Chicago, Illinois: All things go, all things go.

From jazz, gangsters, and bootlegging to the birth of house music, Chicago is that most American of cities—maintaining an uneasy but thrilling equilibrium between the visible and the underground. Host Will Dailey gives you an insider’s look at the stories behind the places that define Chicago’s musical legacy.

To hear the artists mentioned in this episode, check Will’s playlist at soundofourtownpod.com

Want to chat about the music in your city? Hit us up on: 

• Instagram: @DoubleElvis @WillDaileyOfficial

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:22):
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(00:42):
His booth is still there. You can sit in it
the same spot where al Capone sat to watch his
money and his back at the same time. Like him.
You can turn your head away from the door towards
the stage where the jazz bands whaled, where they are
still wailing. Now jump up from that seat top of
the bar, are slipped past the B three organ that
is behind the bar. There in the floor is a

(01:04):
trap door, a quick escape for Scarface back in the
day into the arteries where the Bootlegger Highway flourished, keeping
this city churning and buzzing with booze music and expansion.
The best venues have a story, and these stories draw
us in. That is why this show is here, and
that's why our next stop, The City by the Lake,

(01:25):
is a gold mine. When you dig down, I paint
you a picture, but it never looks right because I
filled in the shadows and I blacked out the light.
I sent you a postcard, it says Pulaski to night.
Greetings from Chicago, City of Light. Come back to Chicago,
City of Light, Andrew Bird. Chicago doesn't care if you

(01:50):
call it second city. It's not insecure. This is the
birthplace of Chicago jazz and blues and improv comedy and
storefront theater of Midwestern indie rock and house music. Creative
minds find space here to experiment and collaborate, with plenty
of room to breathe away from the pressure in the
judgment of the coasts. In Chicago doesn't only take pride

(02:11):
in its major artistic achievements. No city boasts more devoted audiences.
Folks will uncomplaining lye trudge through an ice storm in
January to see a band they care about. It's a
point of pride, an example of the kind of loyalty
the city and genders. Chicagoan's won't get all mushy on
you about how they love their city, but to paraphrase
author Nelson Algren, they love this place the way you

(02:33):
adore a lover with a broken nose. There may be
lovelier lovelies, but never oh lovely, so real. The city
sparkles on the shore of Lake Michigan, gleaming and grand,
and there's a lot more here than meets the eye.
It pays to take your time to dig down deep
into this place. To me, it feels like the most
American metropolis, not out of some purity test of phony

(02:54):
nationalistic measurements, but because of the equilibrium it strikes with
what is above out driving the city now, and what
is always brewing underground, destined to be driving it tomorrow,
delivering sounds and artists that have rocketed to the moon
and taken the world along with it, alongside those acts
that remained by the soil, always ripe for discovery, gifting

(03:18):
us all with music like Cheap Trip, Big Black, Bill Wilco,
Curtis Mayfey, Smashing Pumpkin Grape to Kanye West, Robbie Folks,
Fallout Boys, Sticks, Varsity Ministry, Earth Wind, and five Shellac
Muddy Waters. Not King Cole. Benny Goodman made his staple
Local eight chance to wrap her at Buddy Guy he
could Reagan Chaka con Junior. Well, Okay, Jesus survived, Von

(03:45):
Free but Chard Mark, the Queers Kaya, the Flat Common
and Chicago Duh. It's July twelfth nine. We're in com
Ski Park, where the struggling White Sox played baseball. A
radio DJ with a cunning marketing sense is hosting a

(04:06):
promotion for a double header. Bring a disco record to
the park and get in for cents. The now classic
music genre had taken over pop culture at the time.
It's sexy sounds infiltrating all the way up to the
Rolling Stones. Not everyone was grooving to these beats, and
the organizers of the promotion knew they had something because
seventy thousand people showed up to a ballpark that holds

(04:29):
forty five thousand. After the first game of the double header,
they placed a giant box of the records near the
center field wall, and to the chant of Disco sucks,
blew its sky high. Records went flying in a giant
plume of smoke. Took to the air, but it was
the people who were ignited. A kid jumped into the
field stole second base, the actual base. He just took

