Welcome

Welcome to our website www.gin-palace-jesters.com where if you happen to be a music fan of old school Honkytonk, Hillbilly, Western Swing and Country Boogie you have come to the right place!

May 7, 2022 Cash For Kids 

The Gin Palace Jesters have been pretty quiet for a while because...you know there was a global pandemica and all but we're gigging the Chicago Irish American Heritage Center May 7, 2022 performing a benefit for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation along with a bunch of other great acts including Sun Records Rockabilly legend Hayden Thompson.  C'mon out will ya? Do it for the kids!

 

Now Available At Our Live Shows! 

Yes it's the official Gin Palace Jesters embroidered face mask. Show your support for real live honkytonk music and be safe all at the same time. Only available at our live appearances. Adult size only. $10 cash. Be the coolest kid on your block. 

Welcome back my friends... 

2020 has been one for the record books in so many ways. Everyone but everyone has been impacted by the events of the day. Now we don't pretend to be offering some kind of magic cure-all. But we know from experience that live and in person by-gawd country music can help a person feel better. And that is our contribution. We will be returning to the stage(outdoors with plenty of distance) Saturday October 24 at Fitzgerald's in Berwyn(the best damn roadhouse in America). Thanks to Will Duncan and Donnie Biggins for inviting us. No cover. And you can make seating reservations through the club's website. Take care. Stay healthy. We'll be together soon. 

Cold weather and country music. 

The Gin Palace Jesters have not been idle during this recent stretch of wintery weather. Far from it. Boss Jester Dave Sisson took time out of his busy music schedule(Jesters, Three Blue Teardrops, the Lawrence Peters Outfit, Al Simon) to hole up in the wood shop and re-build our legendary showbiz mic stand. Pix of the process appear on our Facebook page. Also Ken spent more than a month without his beloved Martin acoustic guitar. It went to Zach at Third Coast Guitars in Chicago for a once-in-decades overhaul. It is back and ready for action. The band itself spent some quality time in the rehearsal basement in preparation for our appearance on Friday February 28 at Fitzgerald's in Berwyn. We are tan, rested and ready. 

Nashville Boogie 

The Gin Palace Jesters are proud to be gigging down at the Nashville Boogie in May.  It's going to be a heckuva party so get your tickets and get on board! There's too much talent to pass up.  

Domain name legal issues February 2018 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The non glamorous side of show biz is the biz part of the show and that involves a bunch of junk most musicians aren't well designed to deal with like bookings, promotion, music publishing and web design. In our case lately that has been running up against a gigantic company named Yahoo who wanted us to prove we owned a domain name we did in fact own for 18 years and that we were who we said we were! How do you do that over the phone talking to some guy named "Hank" in Bombay, India?  Well after our little website went down for a while and we were trying to deal with that the usual vultures swooped in to steal the domain name we had for this website to hold it for ransom. It' s a whole sub racket that goes on and so while we have LOST our old domain name of www.ginpalacejesters.com we are now the proud owners of www.gin-palace-jesters.com with the little dashes in between.  We apologize for being down for the last 90 days while the Gin Palace Jesters legal team was in lengthy courtroom proceedings with the Yahoo Business Services. We have severed ties with that organization and it's like a fresh divorcee free to be happy again!  It's great to be back online and expect updates to come shortly!  Please make note of our new domain name with the DASHES in between will ya?  

News and whatnots.... 

Hey everyone.  We have a few new shows over there on the right side of your page.  It's 2017 and really we have been busy even if we haven't been diligent updating our website. . Our fiddler Greg has been off getting famous traveling and performing music and theater hither and yon and we have sure been missing a fiddler with band. I mean, you can't play Texas if you ain't got a fiddler in the band...amiright?  So we applaud Greg for doing what he does and are happy for him but we need a fiddler to gig with us so, after an extensive search we stumbled across and procured the talents of the young 16 year old Connor Ostrow.  Man alive he is good!  He picked up the fiddle at age 4 and now 12 years later he is injecting some hot fiddlin' licks into our sound and it's forced all the lead players to step up their game.  We now count ourselves as a 7 piece Honkytonkin' Hillbilly Swing combo and surely it must be time for some new band photos huh?  Here's a picture of some all the boys including Connor. Come out and see us sometime will ya?  
"Pennsylvania" Dave-Guitar and Vocals
Paddy Keiner-Steel Guitar, Mandolin and Vocals
Ken Mottet- Acoustic Guitar and Vocals
"Spider" Mike Hobson-Upright Bass and Vocals
Michael Henry "Hank" Iwema-Accordion
Connor Ostrow-Fiddle
Martin Dreilich-Drums

 

Nashville Boogie 

We are making our way to the Nashville Boogie. So many great acts are playing this weekender we are delighted to be a part of it. Our set is on Saturday May 14 at 4:00pm at the Nashville Palace. Come on out and watch us do our "thang" and say "hello" to us will ya? Nashvilleboogie.com

Turkey Shoot  

Pat Keiner came to the band with a sweet instrumental idea for our latest and greatest CD "For Better Or For Worse" and we worked it up into something fun.  While it didn't have a working title at the time, Dave had an idea since he had picked up on of those wooden turkey call boxes at a hunting/sporting goods store in Washington, Pennsylvania off route 19 there.  He demonstrated his ability to perform clucks, gobbles, caws and calls and the name "Turkey Shoot" was given to the instrumental.  We have just made this sucker available for FREE DOWNLOAD and put it up on our site wide player. Grab it and steal if off us. Go ahead!

Hey we have some shows coming up and are working a new picker into the group featuring the work of Michael Henry Iwema on the "Stomach Steinway" aka the, Pleated Piano, the Waistline Wurlitzer, the Belly Baldwin... That's right we are talking a piano accordion so come on out and see him work his magic on that thing. We already have a Spider Mike in the band so we may have to go with the accordion man's middle name and call him Hank? 

Upcoming shows Saturday Jan 16th at Chef Shangri-La in North Riverside, IL  (Desplaines ave and 26th) and at the Chicago Irish Center Saturday Jan 23.  Hope to see you there!

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We will do our best to let you know what we are up to and when and where we are performing.

Previous events

Gin Palace Jesters

The Outta Space , 6840 32nd St. , Berwyn

Hillbillies in a Haunted House indeed. It's your favorite purveyors of hard-hittin' honkytonk back on their feet again. The Gin Palace Jesters will be appearing at The Outta Space for Halloween("It's Halloween. It's Halloween. It's time for scares. It's time for screams.). Saddle up and we'll see y'all there.

Gin Palace Jesters

Alhambra Palace, 1240 W. Randolph St., Chicago, IL 60607

We return again to share a Swing Dance night with the Flat Cats. We did this gig once and weren't sure how our brand of Country Boogie and Western Swing would go with this dancin' crowd but by the end, heck we were throwin' two-step shuffles and waltzes and it went over great, so great we were invited back!!!

http://www.alhambrapalacerestaurant.com/home