Sometimes to understand the present, we must look at the past. 

In 2017, playwright Terry Guest grappled with how America could elect someone so outwardly racist as Donald Trump. It shocked him into questioning what could be done about the rise of fascism in the U.S.

“Do we protest? Does that work?” Guest asked himself. “Do we yell? Do we scream? Do we give up? Do we focus on our family and our own personal lives? Do we cut off somebody’s head?”

Those musings sent him back in time to figure out what answers people found when faced with the same questions. The result is Story Theatre’s Marie Antoinette and the Magical Negroes, opening June 30 at Raven Theatre.

Marie Antoinette and the Magical Negroes
6/30-7/17: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark, 773-338-2177, thestorytheatre.org, previews (Thu 6/30 and Fri 7/1) $15, regular run $20 ($10 students, active military, and veterans)

Guest doubles as playwright and director in a story about revolution, rage, and revenge. Set during the French Revolution, the play takes a new look at the lost monarchy myth by putting it in the mouths of Black people.

Brenna DiStasio, one of the founding members of Story Theatre, plays Marie Antoinette, and explains that the company seeks stories that ask how people feel rather than telling them how to feel. They actively support new work and emerging playwrights.

Those goals made Marie Antoinette and the Magical Negroes a good fit for the young company. In 2019, they premiered Guest’s At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen; that script previously won a grant for a developmental workshop from Atlanta’s Out Front Theatre.

This past spring, Guest’s The Magnolia Ballet premiered at About Face, with Guest playing one of the roles under the direction of Mikael Burke (also the director of At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen). It received rapturous reviews.

“Terry’s work is so beautiful,” DiStasio says. “It is so unique in that it has this mysticism about it. It is constantly digging for the complicated nature of history and interpersonal interaction in a way that really fits our mission statement. This show explores the themes of Black liberation and what do we do? How do we react in the face of adversity in a way that honors the fact that not everyone has the same answer?”

While Guest went seeking for answers, he found something else instead.

“I grew to appreciate how throughout humanity, particularly with Black people, we have had to ask these questions generation after generation after generation,” Guest says. “The thing that keeps me going is knowing that I am not alone, that my ancestors asked the same questions that my children will be asking. There is a connectivity to my history as a Black person and to my present, looking around at the different ways that my Black siblings are dealing with all of the things that are happening in the world and America.”

The play spans 300 years of history. It moves from the French Revolution to the Haitian Revolution to the 1992 LA riots and back again. While there is anger, there is also humor and joy.

“It’s a really funny, fun show,” Guest says. “There’s lots of movement and dance. It will feel like something people have never seen before. My goal is not to create something that’s perfect. My goal is to create something that’s powerful and that is saying something new and exciting.”

In the play, a group of magical traveling Black players decide to put on a show to help them understand and digest the complicated feelings they’re experiencing around being Black in a country that keeps showing it hates them. The story they examine is the French Revolution and how it inspired revolutions around the world. 

“Whenever people ask me to describe the show, I’m like, you just have to see it,” Guest says. “It’s too simple to say that it’s the story of Marie Antoinette. JFK and Jackie Kennedy show up and they’re played by Black people.”

DiStasio says that as the play explores Black liberation, it recognizes that the Black experience is not a monolith—Black people experience it in different ways, all of which are valid and should be honored.

DiStasio points out that they explored her character as both a symbol and a real human being. She is the perfect villain, and also a woman with her own hopes and dreams that put her at odds with the duty she was tasked with fulfilling.

More importantly, she says, is that the story is told through a Black lens, and not the oft-told white Eurocentric lens.

“What is so beautiful about what Terry does is that he states and recognizes that Black people were there and present and engaged and living and surviving and thriving this entire time,” DiStasio says. “There were Black people living in France. The actions of the French monarchy had an impact on the American slave trade.”

Terry Guest David Hagen

Guest agrees that too often stories of the French Revolution focus on Marie Antoinette and the experience of the royals. Not enough attention is paid to the people whose suffering sparked the revolution. 

“Looking at where we are now, in this country, there are so many people who are starving and angry and reaching a breaking point,” Guest says. “It’s a really apt time to look at what’s been done before and to see if we can do things a little bit better.”

As for telling the story from a Black perspective, Guest points out that he is Black and he only knows how to tell the story from his perspective.

