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Composer, multi-instrumentalist, educator, and conceptualist Anthony Braxton was born in Chicago on June 4, 1945, and the celebration of his 75th birthday has taken a major hit from the COVID-19 pandemic. At least nine 2020 events have been cancelled so far–the only live performance that hasn’t yet been stricken from the calendar for this year is a concert by Kobe Van Cauwenbergh’s Ghost Trance Septet that’s scheduled for Luxembourg in November. But that just makes the new Thumbscrew album, The Anthony Braxton Project, even more valuable. Everyone in the trio–guitarist Mary Halvorson, drummer and vibraphonist Tomas Fujiwara, and bassist Michael Formanek–has performed and/or studied with Braxton, so they can approach his music like insiders. To make their fifth album, they went through his archives to find rarely performed compositions that suited their instrumentation. The material includes a mostly notated piece that abstracts swinging pre-bebop jazz, an antic march that erupts into slaloming detours and then snaps back into immaculate formation, and a miniature packed with intervallic leaps so broad that you might get dizzy trying to follow them. These pieces aren’t quite like anything that Thumbscrew have played together before, but the musicians’ distinct instrumental identities and inside-out awareness of one another’s moves ensure that they still sound very much like Thumbscrew. v

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The gig poster we’re featuring this week was created for the third incarnation of the interdisciplinary festival Freedom From and Freedom To, curated by artist and teacher Cristal Sabbagh and hosted by Elastic Arts. The first and second events, held in September and December of 2019, were both single-night affairs, but the third will stretch out into two jam-packed evenings of improvisational music and dance. Previously Sabbagh had asked audience members to pick artists’ names from a bag before each performance, in order to determine who would improvise together on the spot, but this year there won’t be an in-person audience: Freedom From and Freedom To will be livestreamed via the Elastic Arts website and Twitch channel, in deference to COVID-19 concerns. A $10 donation is suggested.

Each night of Freedom From and Freedom To will consist of two 30-minute sets of improvised work. Sabbagh says she’s developed a new method to randomize the groupings of performers: “We adapted, and my eight-year-old son just picked the names out of bags for the sets today on Instagram live.” Her son had a lot of people to pair up: dancers Lorene Bouboushian, Keisha Janae, Ed Clemons, Carole McCurdy, Erin Peisert, Michael Strode, Sara Zalek, and Sabbagh herself, as well as improvising musicians Angel Bat Dawid, Johanna Brock, Olivia Harris, Ramah Malebranche, Janice Misurell-Mitchell, Luc Mosley, Ugochi Nwaogwugwu, Julian Otis, Scott Rubin, Eli Sabbagh, Jefferey Thomas, and Adam Zanolini.

The Reader continues to welcome submissions of gig posters for future concerts, be they virtual or in-person. We’d also love to keep receiving your fantasy gig poster designs.

To participate, please e-mail [email protected] with your name, contact information, and your original design or drawing (you can attach a JPG or PNG file or provide a download link). We won’t be able to publish everything we receive, but we’ll feature as many as possible. Your e-mail should include details about the real or fantasy concert and about any nonprofit, fundraiser, or action campaign that you’d like to bring to the attention of our readers.

Not everybody can make a gig poster, of course, but it’s simple and free to take action through the website of the National Independent Venue Association–click here to tell your representatives to save our homegrown music ecosystems. And anybody with a few bucks to spare can support the out-of-work staffers at Chicago’s venues–here’s our list of fundraisers. Lastly, don’t forget record stores! The Reader has published a list of local stores that will let you shop remotely.

