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Concerts & Events

Thursday, July 9, 2026  ·  8:00 PM CDT

Dehd

4544 N Lincoln Ave · Gary and Laura Maurer Concert Hall · 773.728.6000

  • $73 General Public ($60 + $13 fee)
  • $71 Old Town School Members ($58 + $13 fee)

Cigarettes burn in the moonlight. Necklaces bang against bare chests. And on their triumphant fifth album Poetry, Dehd transports us to a world steeped in imagery. It's a world painted in the sunset tones of summer romance and flickering old flames. It's motorcycle chrome (“Mood Ring”), it's fake Gucci Sunglasses (“Dog Days”), and it's shaking hands before a swaying lover (“Hard to Love”). Across fourteen songs, the trio - Jason Balla, Emily Kempf, and Eric McGrady - throw themselves against the question of what it means to hope, knowing all too well that things end and hearts can break. “You can't beat death, but you can beat death in life,” wrote Charles Bukowski and upon listening to this album it's obvious the band has chosen to attempt the latter.

The album Poetry represents a journey as vast and nuanced as the American landscape Dehd traveled to write it. It culminates on the scorching closer “Forget,” a breakup song transformed into mantra. “How could I forget?” Balla laments as distorted guitars burn like the last embers of the day. It's fitting that the final words of the album come in the form of a question, because as Dehd would have us see it, we have a choice: to play it safe or to risk it all and live life like Poetry.

https://dehd.horse/