“This is just my story, my little version,” Guest says. “I’m not trying to be anyone’s voice of a generation. I’m just trying to tell my little stories and write my little plays about my little corner of the world. And that corner of the world happens to be Black.”

As a director, Guest says he put together a cast that was “energetically diverse,” with five of the seven roles cast with Black actors.

“All our actors have such a variety of ways of interacting with each other and the world,” Guest says. “It really shows the complexity of Black actors in this town. All the actors play multiple characters, so they get to really shape-shift and time travel. Black folk don’t get to do that as often as we should.”

Story Theatre has published content warnings, inviting people to contact them for more information. Guest points out there is violence, revolt, and decapitation. It takes a critical look at how people perpetrate and experience violence in this country.

“Everybody has a different comfort level,” DiStasio adds. “This play deals with white supremacy and Black rage and Black joy and Black liberation in a very vulnerable and frank way. Those themes are inherently triggering. We want to make sure you know that . . . you will see negative actions by white bodies being perpetrated on Black bodies. But ultimately, the goal of this show is actually Black healing and Black liberation taking over that narrative.”

Since Guest started working on Marie Antoinette and the Magical Negroes in 2017, he’s rewritten it many times and says he’s still discovering new things that will lead to future rewrites. (The play also closes a run at Baltimore’s Single Carrot Theatre this weekend and also has a short run this week at Indianapolis’s Southbank Theatre.) However, he has found that the historical setting makes the play continue to be more relevant.

“People are getting closer and closer to that breaking point that I was talking about,” Guest says. “I can’t wait for the play to not be relevant.”

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Between Drake’s sleepy Honestly, Nevermind and Beyoncé’s “Break My Soul,” a lot of people have something to say about house music lately. (And while I can’t say I have thoroughly read every discourse posting, I’ve seen almost no instances of anyone mentioning the fact that several music sites reported rumors of Beyoncé working with house veteran and Chicago native Honey Dijon earlier this year.) Since house music was born in Chicago, and since the Reader has had plenty to say about this homegrown cultural legacy over the years, we’ve rounded up some of our house coverage for you here. Whether you want to wade into the discourse, or want to get a better grasp of a definitive Chicago sound, we hope this gives you a little more insight:

This is just a small sample of the house stories you can find in the Reader archives. For a shortcut to more pieces, you can begin by scrolling through the “house music” tag.

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If it’s the first Friday of the month, you’re going to see a line snaking out of Berlin that extends past the entrance to the Belmont CTA station and sometimes around the block. It’s populated by people in leather miniskirts and mesh crop tops, disco bambis and alien centaurs, club mystics with lashes so long you can bounce fantasies off them, and other creatures of the night. They’re on a pilgrimage to experience Strapped, the gender-inclusive dyke night founded by drag queens Siichele and Irregular Girl, a performance artist who will grace the Steppenwolf stage later this summer. 

“I really believe in the power of nightlife as a place where people who are marginalized—who aren’t of the status quo—are able to meet and celebrate one another and live out fantasies turned realities,” she explains.

That Shit’s Trans: Live!
Wed 7/20, 8 PM, Steppenwolf 1700 Theater, 1700 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, steppenwolf.org, $15

Irregular Girl is the Live Laugh Latina of clubland, and her body of work highlights her range of irregularities as assets while refusing to hide how remarkably ordinary she is. When she’s not onstage welcoming the city’s hungriest children like a hot witch in a gingerbread house, she enjoys spending time with her husband and parents. She tans at the beach and bops to Britney Spears, plays video games and watches Real Housewives. Wait, I thought we were describing an irregular girl. What’s so irregular about this one? And once we know, how do we let that information shape our behavior?

Since cis womanhood is the cultural default of womanhood, one of the things that makes Irregular Girl “irregular” is being trans; thus, much of her persona is built on embracing what makes transness and especially trans womanhood unique and beautiful. Her drag is one example of this, but another is her talk show, That Shit’s Trans!, where she connects with local trans artists to discuss their work as well as popular media that’s shaped their trans experience—for instance, Sailor Moon finding a compact that completely transforms her. After filming a pilot episode for OTV last year, she performed a live version at the Logan Theatre in November. Now she’ll be joined by dancer and choreographer Darling Shear for a live show at Steppenwolf on July 20 (part of the theater’s ongoing LookOut series).

