Yes, Chicago, there is some live rock music to be found these days. But can it last?
“You’ve got to wonder about history at this moment,” said the Chicago songwriter Terry White on a recent Friday night. “Here’s a song called, ‘Yourself in History.’”
And with that, White and his band, the Loaded Dice, started to do something that’s been almost non-existent in the Chicago area during the COVID-19 pandemic. They played live rock-and-roll music in front of a live audience at a live-music venue.
There were concessions to the moment, to be sure. Rather than being in one of the two rooms FitzGerald’s Nightclub normally uses for concerts, the band stood on a newly constructed outdoor stage on the open asphalt between the FitzGerald’s buildings, veteran musicians playing timeless roots rock on fresh lumber.
White’s non-singing bandmates wore masks, as did the FitzGerald’s staff. In front of them, the club patrons were all seated in socially distanced groupings, Adirondack chairs for pairs, some patio tables under umbrellas for larger groups. “Stand Up, Mask Up,” said the signs affixed to an arm of every chair.
Still and all, it felt great: warm air, cold beer, live music — almost like a flashback to a time when the air around you wasn’t weaponized, when people weren’t losing jobs left and right, when the culture that binds us together wasn’t an endangered species.
“Because of COVID I miss my live music,” said Leslie McDonnell of Villa Park, who works in chemical sales, and was at the club for the second Friday in a row. “When they started opening things up, I started Googling where live music is, and FitzGerald’s came up.”
“This is a great set-up,” said Joe Harrington of Oak Park, who teaches media and communications at Triton College. “You’ve got to be smart, but you can do that here without too much effort. They’ve done it about as well as you can do it.”
It was already, he said, his fourth time seeing music on the FitzGerald’s patio, and there’s been plenty to pick from. Since the state moved into Phase 4 of its reopening plan and it became clear to new owner Will Duncan that science supported the idea that properly distanced outdoor activity was relatively safe, the club since the last week of June has run a steady slate of free concerts, filling weekday nights and weekend afternoons.
“Six nights a week, and on the weekends we we open up at noon on Saturday and Sunday, and we have live music every one of those days. And on those longer days, we have as many as three bookings throughout the day,” said Duncan. “We’re one of the small few music venues in Chicagoland that I know of that has this great big outdoor space where there’s plenty of room to space out the tables appropriately.
“So we’re able to host some live music here, which is incredible. I mean, that’s what we were born for.”
A small few is the right term for it. Many rock venues have been putting on livestream shows, notably the Empty Bottle from its rooftop and The Hideout and Lincoln Hall from inside the venues. Some jazz clubs have been allowing small numbers of distanced patrons back inside for live music. But live rock performances people can attend in the flesh have been rarities.
SPACE, the Evanston, club, started a new outdoor concert series in August, SPACE Summer Stage, by putting up a “big-top tent” on an open lot near its location. There’s room for just 50 guests grouped with their own people at cabaret or picnic tables, and most of the shows, scheduled (as of midweek) through Sept. 12, are sold out already.
Montrose Saloon, in the Albany Park neighborhood, is booking regular shows in its beer garden. City Winery, in the West Loop, tried to schedule a patio concert series for its outdoor space, but the city put a stop to it.
“The first two planned dates got rained out, and then we got one glorious sold out show with Neal Francis in before we got word from the city,” Senior Programming Director Libby Brickson said via email. What the venue was told, she said, is that its patio license did not allow for live or recorded music “and we needed to cancel the series.”
Brickson said City Winery is “exploring resuming shows in our concert venue with a very intimate 50-person audience. Stay tuned!”
Also notable — and surely there are at least a few more — Hey Nonny in Arlington Heights is putting on live music both outdoors and, with the windows all open, it says, indoors.
Beyond that, the other big trend for holding live-audience concerts has been drive-in shows, which basically work like drive-in movies, but with a band in place of the screen and with extra space between the cars (and hopefully better sound).
The Lakeshore Drive-in series at the Adler Planetarium parking lot, for instance, continues Sunday with a performance by Mungion, a Chicago jam band.
Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy quickly sold out a Sept. 18 drive-in show at the McHenry Outdoor Theater, normally a movie venue. And FitzGerald’s sold one out in early July, a $75 per carload event starring the Waco Brothers and held in a Maywood lot.
But these welcome flashes of semi-normalcy shouldn’t fool people into thinking things are okay or even, really, improving in the live music business. Outdoor concerts, in those few venues that can hold them, only last as long as good weather does.
