats, blues licks and fuzzy rock ‘n’ roll. The concert at Railroad Earth is special for a couple of reasons. It’s the debut of Bach on a Hook “gone electric,” in Verene’s words, and also features Verene’s son Nico sitting in on drums and Jan Sondra on bass guitar. Opener Bill Taft will be serving up something titled “Serves Me Right to Suffer,” which sounds like just the thing to lift everyone’s seasonal spirits. The evening concludes with a discussion about The Atlanta Indie Scene Oral History Project. – Doug DeLoach