By touching on “regular” media, she allows audiences into her and her friends’ worlds without letting onlookers decide the terms of discussion. But why should that bother anyone? Would you interrupt the coolest girl in the room after she’s invited you to eavesdrop on conversations with some of Chicago’s most groundbreaking artists? (And if so, uh, do you have something against cool people? Wait, are you saying Irregular Girl is TOO exceptional for your tastes—that she’s not, dare I say, regular enough? It’s in the name, people: She is IRREGULAR!!)

Irregular Girl—or Regina Rodriguez, as she’s known when the makeup comes off—moved with her family from Peru to Chicago when she was seven. Raised mostly in Edgewater, she attended an arts high school where she concentrated on sculpture, then continued her studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she focused mainly on fibers and performance art. As her arts education evolved, so did the questions she was asking herself about her gender, what it was, and how she was manifesting it in both her work and her everyday life. If gender is a performance, how do we define sincerity? What separates art and artifice? In what ways can and do these ideas live in harmony? What’s fun about the discord?

Meanwhile, she was drawing inspiration from people such as Ana Mendieta, Tania Bruguera, Carolee Schneemann, and Billie Zangewa. She was exhibiting and performing in places like the Art Institute of Chicago, MCA, and Queens Museum in New York as well as a slate of local galleries, including Mana Contemporary and Zhou B. She’s had an assortment of fellowships and artist residencies, including as a project curator for the A.I.R. Gallery in New York. It was there, in 2016, that she started doing drag.

“I’d just turned 21 and had just started going out,” she says, laughing, “and I noticed the drag queens always getting free drinks. I was like, ‘OK, I want free drinks.’ That’s literally why I started doing drag. Just broke in New York. But I was able to express my gender more outwardly there because I wasn’t around my parents or anybody I knew. I was able to experiment and experience my gender by myself and for the first time figure out what I liked just for me.”

Her initial drag persona was Mason Jar. But when she decided she wanted to undergo medical transition in 2018, she adopted the name Irregular Girl.

“As Irregular Girl, I don’t perform positivity as much as hope,” she says. “It’s really, really heavy to live as a person of color. And with all of this anti-trans legislation, it’s really, really difficult to wake up every day and feel the reality of living in a country that doesn’t value you, see you, respect you for what you know is your truth. It’s heavy and hard, but I’m trying my best to share the parts of myself that I hid for so long in hopes that other people will want to share that of themselves, too. . . . It’s heavy and a lot of work, but it’s what keeps that hope alive inside of me to continue to free myself and other people’s minds of what they think they know. And to give people an example—or even just a friend. Just being a friend to others is really important to me.”

To experience Irregular Girl is to revel in someone exceptional who’s exceptionally down to earth: the perfect micro-celebrity for the diffuse communities who emerge at night. 

A fan named pb tells me on Twitter: “One of the most compelling things about Irregular Girl is the way she talks about the divine light that trans people possess—how we are conduits of change. She truly embodies it, and it makes her merch feel like a rallying cry or a badge of solidarity that we are able to transform anything about ourselves and the world around us until we reach the utopia shining out over the horizon.”

Local rising techno DJ Miss Twink USA, who was one of the guests on the pilot episode of That Shit’s Trans!, describes working with Irregular Girl: “Years ago, I met Regina back in the clubs. She was doing these insane club-kid looks, and the impression she left on me was purely impeccable. Fast-forward to 2022, Regina is a household name, and her magic and craft are growing stronger and stronger. I went to Strapped in April where she pulled out a sword while performing to a new Florence & the Machine track. It made me feel possessed! Struck and transfixed by her every move and glorious storytelling. The way she invites us into the world she sees for herself is fascinating, and it makes me want to be a better artist each day. Irregular Girl is one of the most talented and powerful artists here in Chicago.”

Drag performer Sangria Whine writes: “Irregular Girl’s show Mom Jeans was my first ever show in Chicago, so to say she’s important to me is an understatement. She’s not only a talented performer but such a humble and caring individual. She always makes me feel welcomed and like I have a space in the scene. I look up to her so much, and I truly hope one day I can be at her caliber of talent.”

“At art school, I learned a lot about image-making and holding attention,” Irregular Girl says. “The performance art that I was doing at SAIC was very, very image based. There’s such an immediacy to performance art, like your body is right there, almost like there’s no metaphor. I mean, it’s all a metaphor, but you have the physicality of yourself, right there. I think that’s where my energy comes from in my performances now, because, as a trans person, I’ve had to learn to grow love and rejoice my in truth. I really value the freedom that my life gives me and the freedom that I feel when I’m onstage. I have to be 100 percent there and take my audience with me.”

