When Pops on Chicago started bubbling into music lovers’ conversations last fall, it was usually followed by the question, “Is that related to Pops for Champagne?”
One look at this funky Ukrainian Village tavern and it’s pretty clear that it is no cousin of the upscale jazz and champagne lounge in Lincoln Park. But it has been producing a lot of fizz.
The year-old, two-room bar doesn’t send out mailings, doesn’t advertise in music publications and isn’t exactly in a high-traffic music area of town. It has, however, been able to book one of the most respected figures in the growing cool country genre not once, not twice, but three times now (No. 3 is next weekend, April 18, 19 and 20), causing many a FitzGerald’s and Schubas regular to scratch his or her head and ask, “Where’s Pops on Chicago and why is Billy Joe Shaver playing there?”
“My dad’s a very charismatic guy. He could charm a rattlesnake,” explained Pops manager Tom Burton, whose sister, Bonnie Biddulph, owns the place and named it after their father. “He met Billy Joe through a guy named Vince who is an accountant for my sister’s other bar. And so he offered him a deal to play, and he took it.
“It gets packed around here when Billy comes to town. He’s doing some great stuff right now. He’s a true poet.”
Until recently, Shaver was probably best known as a songwriter for artists such as Waylon Jennings, for whom he penned many of the songs on “Honky Tonk Heroes.” But the ’90s have seen a renewed interest in Shaver the performer (and the outlaw singer movement in general), allowing him to re-release his 1973, Kris Kristofferson-produced “Old Five and Dimers Like Me,” as well as the fine new “Highway of Life,” last year.
He says he likes the place because “it’s like a lot of joints I used to hang out in and the people are a mixture of all kinds.”
While Shaver played a spectacular show with a full band at FitzGerald’s, in Berwyn, last summer, his last two shows at Pops found him playing quieter acoustic sets accompanied only by his son Eddy on guitar.
“It had gotten to where it was a little hard to make it with a whole band, so it’s just me and him,” Shaver said in a recent phone interview from his home in Corpus Christi, Texas. “We’ll be playing whatever they wanna hear. Most of them will he hollering stuff out anyway. And then we’ll do a bunch of new stuff too.”
But Burton warns aspiring performers not to be scared away by this occasional star showcase. He needs and is actively looking for bands to fill his 150-capacity room.
“(Bands) can come out here and play at any time,” he announced the night after a film crew finished shooting scenes from “Hellcab” in the bar. “If you walk through that door and I’m in a half-way decent mood and you want to play, I’ll turn this stuff (motioning to to the sound system) on.
“You come in and bring a bunch of instruments or you just tell me `I can play,’ and I’ll hand you a guitar. Those are house instruments,” he said, pointing to an electric bass, a mandolin and a row of hanging guitars that includes an acoustic and an electric Gibson Epiphone. “On Wednesdays and Thursdays, it’s open mike. On Friday and Saturdays, it’s anyone I can book.”
If you think your band is too bad, think again. Burton says his artily decorated ’70s psychedelic room has seen the worst of them.
“Listen, I had a band in here that was so bad. They had three people sitting in the audience,” he recalled while smoking cigarettes at a tall table in the bar on a recent night. “I looked at the bartender when they started playing and I said `I’ll bet you $3 those people at the table have to be their sisters.’ And so I asked them, `By any chance are you all their sisters?’ and they said, `Yeah.’ “
If his pleas in this column don’t get him the bands he’s looking for, Burton says he and his sister have a fascinating booking plan up their sleeves.
“Well, my sister’s in Nashville right now trying to start this club down there,” he said. “We’re gonna have music go between Nashville and Chicago and vice versa. We’re planning on buying a bus and it’s gonna say, `This bus is going to Chicago if you can play and want to go, get on.’ And its gonna kind of change when it gets to Chicago. It’s gonna say `This bus is going to Nashville if you can play and wanna play, get on,’ because there’s so much great music in both places and to get a flow would be a hell of a mixture for this place.
“I’m hoping it can start around June. I mean you can come here and hear alternative on a Friday night and then the next night see backwoods Joe, country fiddle players.”
But until then, Burton is going to try to keep Pops popping on a day-to-day level.
“Basically, I’m just trying to keep the doors open and eat a sandwich once in a while,” he wryly confessed. “It’s a struggle. In fact, right now I’m probably out of Miller Lite and Miller Genuine Draft.”
The facts
Pops on Chicago: Billy Joe Shaver, 9 p.m. April 18, 19 and 20. 2053 W. Chicago Ave. $15. 312-633-0828.