The great majority of Chicago music venues are shuttered now and expect to remain so until there’s an effective COVID-19 treatment or vaccine. Indoor shows at limited capacity don’t make financial sense and don’t feel particularly safe, club owners say.
“If we’re only getting 50 percent occupancy, it just doesn’t work,” said Robert Gomez, owner of Beat Kitchen and the Subterranean, and one of the founders of CIVL, the Chicago Independent Venue League. “Without a vaccine, we just don’t see how we could function at all.”
So CIVL has been “trying everything,” said Katie Tuten, co-owner of the Hideout, including pushing for state and city rental and mortgage assistance and licensing relief.
“We’re trying every possible angle just to stay afloat,” she said.
Because it already organized in late 2018 to help fight the prospect of the Live Nation concert behemoth and its proposed range of venues in the north side Lincoln Yards development, CIVL has been a key player in the newly formed National Independent Venue Association, which is lobbying for federal relief, such as the Save Our Stages act.
“We’re just so fast and furious trying to get federal legislation now,” Tuten said. “Without federal relief it will be devastating to our industry. There’s no question about that.”
NIVA has some 2500 members across the country, and the FitzGerald’s story is an anomaly. “For the very most part, people have either completely shut down or by-and-large shut down,” said Audrey Fix Schaefer, the group’s communications director.
Venues live on very tight margins, she said, and a survey taken of the membership found that “90 percent said they would have to close forever if there’s no meaningful federal assistance” within six months, she said.
“Even those that are doing things like the drive-in concerts, those are not big money makers by any means,” said Schaefer. “Go Fund Mes and drive-in concerts and tee-shirt sales are like one drop of water when you need a whole bucket to put out a fire.”
But the group — which did not exist when the pandemic started — has been able to get people backing the venues to send 1.6 million emails to Congress supporting relief (one way to do so, and to learn more about the efforts, is through saveourstages.com)
And it is approaching make-or-break time for the Save Our Stages Act and the Restart Act, two forms of federal relief that have bipartisan support and NIVA is hoping will be incorporated into an overarching federal coronavirus relief bill, she said.
“We needed it to be last month,” Schaefer said. “This is not a problem that can be put on ice and just wait till the end of the year, because the venues will fall. It would be like getting a liver transplant for a cadaver.”
And even what’s happening at FitzGerald’s, which looks good on paper and feels good in person, is no panacea.
Like other club owners, Will Duncan has been hustling. He bought a vintage pickup truck to do an ongoing series of neighborhood concerts, with a musician and an amp in the back of the truck and the truck roaming through nearby neighborhoods that lobby for it to come by.
The current run of no-charge live shows see the performers playing for a modest guarantee, which is typically surpassed, Duncan said, by the voluntary band tip people can leave on their checks or in the conspicuous tip box by the stage.
The club is managing the outdoor capacity (of roughly 80 to 100) by letting patrons reserve tables, restaurant-style, although it always leaves room for walk-ups on a first-come basis. He’s added a guest chef burger series on Saturday nights (in addition to the Italian takeout available from neighboring Capri Ristorante, a FitzGerald’s tenant).
And in perhaps the farthest cry from the club’s pre-1980 days as the Deer Lodge, Duncan has added frozen drink machines for palomas and Irish coffee concoctions.
The club has received no less an endorsement than the fact that former owners Bill and Kate FitzGerald, who sold the place to Duncan just ahead of the pandemic closure in mid-March, have been back several times, including on this Friday night to support old pal Terry White.
For his part, White — who played once in the FitzGerald’s truck and who is also slated to play Montrose Saloon Aug. 28 — said these shows are good for singer-songwriters like himself, because people are supposed to remain in their seats. “You get everyone separated, it turns into more of a listening environment,” he said.
But Duncan understand this is something of a Brigadoon, a feeling that was only accentuated, he said, when the club tried one show indoors, with limited capacity, and decided not to repeat the experience.
“While FitzGerald’s is enjoying this outdoor live music moment very much, we know it’s temporary,” he said in a text following up on a phone interview, urging people to visit the Save Our Stages site. “Our future, like that of all small independent venues right now, is uncertain.”
Even with all the activity, “we’re running around a break-even proposition,” Duncan said in the interview. “We’re keeping some staff employed, which is great. And most important, we’re staying connected with the people that love this place and providing a safe option for live music — and that’s as rare as hen’s teeth these days.”
Twitter @StevenKJohnson
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