Recorded at the Apollo Theater in Peoria, IL During Two Nights of Sold Out Shows
Available now on Chicago Farmer’s online store, Amazon, iTunes & cdbaby
BLOOMINGTON, IL — Based in Bloomington, IL, Chicago Farmer (A.K.A. Cody Diekhoff) independently releases his first live Chicago Farmer album, Quarter Past Tonight, a two-disc set on Aug. 3. With long time studio engineer Chris Harden (I.V. Labs Studio/Chicago) in tow and armed with just his guitar, harmonica and distilled words and stories of heartache, social injustice, hometown pride, love and loss, Chicago Farmer played two sold out nights at the Apollo Theater in Peoria, IL in December of 2017 and captured it all as it went down.
Quarter Past Tonight offers a greatest-hits retrospective of his work with 32 tracks of stories and songs, including “Watch Doctor,” “Round Table,” and “Postcards” from his debut album, “Illinois Anthem” and “Assembly Line Blues” off of From a Small Town in Illinois [2006], “Weatherman” from Talk of Town [2007], “Workin’ On It” and “Backseat” from Backenforth, IL [2013], and “Rocco N’ Susie” and “Umbrella” from Midwest Side Stories [2016]. The album also features three new original Chicago Farmer songs — “Dirtiest Uniforms,” “$13 Beers,” and “I Need A Hit “— as well as a cover of Backyard Tire Fire’s “Good to Be.
What folks are saying:
“Chicago Farmer has the novelist’s gift of building a suspenseful story to a surprising conclusion. He’s clever, insightful, and witty with his between songs banter, making the stories often every bit as good and memorable as his songs… His trademark appeal is his ability to sing about the regular person, the working person, in a relatable way.’” —Country Standard Time, Jim Hynes
“I’d never heard of transplanted son of the soil Cody Diekhoff and you probably haven’t either. But this tenth-anniversary double-live, 24 songs and eight spoken bits that include a tribute to his heroically supportive wife entitled ‘Benefits’… he’s funny, he’s kind, and he’s preparing an instructional video about ‘how do you get that drawl that you do—it’s kind of a mix between a small-town big-city kind of a northernly southernly easterly westerly stuck-in-the-middle type of a drawl.’” —Noisey, Robert Christgau
“You don’t hear many albums these days like this two-CD set, which hearkens back to a time when solo folk artists like Tom Paxton and Arlo Guthrie strode onstage offering nothing but their voices, guitars, harmonicas, visions, and wit.” —The Morton Report, Jeff Burger
“The troubadour is standup – a storyteller like the best standup comics and an upright fellow standing up for regular folks and the lives of quiet desperation and outright glee we all experience to the soundtracks in our heads and hearts…. He’s comparable to John Prine, Loudon Wainwright and Neil Young, and also occasionally like the late Steve Goodman, Art Thieme and Woody Guthrie, with a soulful sense of humor and keen insight to the human condition and all its passion, silliness and dreams.” –The Community Word, Bill Knight
“A riveting live performer who has cultivated a loyal following with folk songs and stories about the American heartland” –WGLT, Jon Norton
“As hard-working musicians go, few can hold a candle to the Midwest’s own folk hero, Chicago Farmer. Back and forth across the great wide open, the authenticity of his music just resonates with something in the human spirit, with material ranging from raucous and boot-stompin’ runaway hootenannies, to subdued and heartfelt odes to love and loss.” –News-Gazette, Andrew Howie
“Like the stage name that Cody Diekhoff adopted for himself, Chicago Farmer’s music has an urban big-city sensibility with rural small-town roots, similar to the genre of Americana music itself, which is a combination of different American music idioms.” –South Bend Tribune, Andrew S. Hughes
Quarter Past Tonight Track Listing:
Disc One
1. Dirtiest Uniforms (4:52) [Previously Unreleased]
2. Round Table (4:38)
3. Pulled Over On 29 (1:29)*
4. Anymore (2:54)
5. Benefits (1:23)*
6. Backseat (7:57)
7. Assembly Line Blues (3:23)
8. $13 Dollar Beers (3:03) [Previously Unreleased]
9. Six Records (1:00)*
10. Who On Earth (4:42)
11. Fall (4:05)
12. Illinois Anthem (4:03)
13. Jon Stokes Prison Break Blues (3:34)
14. People N’ Places (10:56)
15. Good To Be (3:27) [by Edward David Anderson & Backyard Tire Fire]
Disc Two
1. I Need A Hit (5:07) [Previously Unreleased]
2. Umbrella (4:55)
3. We’re All Billy (:48)*
4. Quarter Life Crisis (2:17)*
5. Watch Doctor (5:58)
6. Weatherman (3:04)
7. Nostalgia & Folklore (2:02)*
8. Postcards (2:41)
9. Hats (3:49)
10. Workin’ On It (7:38)
11. Breaking Bad (1:57)*
12. Rocco N’ Susie (5:55)
13. Thank You’s (:45)*
14. Victoria Walker (5:13)
15. Farms & Factories (4:22)
16. Won’t Let You Down (5:04)
17. For Dad (Pool Song) (8:04)
All tracks FCC clean
*Banter/Story
Further information can be found at www.chicagofarmer.com, www.facebook.com/chicagofarmer, and twitter.com/chicagofarmer.