Leftovers from Doug Ward (Underdog Records, 8-Bark) Interview

 Hey, y’all, I have not been blogging as much here lately. I had a lot of big ideas and let them mostly get away from me. Mostly too exhausted to get to work and have mostly been reading old zines I have bought on eBay the past few weeks and filling in blind spots. If you have a few spare dollars, I would recommend blind-buying a random zine. It is a fun way to jump into random moments in a subculture. I bought two issues of Pains. It is from about 2009 or 2010 in Toronto. I have already discovered how hard it was to find music online from that time. Some reside on Bandcamp; for others, I would have to spend money on Discogs.

I am getting away from myself. Last week, I published something on the hardcore blog No Echo if you are interested in reading it. Lately, I have become fascinated with Chicago punk and hardcore, which were in the 80s. So I talked to my friend Doug Ward, who was getting into stuff around 83 84. What you see is only a tiny portion of our chat. There was one little tidbit I felt like sharing with whoever came across this page. It was a random aside that came up when I mentioned Fireside Bowl and one that did not feel right to sit on my Google Doc. Here it is below:

"How Fireside Bowl gets started goes back to Underdog Records. Underdog would have our weekly meetings on Monday or Tuesday. Russ is still around but not as involved in Underdog. He had found Fireside when it was just an empty bowling alley. After our meetings, we weren’t too far from Fireside. 5 or ten of us would go over there. It looked like it was dead. Beer was 3 dollars a pitcher, and nobody else was there. That started happening, and then Russ stopped doing Underdog. We would go there once a week. There was no jukebox or music or anything. He’d been getting into the first wave of retro nostalgia for tapes. He put out a fanzine called 8 Track Mind.

So he would bring a goofy eight-track and start putting in eight tracks so that they would have music. A lot of the eight tracks were disco stuff. That had been happening for a couple of months, and more and more people started coming. There was a TV show called Wild Chicago on WTTW. It was a half-hour show where they would find something zany going on in Chicago. The original had a pith helmet like he was an explorer. He heard about disco bowling. He went and did a bit of bowling at The Fireside with Russ and his 8-track tapes. Because people knew he was coming, they camped it up a little bit. They did the bit, and more and more people started coming.

There are no shows. One of the people involved in bowling was doing a cable access TV show, and she wanted to do a fundraiser. She asked the guy if he could have bands play here. He said no. Eventually, she talked him into it. It was a weekend thing. They put risers out on the four middle lanes of Fireside. It was a big hit. Other people got excited about it. About that time, Jim’s dad retired. A few different people were putting on shows, and it took off into the 90s when it became a thing. Once again, Russ Forester and Underdog Records had our hand in getting something going, although indirectly."

Jeremy Nelson, Founder of Gnarfest and Chicago DIY Lifer

Booking DIY shows and fests and all that comes with it is a thankless task. In reality, no one cares who booked that legendary show that people reminisce about all those years later. I am guilty of this phenomenon. It was not until Jeremey Nelson reached out to me that I saw his trajectory in Itto and Suffix and how he was directly in contact with so much of the punk and emo revival of the late 2000s into the early 2010s that I adored. He helped book Gnarfest 2012, a festival I still think about and wish I had attended. His trajectory is similar to anyone who spent time in anything you would label DIY. He did the thing for a while as hard as he could and then made his exit. He now lives in Los Angeles. I talked to him the other day about his journey in Chicago DIY and condensed our conversation for you to read. Hopefully, there is something mildly interesting for you to get out of it. 

Schedule for Gnar Fest 2012 (from Gonzo Chicago)

 

So, chronologically, I moved into the guesthouse. Then we moved into a spot called The Shitspace for a little bit. And then we all moved into Phrat Farm. Phrat Farm turned into Treasure Town. It was in the middle of a three-story building. On the bottom was Casa Donde, and on the top was Mortville. The Keep was after that. That was my trajectory. 

The building (that Treasure Town was in) was called Wiser and Sons—the people before it called it Wiser House. I remember going to look at that building. Another guy named Ryan and I went to check that place out, and we were like, “Oh my god, this place is massive.” It was a huge warehouse. There were rooms already for everyone. We didn’t know who lived above us or below us. Mortville was already active. I think the downstairs was vacant at that time. We called everyone and said, “Oh my god, this is it. Let’s go. We started throwing shows pretty instantly. We moved because landlords wanted to demolish or revamp the house. There is always a nice beginning and a bad ending to these places. There started to be crackdowns on DIY spaces ahead of the NATO summit. Or, really, they just started cracking down on landlords. “You can be liable for this if you are illegally letting this happen.” 