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ARTIST: Cristal Sabbagh with design input from Natalya Sturlis and Scott Rubin
GIG: Freedom From and Freedom To, livestreamed via the Elastic Arts website and Twitch channel on Sat 8/22 and Sun 8/23 at 7 PM
MORE INFO: ffftchicago.com
FUNDRAISER TO KNOW: The Elastic Arts Resilient Expression Fund supports community performers and artists who have lost income due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Experimental indie duo Wye Oak make their commitment to reinventing their music feel like an integral part of their art: whether they’re incorporating shades of folk rock or R&B or even scraps of their earliest songs (as they did on 2016’s Tween), it always comes across like a natural progression. On their new five-track EP, No Horizon, they embrace their most avant-pop side by recording with the Grammy-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Opening track “AEIOU” ponders mankind’s complex relationship with language; it was prompted in part by the Trump administration’s attempts to manipulate language to further marginalize vulnerable populations. But rather than protest with anger or rage, Wye Oak turn confrontation into a sweet breeze of liberation: singer, guitarist, and bassist Jenn Wasner steadfastedly demands to be addressed by the name she’s given herself while the choir rhythmically circles through the alphabet’s five full-time vowels. Elsewhere, Wye Oak grapple with the impacts of technology on society: “No Place” seems to be about pandemic social distancing, but its mournful piano, icy synths, and questioning layers of vocals serve as a reminder that isolation and modern life went hand in hand long before the virus ever emerged. No Horizon uses unconventional song structures that sometimes feel better suited to a musical production or film score, but Wasner’s guitar playing and earthy vocals keep it connected to the indie realm. The EP makes its bleak, heavy subject matter sound airy, dreamy, and (no doubt partly due to all the kids involved) fresh. v

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Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.

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I’ll be the first to admit that many of the artists I’ve covered for the Secret History of Chicago Music are obscure for a reason. Some played totally uncommercial music; some were ahead of their time, and thus out of sync with what was popular; some had members who lost the plot. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out why late-70s rockers the Kind weren’t huge–all the ingredients were there. To borrow the words of guitarist and vocalist Sam Skora, they had a Beach Boys mentality, but a decade later–with a fifth of Blue Oyster Cult and the Sex Pistols, all bright and shiny with a new white shirt and tight sleeves like the Knack.

The Kind can trace their roots to the Belmont Heights area in 1975. A few years earlier, drummer Carlo Iaccino had formed the band Local 710. When that three-piece lost their guitarist, Iaccino hired Frank Jalovec, who came recommended by a local music teacher. The bassist in Local 710 then split, leaving the band in the lurch for an imminent gig, so Chris Massa learned all their tunes in two days (and ended up staying until the first version of the Kind dissolved in 1980).

In 1976, Local 710 changed their name to the Schoolboys and added keyboardist and singer Toby Rhodes. After auditioning 78 players to be their second guitarist, they hired Skora, who till then had been their sound man. The band officially became known as the Kind in late 1977 or early ’78, and shortly after lost Rhodes.

The Kind practiced on South Boulevard in Oak Park, sharing a space with legendary power-pop group Pezband. They bought a pink-painted mail truck at a local auction for $50 and started playing every gig possible: pool parties in Rolling Meadows, dances on downstate air force bases, suburban high school proms.

Skora describes each member’s influences in classic rock terms, comparing Jalovec’s glammy guitar to Mick Ronson from David Bowie and Ian Hunter’s bands, Massa’s heavy bass to John Entwistle of the Who, Iaccino’s swinging beats to Danny Seraphine of Chicago and Don Brewer of Grand Funk Railroad, and his own style to Neil Young and Jimmy Page. They got out of town as often as they could, working for a time with road manager Ed Chuman, who was also a pro wrestler and wrestling impresario. The Kind rubbed elbows with rock royalty, opening for the likes of the Raspberries, Skafish, and Off Broadway. At a Madison gig with Mitch Ryder (“Devil With a Blue Dress On”), they got a great crowd response–though Ryder, apparently trying to compliment the band, told them they were “well paced,” which left everyone scratching their heads.

Sadly, this version of the Kind properly released only one song, the catchy “She’ll Make Everything Right,” which appeared on the 1978 LP compilation WKQX Hometown Album Volume II. In 1979 the band recorded a jam session with Thin Lizzy front man Phil Lynott and touring guitarist Midge Ure (also of Ultravox), but Iaccino left that year, to be replaced by Sam Cortese. Despite label interest from the likes of Ovation, Polygram, and Bomp!, the Kind dissolved in 1980. Skora says the Bomp! contract still exists, unsigned because the band knew the end was nigh.