(04:51):
it and he started waving it around. The field was overrun.
A riot ensued, an anti disco riot. The White Sox
had to forfeit the second game that day, America's pastime
was thwarted by disco ire. It is now referred to
as Disco Demolition Night. They tried to kill disco except

(05:14):
I still hear it all the time. A lot of
feelings were hurt by disco, especially those of men who
didn't know how to dance, and they needed to wreck
some ship. It must have been emotionally challenging to be
a music lover in the late nineties seventies, but throughout
history you can place any type of genre or style
in the role of get that new music off my lawn.
The disdain for changes as old and way less fascinating

(05:37):
than dirt. What is always fascinating, though, is that in
trying to bury, are you accidentally fuel it and or
give it the push it needs to mutate and drive
you crazy in completely new ways, Because soon underneath that
Chicago architecture a new sound would take hold from the
ashes of that Chamiskey fire, a more relentless four on

(05:58):
the floor at eats per minute plus, you stop one
dance party and another forms in its place. House music.
It's likely the genre's name came from a spot in
the south side of town where DJs like Freddie Fingers
and DJ ron Hardy first started experimenting with the music
to keep people dancing, cutting, speeding up, and remixing tracks

(06:20):
at the warehouse. From there, it's sprouted across town to
a secret spot underneath one of the best rock clubs
in the country that still proudly stands now in the
shadows of another Chicago ballpark, house Music right under the
rioters noses. And then, just like blues, jazz and rock,
it's spread to the rest of the world. Now the
DJ enjoys rock star status. It's funny because that is

(06:44):
so punk rock. So much of what we love and
music comes from beneath the second City where dreamers are
safe to build us all new ways to explore this
wild ride. In this episode of Sound of Our Town,
we are digging into that ground that's sweet home Chicago.

(07:04):
The Sound of Our Town is a podcast about the
music that shaped the city you're touching down in. It
is also about finding, hearing and understanding it's best music
happening right now, What sounds and places have shaped the
city's culture, and what new sounds continue to define it.
It's about getting together in a room to listen and
why that matters. So whether you're quickly dropping in or
landing for a long stay. In each episode of Sound

(07:25):
of Our Town, I'll introduce you to the real places
and sonic stories echoing in a particular town, so that
your travel is enriched with music. My name is Will Daily.
I'm an independent artist and I've gotten around. I've lived
my life in the music halls, iconic venues, dingy bars,
coffee shops, and outdoor festivals. I've oscillated between being a

(07:47):
struggling artist and a thriving artist, thanks to those who
seek sounds in the night, venturing out into the world,
chasing that feeling that defines who we are and how
we survive this life. And this is episode three of
our sonic adventures. You just landed and driving in from

(08:09):
O'Hare took a lifetime. You need to unwind and attenuate
to the flow of this metropolis. It helps if your
first stop in Chicago, for that first break or that
first pint, and that first sound is that one of
those long standing neighborhood bars, one of the classic tavern
vibe that this city wears like it's fresh off the rack,
where the ghosts of cigarettes passed can still haunt your nostrils.

(08:33):
A place where you can slump upon its curved wooden
bar and being invisible observer, shielded by the embers of
its burning red lighting. The California Clipper was established in
nine seven, and it fits perfectly in the twenty one century.
It has all the things I love about the town.
It's peak Chicago, both leaning forward and backward in time

(08:54):
with ease. The modest elevated stage at the end of
the bar is in perfect sightline to the booths and
the tables, every sound warmly bouncing off the wooden floors
that have absorbed sonic waves for almost a century. It
is perfect for our purposes here as a first stop
because it hosts a plethora of music that is American
thanks to Chai Town. It's newly renovated side room, the

(09:15):
Little Clip has a pair of ten Oi speakers, the
same that dark side of the moon was mixed on
once again, making time a single event, not a linear
line with forgotten errors, and the DJ nights here complete
the connection to the legacy born out of warehouse and
smart bar. Above ground now but intimate, and while it
can be a listening room, it's not quite like our

