Hail to the Kief

Thank you for asking. In fact, I am not related to Christian Kiefer. I mean, not directly. Not that I know of. My family’s not so close; we don’t really talk. I can tell you, however, that the increasingly hirsute, Pitchfork-approved local musician, father, educator, doctor of philosophy, former SN&R columnist and reasonably friendly human sometimes rings or e-mails with 411 on his doings, and, in so doing, calls me “brother.” Kind of kidding-like, ya know? Or he calls me JK, and I call him CK. It’s cute. CK bears news of a promising show at the Fox & Goose (1001 R Street) on Friday, March 7, at 9 p.m. He and Nice Monster’s Matthew Gerken will play presumably indie-rocky, alt-folky songs they wrote for a forthcoming box set called Of Great and Mortal Men: 43 Songs About 43 U.S. Presidencies. Talk about Americana. “We’re trying to make it work like a big, beautiful, historical novel,” Kiefer likes to say of the project. He’s been in the studio spiffing the tunes up with dudes from Low, Cake, Red House Painters and others, and now he wants to run ’em up the flagpole and see who salutes. You, perhaps. And if this thing one day makes him famous, then yeah, we’re totally brothers.