#open mike eagle

Thanks to everyone who came out to last night’s special holiday show at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel! It was a special night for all of us.

Thanks to the WorkJuice Players: @paulftompkins, Marc Evan Jackson, Paget Brewster, @hallublin, Mark Gagliardi, Craig Cackowski, Joshua Malina, Annie Savage, Autumn Reeser, Janet Varney, and Busy Philipps.

Thanks to our special guests: Timothy Omundson, Chris Tallman, and Open Mike Eagle.

Enormous thanks to Jordan Katz and the Elements of Style, featuring composer Jonathan Dinerstein. And thanks to Rhett Miller and Ted Leo for the amazing new songs.

Thanks to our director Aaron Ginsburg. And thanks to Ben Acker & Ben Blacker who created, wrote, and produced the show. The doors are closed for now, but they aren’t locked.

New episode!

The Thrilling Adventure Hour #235: Beyond Belief, “Snakes in a Mane”

Starring Paul F. TompkinsandPaget Brewster as those married mediums Frank and Sadie Doyle. Also starring Hal Lublin as the Spooky Narrator; Annie Savage as a gorgon; Mark Gagliardi as Pterodactyl Jones; and Autumn Reeser as Bloody Mary.

Music by Jordan Katz & the Elements of Style. Written, produced, and directed by Ben Acker & Ben Blacker.

“Love Ain’t No Billy Goat” written by Jonathan Coulton.

Recorded November 12, 2016 at the Bell House in Brooklyn, NY.

itunes//nerdist

Tickets are on sale NOW for the FINAL THRILLING ADVENTURE HOUR show for many years. It’s at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles this Saturday, December 17, 2016.

Starring Paul F. Tompkins, Paget Brewster, Busy Philipps, Joshua Malina, all of the WorkJuice Players, and special guests including Timothy Omundson(Galavant; Psych) and rapper Open Mike Eagle!

Tickets here

NY photo Credit: Mindy Tucker

Open Mike Eagle’s new album, Brick Body Kids Still Daydream, is heavily influenced by the legacy of the Robert Taylor Homes, a former public housing project on the South Side of Chicago, which was unceremoniously torn down in 2007. (Today, all that remains at the site is a barren field.) Mike grew up in Chicago and often spent time with family living in the Homes. Upon revisiting the city and the former site of the Homes later in life, he was struck by the lack of commemoration for the thousands of residents who lived and died in the Homes. The realization that nothing remained in that space inspired the theme of the album. 

For the inaugural episode of AV Docs, The A.V. Club spent a day with Open Mike Eagle at the site of the former Homes in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, exploring its legacy to understand the inspiration behind his new album.