(09:36):
next stop. We're back before the Clipper existed, being too chatty.
Get you hauled out and into the alleyway and minus
a few teeth and we'll get there. Right after this,

(09:58):
we could spend a lifetime exploring live music in Chicago
and barely become experts in its plethora of listening rooms,
the spaces where music is the primary form of human communication.
Martyrs Montrose Saloon with three band bills almost every night,
the Jazz Showcase a listening room no matter where they
move it. But the spot where we started our adventure
in this episode is also perfect listening and perfectly Chicago.

(10:23):
While the architectural landscape of Chicago continues to change both
quickly and drastically over the years, you could walk into
one jazz club in particular at three pm on any
given afternoon and think you are still in the nineteen forties. Then,
as the sun sets and people start arriving for the
night's show. Do you notice the now a sartorial spread
of baseball caps and flapper shirts, business suits and maiden

(10:45):
T shirts. All are welcome at the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge.
The biggest names in jazz, both locally and international and
continue to play here year after year, on every night
of the Gregorian calendar, and even some daytimes one weekend
an you can see and hear a band on Saturday
night play until midnight. A different band after them play
from midnight to five am. Watch the country's longest running

(11:08):
poetry Slam just a few hours later that Sunday afternoon,
followed by an organ trio later that Sunday night in
which the band plays behind the bar. That's about fifteen
hours of entertainment spread over just a day, and every
one of those shows will be packed, be its scorching
summer or dead of winter. It's a listening room like
no other, but listening means different things to different people.

(11:30):
Not everybody who comes here is a jazz fan. Some
come just for the dark, velvety ambiance. It is the
perfect place to take that first date to show them
you know the spots. Often these folks are less interested
in listening than in talking, and for those unlucky few,
you run the risk. It was sometimes polite, but always firm, shushing, shushing, shushing.

(11:50):
Fools are suffered here, but only to a point, and
thankfully Al Capone is long gone. Something to do with taxes,
I believe, But for die hard music fan like Capone
at his table Dead Center, it's a place you know
you can go to every single night for a stiff
drink and a solid set and jump out the front
door to big concert halls like the Riviera in the
Aragon Ballroom, or in the case of Capone, into that

(12:14):
trap door to escape into the underground if you need
to hide out. Ah, yes, the hideout. Sometimes the name
alone tells you all you need to know about a venue,
So when talking about Chicago's legendary club, the Hideout, a
bar and venue nestled into a small, two story, hundred
forty year old boarding house turned local bar turned music venue,

(12:36):
the name could not be more apt. It once sat
isolated among a gigantic industrial zone for the city, an
area which over the last decade has slowly but surely
morphed into a developer's wet dream high rises encroach and
upscale markets and restaurants have settled into the neighborhood. The
areas surrounding the Hideout of change so much that the
club sticks out like a sore thumb, But for all

(12:58):
the right reasons. In a city where the new motto
seems to scream new is King, the Hideout yells no,
it's not, and it does this from its rickety front porch,
saving us all from the sprawl. Yet when you walk
inside there's plenty of what's new to be heard. One
look at their music list things tells you all you
need to know about their modern free form mindset, avant

(13:20):
garde jazz, country punk of Valentine's. They make out party
fundraisers for young political candidates Veggie Bingo, Yes you've heard
that right. Held aloft by the broad shoulders of activists
for the arts, Tim and Kate Tutton, this hollowed shack
has been home to Chicago legends, both old and new,
Mayvis Staples, Wilco Smashing Pumpkins. They've all played here. The

(13:40):
venue no larger than your grandma's house, with a much
better alcohol selection. The Hideout was an incubator for the
insurgent country in Americano Movements, Robbie Folks, Nico Case, Andrew Bird,
and many others honed their material here, and it continues
to ensure that the focus remains on both new and
classic music played by music is young and old. It's

