I’m at evergreen

Chicago is a city I’ve always known but never fully dove into. It’s safe to say that I have only stepped in what could be considered a damp spot, and not nearly the whole body of metaphorical water that is the city of Chicago.

I was born in Arlington Heights,  a pretty little suburb outside of the Chicago zip code, and I lived in that area for the first two hazy years of my new life. Fast forward slightly under twenty years and I have visited Chicago over 25 times to see family, yet I have not been exposed to Chicago as a musical city other than by the bucket drummers who sit on State Street and provide a rough soundtrack for the hurried shoppers and city goers. That being said, even though I have visited Chicago many times, my preconceptions are mostly based on media I have consumed. Through scattered but thoughtful music research over the past five years or so, Chicago has been brought to my attention many times due to the talented musicians and genres that have come and continue to come from the windy city.

My preconceptions of my time there mostly are surrounded by the different culture that’s going to slap me in the face after being in Olympia for too long. It it safe to say that the town of Olympia has a little cultural bubble that is very easy to get comfortable in. People generally swim the same way here and people are quite liberal and happy go lucky. Although Chicago is a somewhat progressive city, it’s location in the Midwest makes me shift in my seat a bit.

Some expectations that I have of my time spent in Chicago are that I will talk to a lot of different people. I am making it a goal to challenge myself and talk to as many (willing) strangers as I can muster up the courage to approach. I expect to talk to people who have seen Chicago’s music scene grow as they have grown in their own lives. I expect to talk to tourists and visitors and find out what they think of Chicago as a musical city from an international perspective. I also expect to feel overwhelmed, both positively and negatively. The fact that I am going to be doing a project in which I am the creator is something that I have always dreamed of -educationally speaking. But, I worry that my tendency of having too many ideas to handle resulting in the ideas going unacknowledged or lost in my mind will take form in this project. I foresee me being too focused on making my project too detailed and/or multifaceted that the quality of the content will suffer or not be as rich as could potentially be. That said, I have completed step one: admitting I have a problem. Now, it is my time to attempt to work past it and I truly hope that this project can be an example of my growth.

I anticipate that I will push myself to make the most of my time in Chicago. I do not want to waste a moment and I am going to have to be ambitious if I want to complete everything I yearn to do.

Some preparations that I am making logistically for my trip are the seek out the Chicago music “experts” that live in Chicago, or can be contacted via email. I am reading articles and watching documentaries writing down names of people that are being mentioned as pioneers in the scene. I also am extremely curious to contact record store owners as well as local show bookers. Folks of these occupations often get looked past as contributors to a music scene. I think these people will be able to give me  some behind the scenes insight on how the city has grown musically over time.