Ben Hollis used to do just about anything to make ends meet: cab driving, bartending, a little singing. He was stretched thin, sure, but for a musician, that seems ideal. Hollis, however, was singing as a telegram.
“It was fun,” says Hollis, 49. “Gotta chance to ham it up and sing, get paid for it.”
And it makes sense: Hollis standing on a stoop, tuning to a whistle. Though a receding hairline and crow’s-feet show his age, his Capraesque ease seems from the time of telegrams. Now, as he lopes through midlife, his to-do list is as long as it was in his 20s, and it includes playing music.
In 2003 alone, he finished recording his album, “Live Your Life,” hosted “Ben Around Town” for WYCC-Ch. 20, and shot everything from wedding videos to an enrollment tape for Oakton Community College with his company, Ben Hollis Worldwide.
Though the videos help pay the bills, TV has helped Hollis channel his inner goof. His first show, “Wild Chicago” (which Hollis hosted 1989-92 on WTTW-Ch. 11), was a safari through the city’s urban jungle. It made a splash, winning Emmys, as did its spinoff, “Ben Loves Chicago” (WPWR-Ch. 50). In “Ben Around Town,” he continues the original’s freewheeling romps.
Now, Hollis is playing music at bars and Borders. He fell back into singing after performing for friend Tim Tobias, producer for Chicago’s Beachhaus Music.
“He brought a guitar over and started playing. I said, `Ben, these are really good,'” Tobias recalls. “I think the lyrics spoke to me . . . there’s a wry sense of irony or humor in them.”
On top of everything else, Hollis has started a documentary on Leslie “Hutch” Hutchinson, a famed cabaret singer notorious for his sexual extravagance. Finding another way to live his rock dreams, albeit vicariously, Hollis says the swing-era singer’s excess appealed to him.
“[Hutch] lived this rock star life at that time, the ’20s and ’30s and all, the same kind of life I fancied wanting myself when I was in my 20s. [He’s] sort of like an alter ego in a wild way.”
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Ben Hollis plays the Heartland Cafe, 7000 N. Glenwood Ave., at 9 p.m. Friday. $7; 773-465-8005 or visit www.benhollis.com.
