Thursday, April 9, 2015
By JEREMBY D. BONFIGLIO • HP Feature Writer
Chicago troubadour Mark Dvorak to play at St. Joe’s Box Factory
ST. JOSEPH - Mark Dvorak acknowledges his plans are a bit ambitious as he rattles off a laundry list of projects on tap over the next year and a half.
“The first one is ‘It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie,’ which is a collection of old pop standards,” the Chicago-based folk troubadour says by telephone from his home in Riverside, Ill. “The second album I want to record is all banjo music. Then I want to do an audio version of my book of essays and peoms, and another disc of 10-12 original songs.”
Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the task, however, Dvorak is exhilarated at the thought of each project. “Time Ain’t Got Nothin’ On Me,” his latest album, was released in 2011, but since then “Chicago’s official troubadour” has continued to teach at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music; written “Bowling for Christmas & Other Tales from the Road,” a collection of 21 essays and three poems publised in 2013; and kept up a busy Midwest road schedule, which on Saturday brings him back to the Box Factory for the Arts. New Buffalo singer-songwriter Andy Burd, a former pupil of Dvorak, opens the show.