The story doesn’t end there, though! Jalovec asked if he could keep the Kind name and formed a new group in 1981, where he was joined by Frank Capek on guitar, Mark Gardner on bass, and eventually drummer Frank Sberno. This incarnation was much more commercial in sound, and opened for huge acts such as Duran Duran. Their self-titled debut LP, released in 1982 on their own Three-Sixty Records, had a glossy power-pop sound–not unlike the records Cheap Trick were making around then. The Kind also played ChicagoFest that year, the same day as Albert Collins, Joan Jett, and previous SHoCM subjects the Ashby Ostermann Alliance.

The Kind dropped a second album through Three-Sixty, Pain and Pleasure, the following year. On this slick LP, the band explores territory bordering on the melodic radio rock and hair metal of Enuff Z’Nuff or Loverboy. The second version of the Kind called it quits in 1985, after exhausting avenues for the distribution of their music.

But once again, the Kind saga wasn’t over. Beginning in the late 2000s, Skora assembled an archival LP of early sessions by the core late-70s four-piece, with a couple songs featuring Rhodes or Cortese. Over the course of several years, he and a few other musicians–including Massa–polished them up with newly recorded overdubs and the addition of old lead-guitar parts from live recordings. The result, entitled Volume!, came out through Skora’s Black Parrot Music label in 2018.

Jalovec played in classic-rock cover band the Legends until his untimely death in 1993–he was crushed by an escalator he was repairing at Union Station. Massa has worked with Uriah Heep, Marilyn Manson guitarist Zim Zum, and Jake Burns of Stiff Little Fingers. Cortese was a choir master in the Elk Grove community for many years, and Iaccino has settled in Elk Grove after a long stint performing in bands on the west coast–he’s collaborating again with Massa and Skora, and a few years ago he reunited Local 710.

Frank Capek, guitarist from the second, more popular version of the Kind, now plays in the classic-rock band Five Guys Named Moe. Sberno went on to teach tennis in Palm Springs, California, and Mark Gardner became the owner of venerable instrument shop Naperville Music.

Skora also continues to write, play, and produce from his current home in Perth, Australia. This fall, he says, he plans to release the Kind’s Thin Lizzy jam session (which includes a cover of the Sex Pistols’ “Pretty Vacant”) on a Black Parrot Music compilation that also features other acts from that era such as B.B. Spin and the Odd. v

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The radio version of the Secret History of Chicago Music airs on Outside the Loop on WGN Radio 720 AM, Saturdays at 6 AM with host Mike Stephen. Past shows are archived here.

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On My Soul Says Yes, the first release by the Chicago Mass Choir in more than four years and its 17th album overall, the ensemble traverses the usual traditional gospel territory. While selections such as “Excellent Is Your Name” and “Hallelujah (You Are Worthy)” have a contemporary character similar to the choir’s 2016 single, “We Give You Praise,” but as always what makes a Chicago Mass album worth the listen are the songs that shake the choral risers. On My Soul Says Yes the full-choir blowouts include the energetic title track, which combines new writing by director Percy Gray Jr. with the traditional “Say Yes to My Lord” (Dr. Judith McAllister’s arrangement of a Pentecostal church favorite) and features forceful vocalizing from Felicia Welch. On “Take Me Back,” Mario Vaughn’s warbling organ intro gives Evelyn Branch room to reflect on the salvation experience with the abandon of a veteran church wrecker. “I Remember” ends way too soon–Cassandra Giles’s electrifying singing could go on forever. For “God Is Still Alive,” a faith declaration set on hyperdrive, the mike goes to Chicago Mass CEO Dr. Feranda Williamson, whose voice has ripened over the years into a wizened evangelist’s battle cry–she’s been a stalwart member ever since the troupe began as the Ecclesiastes Community Choir in the early 70s. Chicago Mass alumnae Lemmie Battles and LaVarnga Hubbard are absent from the lead mike on My Soul Says Yes, but their mantles are assumed capably by Welch, Giles, Branch, and Patricia Clifton. These days many gospel artists strive to sound like their R&B brethren, so it’s gratifying that Chicago Mass Choir continues to work within the invigorating churchy style that makes gospel gospel. v

