There’s a small bar on the corner of Sheridan and Sheridan. It has an unimposing exterior of gray brick, and glass windows giving merely a peak into the dark scene inside, day or night. It seems to stand alone almost, the last stop on a moderately busy strip of restaurants and convenience stores feeding off the subway stop. A small sign in the window says “Wrigleyville North,” but it’s a far cry from the Disney meets Baseball motif of the bars on Clark Street. It’s just a little bar most Chicagoans and Cubs fans alike seemed to have forgot.
I would have never have come across it myself if I hadn’t moved a hundred yards away a few months ago. I tend to appoint myself ambassador to the local drinking holes, finding out who’s beer is the coldest, who’s crowd is the friendliest, and who’s music is moving. A good bar is like a good friend. Better, perhaps, because it’s always there for you. It was on one of these expeditions that lead me in the doors of the Wrigleyville North.
During the week, there’s never more than fifteen people in there; a handful of people on stools edged up to the bar, maybe a group of people at a table or hovering around the pool table. Tops. Every time we go, we’re served by a friendly bartender named Theresa. If anyone else helps her hold down the fort, I’m not sure. She seems to do plenty fine by herself, dishing out their $8 pitchers of Miller or Bud Light, popping caps on their special that doesn’t change - $1.50 Bud Light bottles. Tough deals to beat in this zip code.
Dives like this are invaluable, and still a dime of dozen in this city of neighborhoods. But come in on a Friday or Saturday night, and you’ll find the ace of this particular dives sleeve. “Just Us,” the hardest working bunch of professional country musicicians north of Interstate 80. A four piece band, amped in and playing the country music that actually meant something: Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams (old and new), Willie Nelson. Southern rock like Skynyrd, the Marhsal Tucker Band and the Allman Brothers. When pushed by me to play a Dylan tune, Poppa Jack, the lead guitar player, said, “Well, I never did like Bob Dylan too much, to be honest. But we do play one of his songs – Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door. I tell ya, the harmony we have on it, the first time we played it, I got goose pumps all up and down my arm. No joke, the hairs just stood right up.”
There’s at least a century of playing experience between all of them. Commuting into the city, they hold court with the same mix of lost locals or regulars who quickly become fixtures. They grin like boys being let out of the house to play, although their gray hair and deepening wrinkles reveal their true age, and that the only thing keeping them under lock and key anymore is their wives and their day jobs.
And they don’t miss a beat. When they get on the little rise of plywood serving as the stage, they sit as comfortably with their instruments in hand as some men only obtain with their broken-in lazy boy and remote control. They laugh a bit, clutch their beer of choice, or O’Doul’s on some nights, until their singer and guitarist starts in an a riff, and they’re right into playing without so much as a nod or verbal agreement on what song to do next.
But what is it about Chicago that a true country band can’t fill the seats? What is it that a Chicagoan can’t get about heartache, lonliness, booze, women and mother? The fact is, when you get down to it, country and the blues are the same thing. It just depends on where you put the down beat.
Both can speak to your own sadness, making you want to slip a tear into your beer glass. Or they can fill you with joy, making you get up and swing around like there’s not a care in the world that could ever hold you back.
And this brings me to my larger question. Where do you go when you’re low? When something is just not sitting right inside, and you can’t just sit at home and wallow in it. When you need a friend, but no friend is close. Or when you’re hearts been pushed to the ground, and you turn to an open ear, a warm smile, and cold beer to help you pick it up again. When something in the night wind calls to you, and all you can do is try to go out and soak it up, bobbing your head slightly to a familiar rhythm.
I go to the “Wrigleyvile North,” or the country bar, as I affectionately renamed it. Wrigley just doesn’t fit, and thank God. And if you ever find yourself feeling this way, put this spot on your map. Head over on a weekend, request a Merle Haggard song for me, and throw a few bills in for the band. Chicago can be a lonely place for a professional country band.
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