(14:01):
on too many national and international best of lists to count,
and with good reason. When you're at the Hideout, you
feel like you're out a friend's house, because you are.
And I'm sorry, once again, I'm sending you all over

(14:21):
one of the world's grandest cities. You must be starving now.
Finding great food in Chicago isn't hard, and I believe
in you. But if you're lucky, the food comes to you.
When the venue gets a visit from Claudio the Tamali guy,
simply yelling Tomali's as he walks through the bar. He's
been selling his wife's homemade delicacies for decades at bars

(14:42):
and venues all across the city. You just gotta believe
that you will be lucky that night, wherever you choose
to see a show. Now, if you've been with me
on our travels, you know that we always have to
find the no cover spot, and a lot of towns
it can end up being the most quintessential. Simon's tavern
sits in the heart of Andersonville, a historically Swedish neighborhood

(15:04):
that is home to a large L G B t
Q plus community, the legendary bookstore, women and children first
in an extraordinary number of excellent places to eat in
case you didn't score Tomala. One of the oldest and
most beloved bars in Chicago, Simon's is known for its
blue and yellow neon sign of a fish holding a martini,
as well as it's faded deer hunting murals in the

(15:25):
Swedish drink glog, a winter holiday special that the owner
mixes up in massive quantities in the basement. Go on
a Sunday or Wednesday night for free music, and you're
likely to see a world class band composed of musicians
who have weakly gigs with Muka Pazza, Brian Wilson, n
R b Q or POI dog pondering the shabby speaker
crammed into the taverns corner sounds surprisingly good, and sometimes

(15:50):
a cozy dance floor breaks out. So you make it
to town and you have one night, maybe two, and
you want to get your face melted, Well, I'm sorry
because the choices here can be very overwhelming. Lincoln Hall
and Shuba's Tavern are both beloved venues with warm sounding
rooms and a face melting roster of rock, jazz, and

(16:12):
hip hop. Side note, Shuba's basement backstage room is notorious
for the astonishing array of male Genitalia drawings that adorn
its walls, a veritable art installation. But the Pilson neighborhood
across the street from six H six Records, where I
snag all my house vinyl, is my Chicago dream gig
value hall. It's a place I've never played, but a

(16:33):
room for which I hold lustful feelings. The building was
influenced by the Opera House and Brague, constructed in eight
for three times the average costs at the time. Somebody
clearly had face melting in mind back then. Much respect
this historic landmark called six D nine hundred Music lovers
with perfect views, no matter where you are, all amongst

(16:54):
magnificent burnt brass sheet metal in a hundred and thirty
year old wood that has heard at all. I don't
know if we give pause enough to all the people, creators,
workers and artisans that keep historic spaces alive. It brings
added weight, or rather amplified face melt to let that
all in when you're watching cap Power, Cass McCombs, Stephen Marley,

(17:14):
Madison Cunningham, or broken social scene cradled in the Ornate
Value Hall. But the room I have both played in
and had my face melted in multiple times makes music
history regularly, and we've already technically been there on this journey,
I like to imagine what it's like to be a

(17:36):
bartender through all the years and the epic nous. You
get off the L train and you walk four blocks
to your job. You make your way through the crowds
at Wrigleyville, you get to work, and as you walk
up the double wide stairs to your bar, you can
already hear Metallica sound checking. Turns out they wanted to
return almost forty years after their first show, to test

(17:56):
their metal in front of It's hard to tell if
you really connecting in front of thirty thousand people at
a festival. Hetfield knows this. That's why he seems a
little on edge. He wants to leave no prisoners. You
want to watch, but someone didn't cover the triple sec
last night, and the fruit flies are hammered by the
time you lift your head up and the end of
a Glenn Hansford show. Crowd didn't drink too much, too

(18:17):
busy holding it together. You can't even tell if your
heart is broke or expanding. You wipe down the bar
and it's seventeen arcade fire Lollapalooza after party. Keep the
car running, no problem for you. You've been standing for
five hours from the bars, drop ceiling at the back
of the room. You can't even see Will Butler's head.
Somebody orders a schlitz. You turn back around to George