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Small-town girl finds adventure, fame, and love in the big city: the evergreen plot gained new color in 1937, when Jackie Ormes made history as the first Black female cartoonist with a syndicated comic strip with Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem, in which teenage Torchy Brown leaves rural Mississippi to sing and dance at the Cotton Club in New York City. Trading in a cow for train fare north and sitting in the “whites only” car to get there (18 years before Rosa Parks), Torchy was an independent, outspoken heroine who served up style with social commentary–and posed weekly as a paper doll with pinup proportions and a killer wardrobe. Like Ormes, who got her start at the Pittsburgh Courier covering boxing matches and wrote for the Chicago Defender under the androgynous moniker “Jackie” rather than her given name “Zelda,” Torchy defied expectations and broke barriers. In one strip that describes the “gentle beauty of her face,” she says, “Yes, I’m tired, Mother . . . I’m trying to find a future.”

Hailing from Poplar Bluff, Missouri, Jenn Freeman was also a small-town girl with a mission when she arrived in Chicago: “My goal was to have a dance company that would minister.” A year studying dance at Columbia College prompted a shift in the narrative. “I started discovering who I was. I realized I was queer. I came out. That did not go well,” she recalls ruefully. “My stepfather is a minister. My mom is a preacher’s wife. An exorcism was performed on me. I was prayed over. I was anointed . . . it broke my heart. I was like, ‘I’m excited to know this thing about myself, and I know this thing for certain, and I think it’s cool, and I’m excited to share.’ I don’t know why I thought that. I was raised to believe a certain thing–I learned pretty quick that wasn’t actually what I believed.”

Pulled out of college, Freeman, who had begun to dance at the age of three “at a mom-and-pop dance studio where you learn ballet, jazz, and tap,” participated in dance team at school, and danced in her church, found herself unable to dance. Six or seven years passed before she returned to school on her own. “I was trying to dance, but I couldn’t,” she says, until one day she found herself at a burlesque performance by close friend and fellow queer Black Columbia alum Jeez Loueez. When the troupe needed a replacement, Freeman found herself back on stage. “That honestly is how a lot of performers started performing burlesque ten or 12 years ago. There weren’t classes. There weren’t a ton of people doing it. It was a fringe art form. It’s more visible now. There was no resources or guidance, it was kind of like, ‘You’ve been to a show. Go out there and see what comes up, kid!'”

Though Freeman’s first foray was (in her own words) “bad,” burlesque opened a new channel to expression and identity. “There was no choreographer. I was in charge. And it gave me a way to begin processing all the trauma I experienced with my family and how that impacted how I saw myself, so I kept doing it.” On stage, Freeman began to develop an alter ego named Po’Chop, built on qualities that resisted the expectations of both her family and the form. “Within the burlesque and cabaret scene, it’s common to develop a persona, and it’s common for names to be what I consider ‘frou frou.’ But I’m not a Trixie! When I started working, there weren’t a lot of Black or even POC performers. I wanted people to know when they saw my name that this was a person of color. And, when I was 18, right before I went to college, my dance teacher sat me down and asked me what my favorite food was. At the time it was pork chops. He said, ‘Well, if you’re going to be a dancer, you’re definitely not going to be able to eat that.’ It pissed me off!”

“In burlesque, femininity is often presented in a demure, cutesy, sometimes hypersexual way. I knew after trying that on that that was not the route I wanted to go. So my persona was about bringing out the side of me that was bold, unapologetic, that was aggressive at times, that wasn’t afraid to demand attention and demand it in the way I wanted it. I think of Nina Simone: if you listen to her live [recordings], she legit tells people to sit down. I love that she wasn’t afraid to tell people how to experience her work. Po’Chop was a way for me to explore that. At least then, I considered Jenn Freeman to be an introvert, shy, didn’t want to take up space, shrunk. Creating Po’Chop was a way to give myself room to expand.”

“For a long time I felt I was two,” she says. “About four years ago it became important to me to acknowledge both sides of myself onstage. I needed to leave room for Po’Chop to be seen as vulnerable and not just this superhero-badass-person-thing.”

