Ravinia 2025 Issue 5

What comes to mind on your way to Ravinia and the Chicago area? I’m a huge Chicago fan. I’ve had long runs with several different venues. The Metro comes to mind. The Double Door and the House of Blues. [We spent] many a Halloween and New Year’s there dressed up oddly. Then recently, Park West and coming there with the Stones. After being a fan of the city but never spending that much time there, when I come with the Stones, we get to stay all week, so I’ve done the architectural boat tour a couple of times … What do you look forward to about an evening under the stars? Does that bring any particular vibe to your show? Since it’s gonna be in August, it’s gonna bring a sweaty vibe to the show! [ Laughs ] I’m an old dog. I keep my things simple, but I love playing outside. It’s always super fun, and Chicago is just really cool. The last time I was there, we played [Rose on the River at The Salt Shed]. It rained like cats and dogs, and the audience was totally with it. It was no problem at all, and I was very, very im- pressed, so I’m looking forward to some nice sunshine and summer vibes for the people of Chicago. Howwould you describe the secret sauce that makes up the Tiny Universe? I like to think of it as like a weird history lesson. I try to cover all the points of Black American music history, so there’s a little bit of rock and roll, there’s a little bit of jazz, a little bit of soul, a little bit of dance music, a little bit of Afrobeat. It’s just a mixture of all kinds of dance music. It’s been about five years or so since the group released an album. Will this show be more of your whole history, or are you debuting anything new? I am in the middle. We’ve got some new stuff that we’ve been working on. We’ve got a single that we’re gonna release shortly that was produced by a really great English band, Franc Moody. They’re like a dance band. That’s done, and then hopefully by the time I see you guys, I’m gonna be pretty much done with this Afrobeat record that I’m working on, so I’m hoping to add a couple of those tunes to the mix for the band. Then yeah, we’re gonna be going back and grabbing one of my fun boogaloo tracks off of Dance Lesson No. 2 , the “Rumpwinder,” which is something for me to play over, so I’m looking forward to that. We kind of have the summer off, so we’re getting ready to spend some time refurbishing and revitalizing things. Hopefully we’ll have a few extra new songs for people that have been following the band, and that’s the ambition right now. Do you have any covers planned for your set, or is it all Tiny Universematerial? It’s pretty much all Tiny Universe stuff. I do a few covers, but they’re very random and kind of rare. I’m gonna try to dig in the crates and find some stuff that peo- ple don’t know, as opposed to just doing pop covers. Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe RAVINIAMAGAZINE • AUG. 4 – AUG. 17, 2025 8 ALLPHOTOSBYSTEVERAPPORT