Irregular Girl as Joan of Arc. Dylan Bragassa

But she doesn’t hide the ways she’s vulnerable on her path. Last summer, she was one of five Chicago trans women who shared stories with Them.about experiences sporting bulges at the beach. Recently, she appeared in Cook County Research’s PSA for a campaign called PrEPárate: PrEP for You & Me. Latinx nightlife luminaries like herself and Bimbocita share how PrEP, an HIV prevention medication, creates more opportunity for safety and comfort while enjoying nightlife. Any of these stories sound like you? Try PrEP! In 2014, a study by Kaiser Family Foundation found that gay and bisexual men accounted for 2 percent of the population but 66 percent of new HIV transmissions. Latinx people of all genders are four times as likely to get HIV as white people. On paper, it feels like numbers, but the weight of the myriad ways HIV complicates life as a queer trans Latinx person is very real—and it’s especially palpable in the community right now.

On June 7, Berlin celebrated the life of Simon Sin Miedo, a trans Latinx staple of industrial goth nightlife and BDSM scenes in both Chicago and Minneapolis. Earlier this year, they’d been diagnosed with HIV and spent months raising money on GoFundMe to cover relocation and treatment costs to manage it. When Sin Miedo passed, they were publicly drowning in needs created by a lack of social safety nets exacerbated by their HIV diagnosis, a disease whose systemic denial has caused gay genocide. Why do we tolerate a system that encourages these outcomes, especially for some people and not others? Why is that so normal? Maybe it’s a badge of honor to be irregular in a world that normalizes such cruelty.

“The goal of my drag and creativity is to uplift and inspire others to claim their own narrative,” says Irregular Girl. “The world around us is really unaccepting and hateful of trans people and people of color, and my focus is to give hope. There’s so much uncertainty about the future, and we’re living through some really fucked-up times. That is what we need right now: to recognize each other’s truths and have each other’s backs.”

But her level of visibility doesn’t come without its challenges—for instance, living up to people’s ideals of her while enduring the everyday state violence and interpersonal cruelties that come with being trans. Irregular Girl feels grounded most by her strong relationship with her family and especially her husband Oliver, who she’s been with for four years. People in the community call him “world-famous wife guy” for his widely known and wildly flawless commitment to the bit of a man completely enamored with his partner—a partner who shares many qualities with this particular man’s favorite diva, Mariah Carey. If you were married to your teen fantasy, how would you show up for her? That’s the trans narrative Oliver manifests daily.

“As someone who’s a quote-unquote public figure,” says Irregular Girl, “there’s a huge amount of stress and pressure that comes from other people. None of it is ill-intentioned, but a lot of us suffer from these neuroses where we have to be perfect and always on. My husband and family all remind me that I’m just a person, like anybody else who’s just trying their best and sharing their art. 

“Oliver has been nothing but supportive of my career. My relationship with him helped me discover more of myself. I started taking hormones around the time that I met Oliver because it was something that I was really struggling with. Oliver never pushed me or urged me. He just said, ‘If it’s something that you’re thinking about, try it.’ And that’s what he’s always reminding me: I’m really just another girl out here trying it. That’s all any of us can do.”

It’s a common story amongst trans people: if you’re curious, just try it. Try being a sculptor, a performance artist, a diva—or all three! Want to know what kinds of doors open on hormone replacement therapy or other aspects of medical transition? Try it. There’s a lot of freedom to being irregular.

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There’s a lot that makes going to shows magical besides the live music, and no one knows this better than Empty Bottle art director Bill Connors. The Illinois native never expected to be guiding the aesthetic of one of Chicago’s most beloved independent venues, but the job has proved a natural fit: Since high school, Connors has experimented with music and video projects, playing with how moments of sound and image can be combined to create new meaning. At his core, he’s always been a visual thinker, capturing the attitude or essence of an artist or event with a collage-style approach to gig posters, album covers, logos, and T-shirts. Connors is formally trained as an artist, but he prioritizes cultural ephemera—which he sees as accessible art objects—over collector-driven fine art. His signature style—something like art nouveau skateboarding in a garbage can—has appealed to acts as divergent as Post Malone and Metallica. His career hasn’t been easy or straightforward, but his work is already proving influential.

