Chicago band's new album takes aim at the ultra-wealthy

The Empty Pockets is the little band that can -- and has done a lot during the past 20 years. Formed in Chicago during 2006, initially as Josh & the Empty Pockets, the independently operating rock quartet has released eight studio albums -- including “Dear Billionaires,” out on Oct. 23 -- along with an assortment of EPs, holiday sets and live albums. Two of those title -- 2022’s “Outside Spectrum” and the following year’s “Gotta Find the Moon” -- have topped the Billboard blues chart, while 2015’s “The Ten Cent Tour” and 2017’s “Voices” went Top 10 on the Heatseekers and Folk Albums surveys, respectively. Moreover, the Empty Pockets has also served as a touring backing band for a number of veteran artists such as Kenny Loggins and the late Gary Wright, and particularly for Al Stewart, including on the 81-year-old troubadour’s ongoing farewell tour. Guitarist Josh Solomon, 41 -- who also starred in the Chicago cast of “Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story” stage musical -- would never call his band a household name. But after two decades he’s proud of what the Empty Pockets have accomplished and says via phone from Chicago that he’s looking forward to the next 20, or more, years...So how does hitting the 20-year mark feel?Solomon: God, that’s kind of f*** up, man. (laughs) And we’ve done almost the entirety of that in a van; we’ve never been to Hawaii or Alaska, but we’ve been to every contiguous state together -- I believe we’ve had lunch in every state -- and also almost the entirety of the U.K. and Ireland. Honestly, it feels like a long car ride when you’re a kid -- “When are we gonna get there?”What’s the trick to surviving together that long in a van together, then?(laughs) Y’know, being OK to just be mad at somebody -- if it’s my wife (lead signer Erika Brett), our tour manager, whoever -- and then sometimes it’s like being will to be like, “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have spouted that at you,” or something. It’s finding the fun; we have a national parks pass, and we get to those parks. We love baseball; we’ve been to the Guards. As a band we’ve been to 14 stadiums together, minor and major leagues, I think every Midwest stadium.Including Rate Field; you played live before Game 3 of the divisional series. Thank you from the Guardians nation.The Guardians crushed the White Sox -- yeah, kind of ironic. I did get a lot of Cleveland fans messaging, “Happy for you that you’re there, but hope the Guardians win.” But we did get to perform on the field, in front of 40,000 people; a lot of my life is very mundane, then all of a sudden, you’re performing in a stadium or at Abbey Road (Studios) making an album or something.That’s what keeps you going, right?I think what keeps it going is I desperately love writing songs, and every show you play... it’s very addictive, just this feeling of, “Oh, all feels right in the world.” It’s a combination of ambition and delusion. We’ve sold out the London Palladium. We play the Chicago Theatre. But there’s also the realism and humility of, “Maybe nobody will come to the show tonight. We aren’t a big deal...” I mean, we’re never gonna be on John Mayer’s level, and being OK with that. I’ve met famous people, and it’s not all wine and roses. There’s a cost to everything. I really like our level in my career; maybe as a kid I was more desperate to be famous, but now I love what we do. I don’t need to be famous. We can just make music.You also get to play music with other people -- famous ones at that. What do those associations mean to the band?Part of it is luck, obviously, but a huge piece of it is the economics of the music industry are really crazy. We fit a niche where we have a reverence for that music but also a willingness to do it as a hustle. With all those guys, our pitch is “We want to play with you, if you let us not just back you up but let us open and play our own songs. We’ll drive in a van and trailer.” And the (cost) difference between a van and trailer and a tour bus can be all of the profit of a tour. So a lot of times those dudes fly on their own to the next gig and we get in the van and drive a couple hours and meat them there. And we have no crew; we have a tour manager who drives and we do all the crew stuff together, which can be really fun. I end up being Al Stewart’s guitar tech. You do a lot of jobs and wear a lot of hats.It must be appealing to them, too, that the Empty Pockets is an established, self-contained band rather than having to put together a group of players and wait for them to cohere with each other. Right. Essentially with us you’re hiring a whole operation. And there’s, like, this team mentality. Someone like Al (Stewart), he is like family to us -- we really do call him Uncle Al. We want to make sure he has what he wants to eat. Want to make sure he’s comfortable. We want to make sure he’s safe, that he’s not carrying too much. We’re not just hired guns. What’s the story with “Dear Billionaires,” your new album?It’s our letter to billionaires. It’s gone a little too far; I mean, our governor in Illinois (JB Pritzker) is a billionaire. I’m not opposed to capitalism, or getting really, really rich. But a billion or approaching a trillion, in our opinion, is crossing a line. It feels like this point where history repeats itself; we’re at the robber barons all over again. The difference is that they don’t give as much back. Here in Chicago we have tons of stuff named after Rockefeller and Pritzker. I’ve never been to a Musk museum. Where’s the Bezos hospital? Where’s the Mark Zuckerberg park? And now what -- they’re gonna promise us magical AI computers? F*** off, guys!You recorded at Abbey Road studios, which is hallowed ground. What was that like?We were so lucky, really. It was Al Stewart and Alan Parsons -- I don’t know if I can call him my friend, but I’ll call (Parsons) my associate (laughs) -- who gave us access to Abbey Road. We recorded in Studio 2, which is like the iconic Beatles studio with the staircase, and it’s unchanged. We’re all Beatles fans -- maybe each of us has a favorite album, but still. So to record in that studio where so many cool things have happened. You use all their gear, including pianos and stuff the Beatles used, and what looked like cigarette burns from the Beatles. Erika, my wife, says it was better than our wedding. My mom came in. It was just amazing. Did the environment impact on the work?It was at the end of a long U.K. tour, Al’s farewell tour in the U.K., so we had been rehearsing some things in the sound checks and playing some things live. We were so prepared. So we got in there and played our hearts out in the most comfortable studio in the world. Everything’s pristine. Our engineer and producer Daniel (McCormick) flew in and we just played and played. And we didn’t plan it, but we ended up doing a full 10-track album with zero instrumental overdubs. We got some of the vocals done at Abbey Road and finished the vocals in Chicago, but it’s mostly just what we played there in the room. What’s on the horizon now? For Empty Pockets you usually seem to have a full docket. We’re always writing. We’re working on (a next album), and the Abbey Road experience was so visceral we want to keep the legendary studio vibe going, so I think we want to go to record it a Muscle Shoals. So there’s that, and the Al Stewart farewell tour is going to be a big part of our life next year, as well as what we’ll probably call the Dear Billionaires Tour. It doesn’t stop, and I wouldn’t want it to, y’know?The Empty Pockets performs at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23 in the Music Box Concert Hall, 1148 Main Ave., Cleveland. 216-242-1250 or musicboxcle.com. The group returns with Al Stewart on Oct. 9, 2027 at the Kent Stage, 175 E. Main St., Kent, 330-677-5005 or kentstage.org.