The Golden Dagger is exactly the spot you want to go for live music: a dim-lit, intimate setting with 0 tables, 0 chairs and 1 long bar. Venues like this are home to superb ambiance and even better live music. I think Midcentury Llama would agree.

Midcentury Llama is manned by Frank O’Meara (guitar), Sam Okrent (keys/vocals), Nick Witek (bass/vocals), and Eric Ganter (drums), all who are childhood friends. The group had played and grown together as musicians while growing up in Chicago, but it wasn’t until they all found themselves back in Chicago that they began compiling original music.

Their music draws influences from artists like Whitney, Traffic, and Pinegrove, both rhythmic and extremely catchy. You could immediately tell they had been playing together for quite some time – no instrument overpowered the rest, resulting in one cohesive sound. They had the whole place moving and tapping their foot in no time.

I knew it was going to be a fun set off the bat when they opened up with a rendition of the Wii Theme song; they had the audience from square one. I was impressed with the range of the collection they played, seamlessly weaving in a mixture of old and new. The majority of their setlist of featured a heavy portion of their most recent self-titled album, but we also got a few sneak peeks at some new material, specifically a face-paced joyride called “She’s Pretty”. They finished the night off with their hit song, and my personal favorite, “I Get Confused”.

We originally called ourselves “Spaceman”; however, when we went to upload our first track to Spotify, we were given an error message stating there were too many artists under that name. We met up the next day for a brainstorming session, each of us bringing a few ideas to the table. “Midcentury Llama” was conceived as a combination of a few different ideas and luckily there were no existing artists under that name.

Frank O’Meara

A huge thank you to the Llamas for having me out – it will not be the last time I go to their show. In the meantime, be on the lookout for new music on the way.