Mr. Blotto plays a December Saturday at the newly reopened RocHaus

One of Chicagoland's longest-running jam bands plays West Dundee on Dec. 12, a few miles from where it used to throw its own festival.

There's a particular kind of Fox Valley Saturday night: cold outside, packed inside, and a band that plans to stretch every song past where the radio edit would end. Mr. Blotto plays RocHaus in West Dundee on Saturday, Dec. 12, and the venue's own calendar has it listed. Listings show an 8 p.m. start and $25 tickets at 96 W. Main St. Tickets are available through See Tickets.

The room itself is part of the story. In September, the Daily Herald reported that RocHaus was set to reopen in downtown West Dundee, with shows booked for the rest of the year. A December date from a band with Mr. Blotto's local following is exactly the kind of booking a reopened room needs. RocHaus holds about 400, so this will be close, loud and familiar, the way a jam show in a small room is supposed to be.

A December date from a band with Mr. Blotto's local following is exactly the kind of booking a reopened room needs.

If you've lived around here for any length of time, you've probably crossed paths with this band. Mr. Blotto formed in 1991 around brothers Mike and Paul Bolger, who had played together in garage rock bands since high school. According to the band's Wikipedia entry, they built their sound the slow way, at Chicago-area open mic nights and in outlying bars. It's a roots-leaning jamband approach, with reworked Grateful Dead songs woven in among the originals. Their debut, *Parking Karma*, moved them up to bigger Chicago rooms. Dave Allen, an old college bandmate of Paul's, joined on keyboards after that record, and the lineup has stayed largely the same since.

For a West Dundee crowd, the most local item on the résumé is Blottopia, the band's own self-produced festival, which it held at Vasa Park in Elgin, just down the river. The recorded catalog leans live too. There are four "official bootleg" albums, plus *Live at the Leaf*, from a weekend at the Maple Leaf in New Orleans, along with the studio album *Thread* (2013) and the *Rules of the Road* EP (2016).

The band mostly stays in the Midwest. For people in the suburbs, that has meant a band that keeps turning up at rooms like this one, a short drive away, playing the long sets their crowd came for.

So the pitch for Dec. 12 is simple. A room that just got its lights back on, a band that's been playing this part of Illinois for three decades, and $25 at the door of a 400-capacity club. Grab a spot near the front, let the second set run long, and head home along the Fox with your ears ringing.

Sources: RocHaus — official site and calendar (rochaus.com); Back to rock: RocHaus to reopen in West Dundee, shows booked for the rest of the year — Daily Herald (dailyherald.com); Mr. Blotto — Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Mr. Blotto feature — Glide Magazine (glidemagazine.com); Mr. Blotto to record live album at the Maple Leaf Bar — The Vinyl District (thevinyldistrict.com); Mr. Blotto at RocHaus — See Tickets (prod-nts-api.seeticketsusa.us)