For the remainder of 2020, as Rebuild Foundation dance resident, Freeman is releasing Litany, a series of five films created in collaboration with filmmaker Jordan Phelps and developed from material built over years with Chicago Dancemakers Forum, Links Hall, and Rebuild’s archives. “It essentially means a prayer,” says Freeman. “Each one of the five scenes is a prayer in its own way–looking at anger, looking at Black women’s legacies, looking at femininity, gender, rage, and healing. The first film, Torchy’s Togs, was developed as part of my CDF lab year as People’s Church of the G.H.E.T.T.O. (Greatest History Ever Told to Our People), about three women [Ormes, Beauty Turner, and Elder Lucy Smith], who lived and worked in Bronzeville and made a huge impact on the neighborhood. And the film is also named after Audre Lorde’s poem, ‘A Litany for Survival.’“

“I was drawn to Torchy’s Togs”–the cutout paper doll Ormes published alongside her Torchy in Heartbeats comic strips starting in 1950–“because we love pinup. Pinup is a huge part of burlesque culture, but I had never seen a person of color as a pinup character. Torchy was a brown paper doll, super stylish and colorful but also very smart and cutting. [Ormes] would often use the comics to make commentary on women’s rights, on the environment, on voting. I don’t know if a lot of people knew what she was doing, but they loved it.”

Premiering August 19, Torchy’s Togs also develops the motif of brown paper in Freeman’s life and work–as both surface for text to be written upon and material for textile art. “In the video I take some of the dresses Jackie Ormes drew and blew them up and recreated them on brown paper,” she says. “That is another practice of mine, trying to retrace ancestors, retrace their handwriting. I’ve always been big on covering my walls with paper clippings, magazines that inspired me. That’s how I began my process, just clipping stuff, mapping out flowcharts and bubble charts on paper, and then, for some reason, it became super important to me it was on brown paper. I used to have a coworker who was really into origami, and she taught me how to make paper flowers, so I started folding paper flowers. During that time I was going through divorce, so it was a meditation. Wherever I was, I would sit and fold flowers.” The flowers became part of a performance, and in People’s Church of the G.H.E.T.T.O., Freeman covered the walls of Blanc Gallery with 6,251 open brown paper bags.

“I’m drawn to handwriting,” says Freeman. “It’s a dying art form. I don’t think kids are learning cursive anymore. Tracing is a way to preserve handwriting–I don’t consider it drawing. I consider it tracing Jackie Ormes’s stroke, a way for me to connect to her and her process. During quarantine, I started retracing [science fiction author] Octavia Butler’s journals. That’s how she manifested a lot of her life, by writing out, ‘So be it! See to it!’ I started tracing it to connect with her, as well as meditate to soothe my anxiety. You can find the images of her journals online. I would blow them up. Sewing was a big thing for me growing up, so I even cross-stitched her journal.”

The other four films, filmed on sites in Bronzeville and at the Rebuild Foundation, draw from the history of Bronzeville, the pages of Ebony magazine, Freeman’s life, and the life of her grandfather, the first Black sheriff in Poplar Bluff (“His parents were sharecroppers. He had a lot of rage and a lot of Christianity in him”). They are scheduled for release on dates that combine personal and historical significance–including the anniversaries of Lorde’s passing, Freeman’s grandfather’s birthday, and Elder Lucy Smith’s birthday. Together, they combine images of the church and the cabaret, country and city, feminine and masculine, contradictions that live in beauty in Freeman. v

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Frank Maugeri knows something about picking himself up after a shutdown. When Redmoon Theatre, the spectacle-oriented company where Maugeri worked for 23 years (the last few as producing artistic director) folded in 2015 in the wake of the failure of the Great Chicago Fire Festival, Maugeri took some time to regroup (including a stint developing education and community engagement programs with Chicago Children’s Theatre). Then in 2017, Maugeri unveiled his new company, Cabinet of Curiosity, which, in Maugeri’s words, focuses on “this desire to investigate the spiritual, the sacred, and the supernatural through objects, devices, actors, and songs.”

