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Mickey Menace

@mickey.menace

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@bandnamedgushy
Witch Doctor in Another Life
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@mickeydennisphoto

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What a lovely lil summer

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NEW EPISODE OUT NOW with Mickey Menace of Gushy! Headed up by Mickey and featuring members of Tum, Charmed Form & more, Gushy bring the lush sounds of 90’s grunge and alternative into the present with a freshness and vibrancy all their own. Hear their debut track I Feel Fine at the start of the episode and stick around for the conversation 📸 @holyfawning

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We play July 31st, this Friday, at @goldstarbarchi with @trashkickers.chi. We’ve heard it’s a birthday celebration. Have not been told there will be cake but can gaurentee there will be cold drinks and loud music! Hope to see you there 🖤

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Are we cooked ?

be honest

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What happens when you get 10 girls together in a cabin? They bleach their eye brows. Swipe to be shocked.

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photos from the Great American Summer™ that I’m having right now

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Tour, friends, summer, and all of that 🦇

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No shows and no heroic stage capes for these secret identities tonight. Those are shelved for the time being. Ok, not too secret to begin with, but it was nice to shoot them without a set time before or after showtime, without that usual worry of taking up their time while loading gear in or out of a venue.

Tonight they were just here to celebrate the debut of Gushy’s live set, fans like me. Different atmosphere for me, but not tooo different from other great shows, just a bit more breathing room; a more comfortable, more connected, rainy night at the Sleepy Village.

Cheers to two of the very best ⚡️

#concertphotography #concertphotography #chicagomusic #punk #gushy

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Staying local means you never really lose touch with a band, even after they break up. Members scatter into new projects, or just drift out of the scene for a while, but you still end up meeting them at bars or venues, watching other bands together. You keep showing up because the Chicago scene is worth staying close to.

Years ago, when she was still fronting her old band as Mickey Menace, she told me she’d been thinking about a return. She’d been turning the idea over for a while, plotting it as Mickey Dennis while Menace stayed dormant. She later helped me on a shoot of my own, no fuss, just showed up, did the work, and was the nicest person to chat gigs and music with. Not long after, I was shooting a show and she was there working too, and I got to turn my lens on her for once. Two years later, Menace made her return.

I hadn’t caught her live in ages. So watching her back on stage this summer, fronting a project that pulls from grunge and its offshoots, grunge gaze, grunge punk, a sound she and her bandmates have made their own, dressed in a dark metal and goth aesthetic that felt like grunge’s shadow sibling in the 90s, has been the best part of my season so far. Her voice does the thing I love most in a performer, sliding from sweet and melodic into something with teeth. The room felt it every turn, old friends and new cheering loudest when her voice bared its edge.

I’ve called her smoky, dark, goth, cool to the point of intimidating. She’s also one of the warmest, most enthusiastic people I know in this scene. For a while I had a sense she was building something without saying what. Then came the reveal she’d be playing Sleeping Village, and I kept thinking what that felt like for her and her bandmates on stage.

In conversations she’d mention pieces of it, a few band names she kicked around. Then one day she posted it. Gushy. Tyler, Maddie, Nate, and Mickey, pulling from an era I don’t dig into often enough and making me want to live in it again.

#gushy #bandnamedgushy #concertphotography #grunge #grungegaze

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Despite shooting shows regularly, there aren’t many of the photographers around me that I actually get to meet. Victoria is the shiny exception. Part photographer, full-time artist. She’s joined me on several shoots, with an ability to draw out the best in people that I’m always a little in awe of, and one of my favorite things to watch.

We met at an event I was shooting, when she walked up and asked if she could borrow my camera for a few shots. A few minutes later, watching the camera move in her hands, I understood why the photos would be good before I’d even seen them.

There's a quickness to her, but not hurried, always trailing something only she sees. There’s something determined in it too, fluid and sure of itself, gone before you realize where she went. That same instinct seemed to guide Victoria’s hand, a fearless habit of her getting in close to the subject and/or low to the ground. Victoria’s a person who’ll lay flat on her back or squeeze between two giant speakers just to find the shot.

I also wanted to turn my own camera on her right then, to catch whatever it was that pulled her into her work so completely. Her laugh also seems to live right under the surface, ready to break loose the moment she coaxes one out of her subject, like the the two of them sharing a joke the rest of us missed. You had to be there, and she always was.

Several shows later, she’s become one of my favorite subjects too, not just in the pit or with friends, but dancing with that wide, easy smile of hers, or in an unexpected candid, lost in whatever she’s seeing through her own lens. I love catching her in those moments, the same way I love seeing what she eventually shows me from behind it. I like to think our vision overlaps somewhere in there, an appreciation for artistic talent and a love for capturing creatives at work.

Photos 1, 2, and 20 are mine. Everything else is all Victoria, work I was lucky enough to edit, not create.

#concertphotographer #victoria #thekneehis #bnw #motoblot

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The fun never stops! This week we will have a Special Guest Host for the final Clara-Oke of pride month ✨🌈 Come support @medusainclouds and get a tarot reading by @jamiechamberstarot

Stay tuned for updates and more events from your friends at Adult Recess Collective and please enjoy these highlights from our Clara-Oke half birthday celebration last week 🎂 Appreciate you all!!!

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@bandnamedgushy in my in home studio -
super excited to share these and go support them 🤍

in frame
@bandnamedgushy
@mickey.menace
@chocolate_milk_hotel

photos / edits by me

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