Just a month before David Bowie’s death, local Bowie cover band Sons of the Silent Age made plans for their next show, a concert benefitting cancer research at the University of Chicago Medical Center—the same place that Metro owner Joe Shanahan went for his own cancer treatments. Once the Thin White Duke died from cancer, says the Sons’ drummer, Matt Walker (previously of Garbage and the Smashing Pumpkins), it became even more clear that playing a benefit show was the right thing to do. On March 4 the nine-person band will take the stage with Bowie’s former girlfriend and collaborator Ava Cherry to play Station to Station in its entirety plus a set of songs spanning Bowie’s career.
The Pablove Foundation was started by a good friend of mine, Jeff Castelaz—he lost his young son, Pablo, to cancer and started this foundation. It just felt good that, if we were going to do this, to put our efforts toward a good cause. As it happened, Shirley Manson, who I worked with in Garbage—she was also close to Jeff, and she knew Pablo. Also Shirley was a big Bowie fan, pretty much like everyone, and so was Pablo. Pablo’s favorite song was “Life on Mars?,” and she sang that song at his funeral, so she was very close to this. She came out and joined us for the show. We did it at Metro, and it was just an amazing night for so many reasons. The greatest thing is that we really did raise a lot of money for the foundation, but we also had so much fun doing it that we thought we should do it again. So since then we’ve been playing once or twice a year, mostly for our own enjoyment but also for causes we feel close to. So it seemed like a natural fit that you would honor Bowie’s death with that same kind of concert.
Exactly. That first show, we played 15 songs—how do you even choose what Bowie songs to play? They’re all so great. We have nine people in the band, and everyone wants to play their favorite, so everyone’s arm wrestling for which song they fantasize about playing. This upcoming show is our fifth or sixth show, and there are still 30 songs left that I would love to play. So I think we’ll keep going with it.
Tell me about when you met David Bowie. I was on tour with Billy Corgan for his solo record, The Future Embrace, and Billy knew Bowie. We were playing in New York, and we were just about to go onstage. The door opens—David Bowie walks in. It was extremely surreal. He was just very relaxed and sweet and said some encouraging words before we played, told us to have a good show, that he was really looking forward to it. There wasn’t too much to it, but he was instantly disarming. I’d heard that before, and sure enough, that’s exactly how he was in person. And then of course we had to play the show knowing that he was there watching.
