Originally scheduled in April of 2020, this run of Widespread Panic shows had been rescheduled twice and uniquely settled on some midweek shows in November at the Chicago Theatre. WSP’s second of a three-night run in Chicago was on Thursday night and they did not disappoint. The band took the stage 20 minutes after the 8 pm showtime, as ticketed, but early for Spreadheads. 

After a thirty-year-plus hiatus, Todd Rundgren’s Utopia graced the Chicago Theater stage, with the hopes of promising fans an extraordinary, other-worldly concert experience. The original 70’s-formed band established a stellar reputation for stretching the prog rock/pop envelope and infusing their mostly original material with verve and state-of-the-art technique.

Founding members Phil Lesh and Bob Weir, of Grateful Dead fame, playing as a duo without a backing band for the first time together, ended their “Bobby and Phil Tour” with two, consecutive nights at the Chicago Theatre, after selling out New York’s Radio City Music Hall and Boston’s Wang Center.

The Steve Winwood Band’s Greatest Hits Tour will have touched down on three U.S. coasts by July 8th, concluding thereafter with concerts in Germany and the UK. But it’s hard to imagine those other fans showing their love the way Chicago did on Thursday night.

In 2015, a restless, curious talent from Gloucestershire, England, decided to revisit her Nashville relatives—she had previously spent summers with them, and perhaps she believed that this jaunt would just be one more road trip, yet this visit yielded a major career milestone.

In fact, singer-songwriter, Lilly Winwood, found that visit so illuminating that she chose to document her coming-of-age observations and anecdotes. The result became 2017 debut EP, ‘Silver Stage’.