Chris Connelly and Matt Walker are both 30+ year veterans of the music business: Chris having moved from his native Scotland in the 80s to pursue a career in gratuitous volume and outrage with technorednecks The Revolting Cocks and Ministry; Matt bringing his formidable drum skills to the likes of Filter, Smashing Pumpkins, Garbage and Morrissey.
Matt and Chris were working together on one of Matt's songs when the seed was sewn to start a band dedicated to the music of David Bowie, the pair always having had a strong connection and affinity with his career, his changing, challenging sound and his aesthetic. A stellar band was assembled, all veterans in their own right with excellent pedigrees, and almost immediately rehearsals were well underway with songs from Bowie's canon that were being selected, played and played with. Sons of the Silent Age was a living, vital entity. It was decided to make the inaugural gig a benefit for a charity close to their hearts: Pablove, an organization that provides relief for pediatric cancer patients and their families. And so it came to be, on January 11th of 2013, SONS played their first show to a sold out crowd at Metro in Chicago.
The benefit was so successful that it went without saying they should keep the band moving and playing, exploring Bowie's music, and exploring his aesthetic, treating it the way perhaps he would himself, evolving, changing sonically and visually, with the aim of both thoroughly entertaining an audience, and challenging it at the same time.
Four years later and the band continues to thrive, playing select and prestigious shows, and collaborating with kindred spirts such as Shirley Manson, Sinead O'Connor, and Ava Cherry.
Sons of the Silent Age boasts nine members culled from the absolute elite of Chicago musicians - diehard and dedicated souls who love the material and know it intimately, pouring their collective talents over Bowie's 40+ years and 30 albums of dazzling music, music that irrefutably changed the face of rock and an aesthetic so strong it will continue to spread ripples through our culture for ever.
March 2013, updated March 2017