(18:37):
Ezra's first headline show in the US, and you had
wanted to shift for okay go two nights before. But whatever.
You make your cash discovering who the hell he is
alongside America that night, You blink and it's who screwed in.
You better put your ear plugs in, lift your head
up between making six jack and cokes, and steal a
glimpse of the stage. It's radio had Apparently they made

(18:59):
a second album, but you are sure there are one
hit wonder. It's time to pull up those soap mats now,
and you're putting them back down again. In two thousand
and nine for the Decembrists. You go home that night
and start reading a book you won't finish before coming
into tap of Keke For the Kings of Leon Show,
you could use somebody behind the bar to help sling
blue ribbons to this unseatshiated lot. Clean up the broken
glass and get back up. It's Liz Fair two thousand eighteen,

(19:21):
still making you spill a drink or two. You marry
the Well Liquors and its Rage against Machine in nineteen
some of those that burn crosses certain that this song
will put an end to all corruption in hypocrisy. You
give away a few dozen free drinks. Blink and you're
counting a mountain of dollar bills after two nights, have
a chance to rapper. Blinken. It's blind mel In. This
band is glowing on you. Blinken. It's paid for the Lion.

(19:41):
Tenth of September two thousand and one, The chill and
lovely evening. Blink and it's blur. You don't think you're
long for this work. Blink in. It's Blink one eighty
two and nineteen ninety and blink and It's Blink one
eighty two and two thousand, seventeen, What the hell is
my age again? Focus on your job, because it's suddenly
two and the Strokes here to celebrate. Everyone you've ever

(20:03):
met is hitting you up for tickets. You will never
stop moving that night and it's absolutely glorious. Next week
it's Idols, And after all these years, there's still something
to look forward to. As you clean up after another
despol pounding show in its forty year, your owner, the boss,
the leader comes up to the bar and asks if

(20:26):
you had a good night. Joe Shanahan has cultivated the independent, electric, lauded,
and comfortably loud Metro as a place you don't have
to pass through, but a room you want to pass through.
Listeners and artists alike. I just got back from a
show there and I'm still floating. Your face will melt

(20:48):
right off here. Just remember to tip your bartenders. And
this is the building that is also the home of
Smart Bar, where we started our adventures. Shanahan traversed the
underground sounds of Chicago in the nineteen seventies and felt
it needed a champion. He opened Smart Bar as a
dance club on the fourth floor of what was then

(21:10):
called Stages in July of nine eighty two, d J,
Frankie Knuckles and Joe Smooth performed regularly. Joe began building
a space for all the underground music throughout town and America.
In August of nineteen eighty two, Shanahan booked another underground
sound from the then little known band from Athens, Georgia,
r E. M. The show was a success, and Shanahan

(21:32):
began booking the club's weekend slots, taking over the main
floors of stages and changing the name to Metro. Smart
Bar moved down to the basement where it still thrives today.
When you walk down into Smart Bar now, the heart
and spirit of house music is intact in this house
of worship, the foundation of a building vertically integrated for
Chicago as a music conduit to America in the world,

(22:01):
and the Metro is the ideal location for opening up
the calendar. Your time in Chicago needs planning in July,
an event that I will go into in more depth
and detail in our next episode. There is hot Stove,
Cool music, combining the power of the ballpark across the
street in the music of Chicago and Boston to raise
funds for youth sports music in scholarship programs. It just

(22:22):
so happens that the headliners are the likes of Smashing
Pumpkins made his staples, Tom Morello and Buddy Guy, to
name a few. The other calendar event to watch out
for a metro is Sons of the Silent Age, a
Bowie tribute band for charity featuring members of Morrisey, Revolting
Cox Ministry, and Garbage. Not always annual, which gives this
event a special Cicada allure if you can align it

(22:44):
with your calendar in The Chicago music calendar is packed
year round, but it explodes with festivals in the summer.
The biggest of the fests is La La Palouza. Launched
in the nineties by Perry Pharrell, singer of Jane's Addiction,
as a touring extravaganza. La La has settled into an
annual late July event in Grant Park with a jaw
dropping huge roster and is something for everyone. Vibe Pitchfork