Cabinet of Curiosity had just opened The Farewell Fables: satellites, songs, and cereal, a piece conceived and directed by Maugeri about four “galactic gods” who decide to pack it in and leave humanity to its own devices, when the COVID-19 shutdown hit. Normally, the company would have been spending the months after their indoor show developing an outdoor ritual piece, as with Reflections on Fire: Extinguishing Old Ideas, created in collaboration with the Blu Rhythm Collective (a group of Chicago artists and dancers who focus on contemporary issues facing the city, particularly its younger residents) and performed last July at the Exelon Observatory.

The company is still collaborating on a ritual performance to be performed outdoors later this year, but where and when they can do so under the current state and city COVID regulations remains unclear. However, in the meantime, you can head out to the Little Red Schoolhouse Nature Center in suburban Willow Springs to receive Messages of Hope–an ambulatory installation of over 60 dioramas created by artists from 15 Chicago neighborhoods and five additional states, all reflecting in some way on the concept of “hope.”

Maugeri says the impetus for the installation, which is up through September 30, came immediately out of the isolation and uncertainty unleashed by the pandemic. He and the Cabinet board “came up with the proposal to create an opportunity where people can make shrines and altars and create, that gives people a chance to be self-expressive, and we’ll put them in a venue that’s outdoors and obviously safe. So for people who are locked in or feel like ‘I can’t go see theater,’ let’s give them tiny theaters that they can go visit that have their own little narrative and their own experience.”

But there was also an earlier personal inspiration for Maugeri.

“I was in Mexico City even before Redmoon and I was studying ritual and local art and one of the things I saw that blew my mind were these old cigar boxes strapped to telephone poles full of detritus and oddity. I saw them all over Mexico City and I loved them. They were sort of filthy and strange and didn’t make any sense. They were like working-class Joseph Cornell boxes. When I finally pursued a local about what they were, the local said ‘Oh, the artists make those, so the businessmen are reminded to look up.'”

For those unable to attend Messages of Hope in person, the company offers virtual access to two live tours, guided by Maugeri and a Little Red Schoolhouse representative, on August 19 and September 16, 10 AM. Little Red Schoolhouse Nature Center, 9800 Willow Springs Rd, Willow Springs. The center is open 8 AM-4 PM daily, though exhibit buildings remain closed. Bathrooms on-site. For tour reservations (tickets $10, benefiting the center) email [email protected].

Hoofing into a new Hall

After many years in Edgewater, Joel Hall Dancers & Center are on the move into a new place, called, simply and appropriately enough, the Hall, located at 2951 W. Montrose. They’re celebrating with the “Fiercetival for Our Future,” a fund-raiser with limited and socially distanced attendance (no more than 35), on Saturday, August 15, 5-7 PM. An anonymous foundation put up the seed money for the new space, and the company now seeks to raise $200,000 for the build-out.

Founded by dancer, choreographer, and teacher Hall and Joseph Ehrenberg in 1974 as Chicago City Theatre Company, Joel Hall Dancers have been through moves in the past. They lost an earlier studio space after a 1993 fire, and increased financial costs precipitated the move out of their North Clark Street venue. What remains behind is a street sign, Joel Hall Way, at Clark and Thorndale, honoring the 71-year-old founder, who stepped down as artistic director in 2018 in favor of then-assistant artistic director, Jacqueline Sinclair, who has been with the company for three decades. Hall is only the second openly gay Black man to have a Chicago street named after him (the first being the late house music pioneer Frankie Knuckles). His style of “urban jazz dance” has influenced generations of students and artists. Hall, who was raised in the Cabrini-Green housing projects, has always emphasized diversity and accessibility in the company’s work, which Sinclair promises will continue with the Hall as “a space conducive to artistic development, incubation, and training.”

Achieving “Transcendence”

Collaboraction made a commitment to focusing on social change in their work a few years ago, and also moved to a performance space at Kennedy-King College in Englewood last year. And though they, like almost every other company in town, remain in shutdown mode, they’ve gone ahead and announced their 24th season, built around the theme of “Transcendence.” The season kicks off on Saturday, August 22, 7 PM, with a streaming presentationt of the company’s The Light, a youth theater festival featuring ten short videos created by Antwon Funches, Aria Mallare, Chistina Aguilar, Collaboraction Peacemaker Ensemble, Daniella Mauleon, Graffiti Rhythms Dance, Smith, JJ Binion, June, and Teh’Ray Hale Jr. The videos were shot in “an isolated studio,” and the streaming presentation will be followed by a discussion.