As told to Micco Caporale

I grew up in Orland Park and started attending SAIC in 2007 and graduated in 2012. In 2010, I started couch surfing until I could live in the city full-time. I really found a home in the printmaking department, and I took a lot of studio classes so I could stay in the buildings overnight and crash on a couch when I got tired.

I’m a huge fan of the Chicago Imagists—like the Hairy Who kind of stuff. A lot of that was painting, but their book stuff got me into the world of offset lithography, which led me to screen printing. That got me thinking about translating these higher-art paintings into something ephemeral, like a zine or pamphlet. Something not very precious. And from there I got interested in show posters. I can remember being at Handlebar for the first time—in, what, 2008?—and seeing Ryan Duggan’s work. He’s got a very particular hand-illustrated style with this really sharp sense of humor. Always an inspiration.

SAIC is a very conceptual school, but I’ve never felt like I had a place in the conceptual-art world. I like making for making’s sake. I always felt out of the loop with that “precious art” thing. I don’t come from a place where anyone I know owns or wants to own a bunch of expensive paintings. What I do want are things that I collected over my life that mark time, you know? And making that accessible to more than just, like, people I met in school.

My art is so eclectic. I know everybody says that, but the kind of art that I like and the kind of music that I like—I don’t know if they necessarily overlap. Like, not in a way where I’m like, “Oh, yeah, I definitely see the connection between this music and this artwork!” That’s not always my favorite moment. I really, really like when things go off-kilter.

When I was in high school, I’d share stuff online. In the LiveJournal/Blogspot days, people would chronicle every moment of their life in great detail rather than, like, a quick snapshot, so it felt like a great place to share work and get feedback from random people in a way that was natural and helpful for me. It was a great environment to get a discussion going about some drawing that I was working on with my friends who were just trying to, like, skateboard. 

I wasn’t trying to advertise, but here’s where that becomes sort of a thing. Because by the time I was 21, I was negotiating with bands and companies that were, like, in Australia. I did something for Converse right out of college because I was sharing so much work online. I’m very grateful for everything that’s come my way, but at the same time, it makes me afraid.

The algorithm has got me pegged to a degree. It’s feeding me the same kind of images and artists who are doing work in a specific way. Sometimes it ends up distracting me from what I’m working on, like having too many reference points for your own work. But it scares me too, because I’ve gotten offers from companies or whoever where they’re very excited but want to charge a very low rate. And then you counter and immediately feel that gust flow the other direction, like, “Oh well, if this guy won’t do it for 40 bucks, I’ve got 100 people on this app who will!” 

I see it a lot with companies that I know have the money, but they bank on you wanting their endorsement or to feel part of their “team” or whatever. But it’s like, I need to pay my rent. I need to pay for food. I need time to do human-being things. It’s a constant turn and burn. I don’t know how people rely solely on freelancing. Nothing but respect from me.

In 2014, I started working the door at the Empty Bottle. Most people didn’t know that I had this art career outside of work. But once I started doing more work for bands that were touring and coming through the Bottle, people started connecting me to the place, and I started getting more offers. Eventually I started doing graphic design here and there for the Bottle, and then I graduated to my current role as art director. That’s a new role, and it happened during the pandemic so we could focus more on merch and branding. 

Bill Connors created these artworks for the Empty Bottle and for Los Angeles band Cobra Man. Credit: Bill Connors

Every time we have a show—all that stuff on Instagram—it’s hand collage, which is a little bit more than I should have undertaken, but I like the way it looks, so. . . . 

I’ve always been into collage, like rooting through magazines and collecting images to use in different ways. I experimented with digital-collage stuff in high school—just poking around Photoshop and Illustrator for years. Those were rough. I learned a lot of different collage techniques in school, but those were mostly physical collages. In school, I was really into physical materials and scanners and physically printing things and then scanning the things that I physically printed. And it got into this whole process of physical, digital, physical, digital, just back and forth, you know? Which also lends itself to Xerox stuff, right? Like, the more times you photocopy something, the more blown-out it gets, and you can create these little worlds, especially adding hand drawing. 

People always ask me, like, “Oh, are you really into, like, punk artwork?” I like that kind of thing, but it’s always been kind of an afterthought to me. I just like that photocopy look in general. It feels timeless. It’ll always look like the perfect age because it can be any time.

I don’t really have a process. There are steps, sure, especially with the scanner, but I’m like the trashman. I use everything and anything. I work digital and analog. I’ll scan things, use other people’s scans, take photos, find photos, add drawn elements by hand or in the computer. What I’m most interested in is a collage that feels like a collage but doesn’t necessarily look like one, you know?

