Bill & Ryley headline, but this appears to be an night packed with interested art and performance.

Hear Ye..! Come one, come all. Join in the cheer as we light a candle for the bright times of the year past, as for the year to come, and work to move any lingering darkness along with the help of four unique acts. Starting off the evening, Charles Joseph Smith brings his idiosyncratic genius to bear upon the Hideout's vintage upright piano. Following him we shall witness the acutely-sharpened pen & agile mind of playright Gabriel Wallace in a rare reading. Exemplary song-maker & creative force AZITA performs third doing a selection of new songs in band format. And fourth but not least, songwriter-guitarists Bill MacKay & Ryley Walker will beguile the public with a range of their ragas meets cosmic blues meets folk odysseys for guitars. Joy is real.

At $8, I proclaim this the best show value of the year.

Chicago-based guitarists Bill MacKay and Ryley Walker first met in January 2014 at a friend’s birthday party where they discovered a mutual admiration for Albert King, Laura Nyro, Nick Drake, Bert Jansch, Ali Akbar Khan and Jimi Hendrix. They soon began meeting at Bill’s southwest Chicago home to write and improvise together on their lived-in dreadnought 6-string guitars, with Ryley's 12-string and Bill's requinto making frequent appearances as the year wore on. The duo quickly developed their own musical vocabulary and the resulting sounds drew on traditional folk music from Appalachia to Northern India, as well as jazz and blues. Over the course of the year, an impressive repertoire of new songs and ideas coalesced.