(23:06):
follows a couple of weeks before La La. Although it
has grown significantly since it's launched in two thousand and six,
it maintains a more boutique and cutting edge feel with
an emphasis on alternative rock, hip hop, electronic and dance
music from Smart Bar to the World for punk rockers,
young and Old. Ride Fest in September specializes in punk

(23:26):
and new wave artists and is known for hosting highly
anticipated reunions for bands like The Replacements in the Misfits.
And then there's Blues Fest. Since its inception, you can't
name a significantly influential blues musician who hasn't played the
Chicago Blues Festival. Yes, this city loves its blues stage
on the grounds of the glorious Millennium Park. The always

(23:49):
capacity crowd here eats up every note, much like they
do the always popular gigantic and barbecue soap turkey legs
here on sale every June. And if course, what starts
in the dark and underground eventually finds the daylight. And
why not experience the energy of house music in the
city where it was born. The Chicago House Music Festival

(24:10):
is a free, multi day celebration showcasing the various sounds
and styles in the month of May in Millennium Park. Afterwards,
you can bust into the many venues hosting after party
shows around town. I mean, Chicago has festivals all locked
up in every episode of Sound of Our Town, We're

(24:31):
going to identify the Vatican of each city we visit
and how and why music makes it so. For example,
die hard fans of the Chicago Cubs lost their mind
when lights were permanently installed at venerable Wrigley Field in
order to accommodate night games. What a lot of those
people did not know, however, is that it was not
the first time lights were brought into the second oldest

(24:52):
existing ballpark in baseball. In two while still known as
Cubs Park, temporary lights were brought into the park's first
ever concert, which featured an orchestra. Fast forward exactly one
hundred years later, and you will find not only permanent lights,
but now a permanent summer concert schedule featuring some of
the biggest names in music, The Police, the Lumineers, Lady Gaga,

(25:13):
Chris Stapleton, Dead and Co and Motley Crue. And yes,
Wrigley and music go hand in hand, which makes perfect sense.
Baseball is a musical sport. The grand pause of the
picture just before he throws, the simple crash of the
bat hitting ball into left field gap, the allegro, the
runner legging out a triple with the orchestra of fans
rising up underneath him, everyone in the park racing toward
the finale is the coach waves his baton. And this

(25:36):
doesn't take into account the myriad of other musical elements
involved in a day at Wrigley the anthem, the seventh
inning stretch of the forty voice chorus, the live organist,
one of only a handful left in Major League Baseball,
and finally, if cub fans get their wish, the raising
of the w flags said to Chicago legend Steve Goodman's
go Cubs go blasting over the park's loud speakers, Fans

(25:58):
joyfully singing along as they walk out to Addison Street,
so entwined, or the Vatican of Chicago, and music that
even the always in demand hometown hero Dave Max Crawford
has not only worked the outfield digital boards there and
occasionally the DJ booth for years, but was also likely
your bartenders sometime in the last thirty years at the
spot we just left the Metro and we still have

(26:23):
our hidden gem in Chicago is dripping with gems, Vibrant
little venues like Constellation or Hungry Brain, brilliantly curated record
stores like Dusty Groove, Reckless and Laurie's Planet of Sound.
Actually never buy records on the road because it's too
much of a burden to cart them home. But damn it,
Chicago gets me every time. When you're in a place
that loves something so intensely, it is infectious and you

(26:45):
want to take some of that home. But it's Dorians
in wicker Park that is the very definition of a
hidden gem. A small storefront simply called the Record Shop
featuring primo jazz, R and B and blues records. Walked
to the back of the shop and discover a discreet
entryway leading to a secret, swanky speakeasy in the back.
Dorian's features live music most nights, including performances from Chicago

