Chicago’s Hidden Country

In a city better known for the rarified sounds of a world-class symphony and legendary jazz and blues, there’s a lively but almost hidden country music scene in Chicago.

Sometimes there’s a nominal cover charge, but for some gigs, like the Hoyle Brothers’ Honky-Tonk Happy Hour, the music costs no more than whatever you feel like putting in the tip jar.

The Hoyles, not really brothers, have been playing at the Empty Bottle for 10 years, the last five or so with Texas-born lead singer, songwriter and acoustic guitarist Trevor McSpadden, a handsome young crooner whose deep mellow voice sounds made for the old tunes.

“I was surprised people were into it up here,” McSpadden said before a recent gig. The band regularly attracts a good mix of tattooed hipsters, middle-aged professionals and gray-haired suburbanites, all drawn to the down-home sound.

The Bottle, on the edge of an old Ukrainian neighborhood, is better known for avant-garde late night bands, but the stalwart honky-tonk crowd has become a Friday night staple – McSpadden calls it almost like a weekly family reunion.

“Chicago is a host to a number of different types of music, and it’s there for the taking and it’s there if you look for it,” said the Empty Bottle’s self-described “head cheese,” Bruce Finkelman.

On a recent Friday, a visitor from Naperville, a far western suburb, walked into the Bottle for the first time and commented, beaming, ‘Wow, you could walk right by this place and never know it existed.”

Same goes for Simon’s, a divey tavern in trendy Andersonville five miles (eight kilometers) to the north, where you’ll find another band popular among Chicago’s country cognoscenti, the Western Elstons. Every other Wednesday night, they play a brand of Western swing so smooth and catchy that dancers somehow find room to twirl in the bar’s narrow aisle.

A few blocks to the south, on a more working-class stretch of Clark Street, you could easily miss 40-year-old Carol’s Pub, the granny of the city’s country music scene. A little worn at the edges, Carol’s still serves up pitchers of PBR and live country music four nights a week.

Details and a few others: