TRAVERSE CITY -- Sometimes, when it seems that things can't get any worse, the bottom falls out.
Oh my god, a Chicago-based band with an aversion to capital letters and a gig tonight at The Loading Dock, has had that feeling over and over.
Just weeks after joining forces in 1999, the organist, who goes by "Ig," moved his equipment into singer Billy O'Neill's rehearsal space.
A few rehearsals later, the building burned down.
The building's owner accused the band of somehow starting the fire but, after almost 10 years of legal battles, they were exonerated.
They used the prosecutor's statements in a subsequent poster: "Oh my god ... use their equipment in such a way ... as to cause it to ignite and burst into flames."
The band's performance tonight wraps up a tour that started Sept. 10 in Minneapolis. They're touring in support of their latest album, "The Night Undoes the Work of the Day." The music and lyrics show the emotions the band has gone through since yet another tragedy, a September 2007 van crash.
An Ohio woman, apparently drunk at noon on a sunny Friday, swerved into the wrong lane and hit the band's van head-on at 55 mph. The woman was killed. Some of the band members were airlifted to hospitals, others driven and many had to go through months of physical therapy on broken legs and hands.
A tour and album were delayed while everyone healed. "Fools Want Noise" was finally released in 2008, when yet more sadness hit the group.
O'Neiil and his wife separated about the same time Ig's wife (they'd been together since high school) was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
With the tragedies seemingly leveled out for now, the band took to the road. Time Out Chicago writes of the shows, "Onstage the trio sells it to the crowd with such energy, joy and power that we've often confused it for an actual noise or punk or hard-rock band--odd, considering that there are no guitars."
Oh my god did get rid of the guitars at one point, but opted for the stripped-down sound of organ, bass and drums. Guitars reappeared on the 2008 record.
Cover charge tonight is $5. For more information on the show at The Loading Dock, call 941-4422.
For more information about oh my god or hear some music, go to www.ohmygodmusic.com.
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