Phil Yates with Shannon Baker and Adele Nicholas

Phil Yates is the songwriter behind the Chicago power pop band Phil Yates & The Affiliates. His songs have been described as "hyperliterate pop-rock with shades of Elvis Costello and Big Star," although his solo sets leans into what he describes as songs that are "too folky for the rockers and too rocky for the folkers." His last album with the Affiliates, 2022's A Thin Thread, was released by the power pop boutique label Futureman Records. Through the years, Phil has shared the stage with a variety of artists that include The Mountain Goats, The Babies, The Dead Milkmen's Joe Jack Talcum, The Folk Implosion's John Davis, Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs, and Anderson East. Phil has also shared a basket of chips and salsa with The Apples in Stereo’s Robert Schneider. Buy him a drink and he will gladly tell you that story! Shannon Baker and her catalogue of melodic original songs have been a mainstay in musical venues all over Chicago. Her backing band The Burners (Dan Kane, Michael Fitz, Bobby Puetz, and Pat Corbett) add sonic layers to a rich collection of songs that leave an echo of nostalgia for the classics while remaining consistently fresh throughout. Axons is the songwriting project of Chicago civil rights lawyer Adele Nicholas. She writes pop songs that reflect on questions that she wrestles with in her professional life — the boundary between justice and vengeance, the limits of compassion, and the ways, quotidian and dramatic, that regular lives can go off the rails. Buy tickets