(27:06):
jazz luminaries like George Freeman and Mackay mccraven. It's not
an ordinary bar, and they don't serve ordinary drinks or food.
Try a snazzy house cocktail like the Dear Darla. I'm
not going to pronounce the ingredients so it'll be awful,
or a gourmet cheese plate brought to you by small
Wisconsin farms. If you're not already swooning over the music
and cocktail. Then maybe the morale and leak Monterey Jack

(27:29):
will take you there. Now, after this episode, you might
want to prepare for your trip a little bit more.
You want to feel like you're audience Chicago. Reach for
these two books. First, My Kind of Sound, The Secret
History of Chicago Music by Steve Krakow, a collection of
over two d illustrated entries documenting deep cuts into this

(27:51):
city's incredibly diverse music history. Second, The Devil in the
White City, Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That
chan Aged America by Eric Larkson. It is a page
turner that gives a sense of the city's depth drama
in the eternal question of what is on the surface
and what is lurking down below. Chicago has everything. It's

(28:19):
Peak America, the nation's folk room. While the coastal duality
seesaws back and forth, competing for our attention with sounds, arts,
and culture. Meanwhile, Chicago stands firm and keeps warm, the
melting pot of all of us. It competes only with itself,
singular in design, history and completely diverse in its music.
That makes it the perfect breeding ground for what we

(28:41):
have yet to discover, the underground is real here where
it's a marketed term in New York in l a vibrant,
experimental and fresh while firmly appreciating the roots that are
graceful in Forever. It feels obvious that blues, jazz, hip hop,
indie rock, and house music would all germanate here. When
I'm playing in town, I feel like I'm accepted just

(29:01):
for being an artist, for being myself. A place where
a lauded radio DJ like Lynn Bremer goes out to
see indie shows, the musicians come out to support the musicians.
You can really try things out here first. There is
room to breathe as an artist, in the rooms to
exhale in. It's a town that takes us somewhere and
remains anchored like a great band, and it's always ready

(29:24):
to welcome those seeking that next great show or sound,
both above ground and below. In one last thing, art
is America's greatest export, specifically music, a legacy and song

(29:46):
that can give our grievances volume and guide our imbalances
to equilibrium. It can etch love and stone and give
a broken heart some superglue. And its brightest light has
always come from our hidden pockets pushed around by the
teeming architecture above. So maybe you find yourself walking down
the steps into Smart Bar one evening, underneath North Clark Streets,

(30:08):
bar hoppers and shot takers, deep where the baseball crowd
noise does not reach. You are in another cathedral of creation,
breaking up tracks, pummeling beats constructed to go along with
your heart. It too, drove that above ground world crazy
before taking it over, a human practice older than the
smoke stained walls of the Green Mill or the ivy

(30:31):
in Wrigley Field. The underground winds and takes over the
industry and takes over the world. It's always happening right
now under our feet. You never know what you're walking over,

(30:57):
all right, You've been listening to the Sound of Our Town.
We're coming out with twelve episodes this first season, covering
ten different cities and all in. New episodes drop on Thursdays.
If you want to chat about the music scene in
your city, hit us up on Instagram at Double Elvis
and at Will Daily Official, or on Twitter at Double
Elvis FM and at Will Daily Sound over Town is
a production of Double Elvis and I Heart Radio. The

(31:18):
show is executive produced by Jake Brennan, Freddy Sadler, and
Carl Karioli for double Elvis. Production assistant by Matt Taheney
and Matt Bowden. The show is created, written, hosted, and
scored by me Will Daily. Additional writing on this episode
by FRIEDA. Lovesmith and Gerald Dowd. For sources see the
show notes and a special thank you on this episode
Joe Shanahan and the Foundation to be named later. Music

(31:40):
for this episode was composed and performed by me Will Daily.
You can check out my music just by spelling my
name correctly anywhere you listen to music to spell Daily
with all the vowels D A, I, L E Y.
I'm on Spotify, Apple, band Camp, and always at Sound
of Our Town, Paul dot com and Will Daily dot com. Okay,
I'm off to the next town. In the next show,
I will see you out there. Thank you through your ears.