Ratchet Series in Chicago Profiled

Gapers Block has a piece about the Ratchet series in Chicago, and in the process gives a pretty good overview of the difficulties of getting gigs as a creative music artist.

Ratchet originally began as a bi-weekly gig in the summer of ’07 for the avant garde trio Princess Princess, with Rosaly on drums, Jaimie Branch on trumpet and Toby Summerfield on bass. The band was a rather challenging listen, especially in an unforgiving bar scene, and the group was eventually fired. But during the process, Rosaly took the reins and somehow convinced the management to let them try a weekly series, this time with different bands each week. “As long as it ain’t Princess Princess every week, we’ll try it out.” They gave Ratchet six months—and that was almost three years ago.