B- Sides Live presents: Zack Keim at the Empty Bottle
B- Sides Live Presents:
Zack Keim
Flesh Panthers
Max & The Fellow Travelers
Live at the Empty Bottle March 6, 2025
Doors: 8PM / Show: 9PM / 21+
The first B-Sides Live presents show took over the historic Empty Bottle in a way that felt equal parts planned and completely unhinged in the greatest ways. The kind of night where you think you know what you’re walking into, but the next thing you know, you’re being asked to walk like a crab.
Max and the Fellow Travelers hit the stage for their first time at the Empty Bottle, easing things in with a little folky sway that felt just right for the room. You could feel people in the room perk up and kind of lock-in together. I think Evan’s pedal steel had a lot to do with that. One of those sounds that cuts clean through the noise and makes people stop mid-conversation like, “hold on… who’s doing that?”
Then Zack Keim got up there and things loosened up even more. At some point he introduced the crowd to the long-lost “Chicago Crabwalk,” which, without really volunteering, became something I was suddenly participating in. I wouldn’t say I nailed it. Meanwhile, completely under Zack’s radar, there was a guy fully committed to the bit: backwards, on all fours, crawling between people’s legs like that was just… part of the show. One of those blink-and-you-miss-it moments that somehow sums up the whole night.
By the time Flesh Panthers closed things out, any sense of restraint was long gone. They went as loud and hard as possible, pushing it right to the edge until a broken guitar more or less called it. No encore needed. Everyone got the message.
For a first go at B-Sides Live presents show, it felt exactly how it should. It was loose, a little unpredictable, but very much alive. The kind of night that doesn’t feel overproduced or overly precious. Just people showing up, playing hard, and letting whatever happens happen.
As I get ready to announce the next one, it’s hard not to look back at this as the perfect first dip. It was messy in the right ways, and a solid reminder of why shows like this are worth it in the first place.
- Dan (from the B- Side)