Right now I’m trying to make work for posterity. I’m not interested in “the cloud.” I’ve worked with some big people, but I don’t always post it if I’m not into it. I wish I had more time to regroup and just make something for me instead of clients. I don’t want to be depressing, but I don’t want to lie to people either. Sometimes I think it looks like I’m killing it, but I’m not. I’m really not. I’m so broke and tired. 

That’s the thing that kills me about the Internet. People think, like, “Oh, this image will get me a bunch of followers, and then with a bunch of followers, we’ll get a bunch of money.” But exposure and followers don’t translate to money.

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There’s a lot that makes going to shows magical besides the live music, and no one knows this better than Empty Bottle art director Bill Connors. The Illinois native never expected to be guiding the aesthetic of one of Chicago’s most beloved independent venues, but the job has proved a natural fit: Since high school, Connors has experimented with music and video projects, playing with how moments of sound and image can be combined to create new meaning. At his core, he’s always been a visual thinker, capturing the attitude or essence of an artist or event with a collage-style approach to gig posters, album covers, logos, and T-shirts. Connors is formally trained as an artist, but he prioritizes cultural ephemera—which he sees as accessible art objects—over collector-driven fine art. His signature style—something like art nouveau skateboarding in a garbage can—has appealed to acts as divergent as Post Malone and Metallica. His career hasn’t been easy or straightforward, but his work is already proving influential.

As told to Micco Caporale

I grew up in Orland Park and started attending SAIC in 2007 and graduated in 2012. In 2010, I started couch surfing until I could live in the city full-time. I really found a home in the printmaking department, and I took a lot of studio classes so I could stay in the buildings overnight and crash on a couch when I got tired.

I’m a huge fan of the Chicago Imagists—like the Hairy Who kind of stuff. A lot of that was painting, but their book stuff got me into the world of offset lithography, which led me to screen printing. That got me thinking about translating these higher-art paintings into something ephemeral, like a zine or pamphlet. Something not very precious. And from there I got interested in show posters. I can remember being at Handlebar for the first time—in, what, 2008?—and seeing Ryan Duggan’s work. He’s got a very particular hand-illustrated style with this really sharp sense of humor. Always an inspiration.

SAIC is a very conceptual school, but I’ve never felt like I had a place in the conceptual-art world. I like making for making’s sake. I always felt out of the loop with that “precious art” thing. I don’t come from a place where anyone I know owns or wants to own a bunch of expensive paintings. What I do want are things that I collected over my life that mark time, you know? And making that accessible to more than just, like, people I met in school.

My art is so eclectic. I know everybody says that, but the kind of art that I like and the kind of music that I like—I don’t know if they necessarily overlap. Like, not in a way where I’m like, “Oh, yeah, I definitely see the connection between this music and this artwork!” That’s not always my favorite moment. I really, really like when things go off-kilter.

When I was in high school, I’d share stuff online. In the LiveJournal/Blogspot days, people would chronicle every moment of their life in great detail rather than, like, a quick snapshot, so it felt like a great place to share work and get feedback from random people in a way that was natural and helpful for me. It was a great environment to get a discussion going about some drawing that I was working on with my friends who were just trying to, like, skateboard. 

I wasn’t trying to advertise, but here’s where that becomes sort of a thing. Because by the time I was 21, I was negotiating with bands and companies that were, like, in Australia. I did something for Converse right out of college because I was sharing so much work online. I’m very grateful for everything that’s come my way, but at the same time, it makes me afraid.

The algorithm has got me pegged to a degree. It’s feeding me the same kind of images and artists who are doing work in a specific way. Sometimes it ends up distracting me from what I’m working on, like having too many reference points for your own work. But it scares me too, because I’ve gotten offers from companies or whoever where they’re very excited but want to charge a very low rate. And then you counter and immediately feel that gust flow the other direction, like, “Oh well, if this guy won’t do it for 40 bucks, I’ve got 100 people on this app who will!” 

I see it a lot with companies that I know have the money, but they bank on you wanting their endorsement or to feel part of their “team” or whatever. But it’s like, I need to pay my rent. I need to pay for food. I need time to do human-being things. It’s a constant turn and burn. I don’t know how people rely solely on freelancing. Nothing but respect from me.

