Evanston’s music scene is about to get a lot more soulful as the city moves forward with plans to open a new jazz club downtown at 1716 Sherman Avenue this June.
“Local Note,” as club Owner Kurt Schauer described it to the Pioneer Press, is an 800-square-foot intimate space where “45 to 50 people can just go in and really get a good connection with the performers.”
A former musician himself, Schauer said he wanted the club to feel like a hybrid of 20s and 30s-era jazz mixed with a 50s and 60s-era influence. With only a small surface area to work with, Local Note aims to cultivate a laid-back, sophisticated yet approachable atmosphere.
The goal is to create something different, Schauer said, not a “speakeasy like everyone’s used to,” but also “not too contemporary either.” Evanston is already home to well-populated music venues like SPACE, but Schauer envisioned a venue exclusively devoted to the genre.
“We wanna have this thing have an elegant feel to it, but [we] want it to be approachable and accessible to people. I don’t want to scare people off by saying, ‘Oh man, that’s a high class place, we can’t go in there.’ We want to give everybody the same type of feeling and the same type of service and experience,” he added.
Schauer said the idea for a live jazz club had been in the works for a couple years, but it took a while to find the right venue. 1716 Sherman Avenue, formerly Skylight Vintage, an antique store, seemed like it could be a contender, but Schauer wasn’t sure if the front entrance would match the aesthetic vibe he wanted to emulate. When the landlord suggested flipping the entrance so the main door was located through a back alley, Schauer was sold.
“There’s not a lot of property in Evanston for what we’re looking to do,” he said. “There were restaurant spaces that were available, but we’re not interested in doing that whole kitchen scene.”
While food isn’t currently on the menu, Local Note plans to have a signature cocktail list of 10 to 12 drinks, either the jazz club’s take on an old-school classic, or something “completely new,” Schauer said.
Local Note also hopes to partner with breweries in the area to offer some of their own selections and build out new business relationships in Evanston.
“I talk a lot about community, right? The community of Evanston, the community of performers, the business community, we want to be a part of all that,” Schauer said. “We really want to help uplift and collaborate with those people, that’s really important to us. And as our name suggests, we want to at least start off spotlighting local and regional talent and then spread out from there.”
Schauer said he’s been collaborating with Fulton Street Collective Operations Manager Chris Anderson to establish a weekly and monthly performance schedule that will allow listeners to get a little taste of everything. Anderson, who’s also a musician, formerly managed Green Mill Jazz Club in Uptown, one of the oldest and most distinguished jazz clubs in Chicago.
“That’s the great thing about jazz, there’s so many different sub genres, you got your acid jazz, you got your singers and your guitar players…New Orleans Style, San Francisco, New York,” Schauer said. “You have all these different styles to choose from and really keep this place interesting and not stale.”
Local Note plans on being open Thursday to Saturday, 5 p.m. to 1 a.m., Sunday, 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. and Tuesday to Wednesday 5 p.m. to midnight, varying by demand. Local Note plans to be closed on Mondays.
Councilmembers voted unanimously at their Feb. 23 City Council meeting to adopt an ordinance for Local Note’s special use permit to operate as a performance entertainment venue.
Ald. Bobby Burns, 5th, championed Schauer on his efforts to improve Evanston’s nightlife options, adding that he thought a new music space was a “great idea” for the city.
“I’m personally excited about this,” Burns said.
Ald. Juan Geracaris, 9th, said Schauer, who himself is a 9th Ward resident, reached out to him with the idea to open up a jazz club more than a year ago, and he was thrilled about the prospect of it finally coming to fruition.
“I’m really looking forward to having a place downtown that’s open past 10 o’clock. It’s very important, so [I’m] excited to have this come forward,” Geracaris said.
Schauer praised both Geracaris and Ald. Clare Kelly, 1st, for their continued support of his business and their guidance throughout the process of obtaining the right documentation and business permits in the lead up to receiving City Council approval.
“At the very beginning there’s a lot of moral support to kind of keep this going and navigate this whole thing and Alderperson Kelly, it’s in her Ward, so she really threw in her support,” Schauer said at the Feb. 23 meeting.
“We did our due diligence and we can control what we can control and I think it’s gonna be a success, so we’re happy to do it,” Schauer added.
But for Schauer, Local Note is a dream that’s been a long time coming.
“You go through your whole life, and you see other people doing stuff or taking risks, whatever that may be… and it was that thing of, like, why not me? I’m seeing everybody else do stuff like that. So why not? Why not me?” Schauer remarked.
“I don’t know why, but I was in that point of life where I was just like, ‘All right, let’s just do it’.”
Local Note aims to open its doors to the Evanston community on June 12. Plans call for some of the following performers to take the stage in the first month: Chris Greene Quartet, Bobby Broom Trio, Gabriel Wade Quartet, Quentin Coaxum Quartet, Scott Burns Quartet, Clark Summers Trio.