The pieces in The Light all reflect in some way on issues of racism and social justice. After the livestreamed event, they will be available through Collaboraction’s subscription digital platform, the Together Network. Future offerings will include digital versions of the company’s annual Peacebook Festival (October 2 and 3) and the youth-created All I Want for Chicago Is . . ., premiering in December. v

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It’s like the mail carrier ringing the bell, then handing over a package. The day becomes all Reese’s and peace.

That was my feeling Tuesday when I downloaded the new free app, Outdoor Illinois.

I’ve been waiting nearly a decade, through three governors and three Illinois Department of Natural Resources directors, for Illinois to come screaming into the 21st Century with an app.

The app was developed by the Illinois Conservation Foundation. Yes, there’s a “Donate” button on every page I checked and a lead advertisement.

But it’s a start.

“We’re so excited to be able to offer sportsmen and women an additional – and accessible – outlet to fill their needs when it comes to outdoor recreation, hunting and fishing,” ICF executive director Crystal Curfman said in the initial release. “The new app offers outdoor enthusiasts a wealth of information and opportunities, from setting reminders for hunting and fishing licenses to providing contact information for Illinois’ Conservation Police Officers.”

Like any other app, it’s available for both iPhone and Android systems on the App Store and Google Play.

Dale Bowman

My foremost question was whether it would make it easy to have an electronic license.

Or as Mike Clifford put it, “My question is whether having a fishing license on our phone is good enough?”

IDNR deputy director Rachel Torbert emailed back on Wednesday, “Just heard back from OLE [Office of Law Enforcement]. Electronic copy is now allowed for licenses.”

“I’ve been playing with it today, it’s a great resource all in one place,” Christian Howe posted. “No more fumbling around websites, etc.

I love that idea and have a few other ideas, too.

The app is divided into four main categories: Hunting, fishing, boating and camping.

“The initial intent of the app was to help remind hunters, anglers, boaters and campers when applications and permits were due as well as license expiration and renewal reminders,” Curfman emailed.

It’s more than that.

The ICF noted the app allows users to purchase hunting and fishing licenses, find places to hunt and fish, view fishing records, register new boats and renew boat registration, access a list of Illinois state parks, learn more about camping and campsite and shelter reservations, set reminders for upcoming season and renewal dates.

Dale Bowman

I just joined Illinois Recreational Access Program and was hoping I could get my IRAP stuff through the app.

“You must still go through paper copies and the IDNR website,” Curfman replied. “The app does not include IRAP.”

The requirement in the IDNR I find the biggest pain in the ass is the use of windshield cards. Somehow, I was hoping the app might have a way to avoid that hassle.

Alas, Curfman explained,” The app does not have a function to replace windshield cards.”

A few clicks I had trouble accessing, but could be operator error or some of the electronic issues since the derecho on Monday.

“Additionally, in order to set reminders you must create an account to received the notifications,” Curfman noted.

I set up an account within seconds.

All in all, I found it fairly easy to use, even for a Luddite-leaning sort like myself.

That’s not by accident as Curfman explained when I asked what was most difficult in developing the app, “The most difficult part was making sure sure we weren’t missing any major features that make the app easy to use. For example, including a back button to get back to the app once you tap on a link outside of the app as well as making sure all aspects were user friendly to all outdoorsmen and women.”

As to tweaks, she would like to see, she emailed, “[Today] we will already have an updated version of the app that includes a search button within the app. Say someone is looking for something directly related to mallards, they can search `mallard’ and the app will populate all the places the term is located in the app.

“Additionally, we’ve received overwhelming feedback on additional features people would like to see added such as more information on boating, being able to directly contact CPOs within the app, and, as you mentioned earlier, IRAP, and having the ability to use the app as to show your license electronically. Sky is the limit, but we wanted to start simple and build and add as needed.”

It’s long overdue, but Outdoor Illinois is a good start in aiming upward.

Dale Bowman

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