In 2014, I started working the door at the Empty Bottle. Most people didn’t know that I had this art career outside of work. But once I started doing more work for bands that were touring and coming through the Bottle, people started connecting me to the place, and I started getting more offers. Eventually I started doing graphic design here and there for the Bottle, and then I graduated to my current role as art director. That’s a new role, and it happened during the pandemic so we could focus more on merch and branding. 

Bill Connors created these artworks for the Empty Bottle and for Los Angeles band Cobra Man. Credit: Bill Connors

Every time we have a show—all that stuff on Instagram—it’s hand collage, which is a little bit more than I should have undertaken, but I like the way it looks, so. . . . 

I’ve always been into collage, like rooting through magazines and collecting images to use in different ways. I experimented with digital-collage stuff in high school—just poking around Photoshop and Illustrator for years. Those were rough. I learned a lot of different collage techniques in school, but those were mostly physical collages. In school, I was really into physical materials and scanners and physically printing things and then scanning the things that I physically printed. And it got into this whole process of physical, digital, physical, digital, just back and forth, you know? Which also lends itself to Xerox stuff, right? Like, the more times you photocopy something, the more blown-out it gets, and you can create these little worlds, especially adding hand drawing. 

People always ask me, like, “Oh, are you really into, like, punk artwork?” I like that kind of thing, but it’s always been kind of an afterthought to me. I just like that photocopy look in general. It feels timeless. It’ll always look like the perfect age because it can be any time.

I don’t really have a process. There are steps, sure, especially with the scanner, but I’m like the trashman. I use everything and anything. I work digital and analog. I’ll scan things, use other people’s scans, take photos, find photos, add drawn elements by hand or in the computer. What I’m most interested in is a collage that feels like a collage but doesn’t necessarily look like one, you know?

Right now I’m trying to make work for posterity. I’m not interested in “the cloud.” I’ve worked with some big people, but I don’t always post it if I’m not into it. I wish I had more time to regroup and just make something for me instead of clients. I don’t want to be depressing, but I don’t want to lie to people either. Sometimes I think it looks like I’m killing it, but I’m not. I’m really not. I’m so broke and tired. 

That’s the thing that kills me about the Internet. People think, like, “Oh, this image will get me a bunch of followers, and then with a bunch of followers, we’ll get a bunch of money.” But exposure and followers don’t translate to money.

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Reader senior writer Ben Joravsky riffs on the day’s stories with his celebrated humor, insight, and honesty, and interviews politicians, activists, journalists and other political know-it-alls. Presented by the Chicago Reader, the show is available by 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays at chicagoreader.com/joravsky—or wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t miss Oh, What a Week!–the Friday feature in which Ben & producer Dennis (aka, Dr. D.) review the week’s top stories. Also, bonus interviews drop on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays. 

Chicago Reader podcasts are recorded on Shure microphones. Learn more at Shure.com.

Chicago Reader senior writer Ben Joravsky discusses the day’s stories with his celebrated humor, insight, and honesty on The Ben Joravsky Show.

Ben Joravsky brings you hours of incisive political commentary each week. Support Ben’s tireless dedication to Chicago and become a Ben Head today.

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Vade Mecum translates from Latin as “go with me.” When Glenn Jones makes such an offer, anyone who appreciates a vivid musical trip shouldn’t think twice. The 68-year-old guitar and banjo player from Cambridge, Massachusetts, began working as a solo acoustic musician in the early 2000s, after spending years playing with surf-meets-experimental-rock combo Cul de Sac, coproducing and compiling folk records, and befriending and assisting the original Takoma Records guitarists, John Fahey and Robbie Basho. Like them, he composes tunes that combine folk and blues forms with devices learned from other styles, and he prioritizes the expression of emotional truths over displays of technical facility. On this latest LP, Jones uses rich sonorities derived from idiosyncratic tunings as inspirational springboards for intricate, unhurried excursions that reference places, pets, and old friends. Many of them are now gone, and Jones’s melodies persuasively evoke his sadness at having lost them as well as his joy at having known them in the first place. But some of those friends are still with us: on “Ruthie’s Farewell,” whose title nods to the old friend who gave him his first banjo when she moved away and couldn’t pack it, Jones reunites on record for the first time in three decades with fiddler Ruthie Dornfeld, who played on the debut Cul de Sac record.

Glenn Jones’s Vade Mecum is out 6/24 via Bandcamp.

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