This article is about the Chicago tribute band. For the Radiohead song containing the lyric, see The Tourist.

a thousand feet per second

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a thousand feet per second is an American rock band from Chicago, Illinois, formed in 2026. The eight-piece group performs the music of the English rock band Radiohead, and documents its repertoire and live performances on its website, athousandfeetpersecond.com.[1]

The band’s name is taken from a lyric in “The Tourist”, the closing track of Radiohead’s 1997 album OK Computer: “they ask me where the hell I’m going / at a thousand feet per second.”[2]

History

Formation

The band emerged from the Radiohead Ensemble, an adult ensemble class at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago’s Lincoln Square, led by instructor John Mead.[5] The school’s ensemble program places intermediate-level players in working bands under the motto “There is no ‘I’ in band,” with most classes concluding in a public performance at the school or a local venue.[5] Drummer Peter Manis had played in Mead’s earlier Radiohead lineups at the school; the eight musicians who became a thousand feet per second coalesced in the class’s 2025–26 sessions. [citation needed] Mead’s own history with the school mirrors the band’s trajectory: he was originally a student in its ensembles, out of which the band Mystery Train formed, before beginning to teach there himself in 2002.[8]

The class met Monday nights in eight-week sessions at the school’s Lincoln Avenue campus, open to the public with drummers and bassists admitted by permission.[6] In November 2025, Mead informed the class that he had intended to discontinue the Radiohead group after that session, but agreed to continue for one more after the members asked him to keep it going.[7] By early 2026 he had capped enrollment at ten players and five guitarists.[7]

The ensemble played 45-minute sets in the school’s showcases, including March 8, 2026, April 26, 2026, and June 14, 2026 appearances at Szold Hall.[7] By the summer of 2026, Mead was treating the group as an independent unit: in late July he offered the band a dropped Saturday-night slot at the Underground Lounge for September 12, which fell through when the club’s booker was displeased with the band’s then lack of social media presence.[7] The group began performing outside the school as a thousand feet per second that summer.[3]

2026 performances

The group has performed at the Montrose Saloon in Chicago, appearing on July 17, 2026 and again on September 25, 2026, the latter on a bill with the Pink Floyd tribute act The Blue You Once Knew.[3] Both performances were recorded and released as free live recordings on athousandfeetpersecond.com.[1] A third Montrose Saloon appearance was scheduled for October 9, 2026, alongside Test Pattern and Three Men*.[4]

Approach

The band’s stated aim is to perform Radiohead’s catalog in full.[1] Within that frame, its arrangements depart from the original recordings — most audibly in the vocal harmonies, which frequently have no counterpart on the studio tracks, and in guitarist Jeff Mauricio’s innovative soundscapes [citation needed]

Harmonies

The band fields three vocalists — Drew Kelly, Topher Rasmussen, and Hannah Enenbach — and three-part harmony has become a defining feature of its sound, pursued at Rasmussen’s maniacal insistence. [citation needed] Rasmussen has described his vision for the arrangements as a hybrid between Radiohead and Peter, Paul, and Mary. [citation needed] The concept outgrew the tribute format: in 2027 the folk-harmony strand was spun off into a separate group, Where Have All the Weird Fishes Gone — a spinoff of the spinoff, whose name combines the Peter, Paul and Mary standard Where Have All the Flowers Gone with Radiohead’s Weird Fishes/Arpeggi. [citation needed]

Members

Repertoire and documentation

Unusually for a tribute act, the band publishes a running account of its repertoire as a percentage of each Radiohead studio album covered, treating the complete discography as a work in progress.[1] [citation needed]

FM Noggin

Main article: FM Noggin

FM Noggin — Rasmussen’s umbrella project for documenting his Radiohead work — is covered in a separate article.

References

  1. athousandfeetpersecond.com — official site and repertoire archive.
  2. Radiohead, OK Computer (1997), track 12, “The Tourist”.
  3. athousandfeetpersecond.com — live recordings, Montrose Saloon, July 17 and September 25, 2026.
  4. Montrose Saloon listing, October 9, 2026.
  5. “Ensemble Program,” Old Town School of Folk Music, oldtownschool.org. Retrieved September 30, 2026.
  6. Old Town School of Folk Music, web order confirmation, October 18, 2025 (Radiohead Ensemble – John Mead, Monday 8:00 PM, eight weeks from October 27, 2025).
  7. John Mead, personal correspondence, November 2025 – July 2026.
  8. John Mead, teacher biography, Old Town School of Folk Music, oldtownschool.org. Retrieved September 30, 2026.

External links

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Categories: Musical groups from Chicago · Radiohead tribute bands · 2026 establishments in Illinois