That is kind of how a lot of Chicago houses come and go for political reasons. The culmination of Phrat Farm was three or four punk houses getting shut down by the police. That usually happens around the time of Lollapalooza. A lot of local businesses, bars, and even venues are attending city council meetings. These are the people who are talking to the police chiefs. There is a concerted business and political effort to shut down these DIY spaces around certain events and times of the year. 

Our stuff at the beginning was more like DIY screamo and hardcore. We started to branch out. It was in a sketchy part of town, but we could do whatever we wanted. We would have shows back to back. We would have shows on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday sometimes. There were ten people living there. I booked my shows. Other people had their shows. Eventually, we started doing noise shows. One of the guys who moved didn’t even play music, but he was an artist, so we started having art shows. We would have game nights. Once or twice, we got approached by French EDM people who were like, “We’re going to give you a lot of money if we can have a rave in your place.” That’s all of our rent, so it's fine. We did a couple of things like that that were not DIY. It started siloed in that emo/screamo/hardcore lane, and then it got into everything. 

Different people started moving in and booking different shows. That is how DIY is. It is why I love it and why I hate it. Nothing stops you from moving into Chicago, renting a house, and throwing shows in your basement. Anyone can do it, and no one can stop you. I never really judged the shows at Treasure Town that I wasn’t particularly interested in. It is not business what they do as long as they don’t jeopardize the space. I eventually moved into a regular apartment. After three or four years of house/loft communal living, it was time to get a regular apartment. 

I was in that apartment for a bit and had a relationship that fizzled out, and I moved into The Keep. The Keep had shows, but not too many. We had all been evicted a lot. We know what happens. We were getting over it. Playing music is still what we do. We took a responsible approach. It is not going to be a gritty warehouse with dynamite going off. There were fewer shows, and it was more of a place to live. We were trying to make it a more livable space. 

Shread & Breakfast was my attempt to go legit. There was an effort amongst the DIY community to create in Chicago something along the lines of Gilman Street or ABC No Rio. Chicago doesn’t have a 501 (C)(3) all-ages venue. That was my goal. I recognized that Chicago needed a space that could always exist freely without worrying about cops or neighbors and is a legit venue and not a fucking bar. It is an art space. That was my attempt to give that a shot. But then the neighbors called the cops on me. The cops showed up, and I said, “Hey man, we’re a 501C.”  The cops said, “We don’t care. We can hear the music from outside. You need to fix that.” Harrison Hickok and I from Summer Camp built some insulation because it was a storefront with thin glass windows. It kind of helped. I had a good amount of shows but it was not going to work. I did file for 501C. I got the business license and tax-deductible.

With all of these things, I pushed the limit every time. There is so much of Chicago that is underground, and you have to dig to find it. Most people, if they aren’t looking, are just seeing what’s at Coles or Empty Bottle. I just kind of wanted to press that button and see what happens. The Logan Monument is one of the most badass places to throw a show. I think there was a show a year or two before Gnarfest 2014. They were always sponsored by something or kind of lame. I wanted to try to see if I could do that.

I didn’t even know where to start. Someone pointed me to the alderman. The alderman was not stoked on the idea, and he gave me this impossible task of getting the Department of Cultural Affairs behind it and getting the ok from the sheriff of Logan Square. I rode my bicycle to the police station, met with the sheriff, and asked him to sign this thing. He said I’ll sign if you have insurance. I was personally liable for everything that happened at the show. The alderman wanted porta-potties and barricades. I said yes to everything, and they didn’t care. It was a lot of work. I had to rent a generator. 

I had worked my ass off for a year meeting all these people. When I would go out and hang out with people, and they would ask what I was doing, I would say, “Oh, Gnarfest.” After it happened, people told me it was the coolest thing they’ve seen happen in a long time. I thought maybe that was as far as I could push it. I can’t open a venue. I can’t go further than that. It was the culmination of my thing. I tried something way out of my wheelhouse, and it worked. After Gnarfest, I got calls from local venues to figure out who threw the show on the monument. They wanted to hire me. I had some meetings with certain people in that sphere. They didn’t want to work with me; they wanted me to work for them.

 It definitely left a mark on Logan Square. People talk about it still. Now that it is ten years later, people don’t care who did it. People don’t care if the Empty Bottle did it or who presented it. I was never trying to put my name all over it. I was just trying to make a cool thing happen for people to enjoy.