Goodbye Heartland Cafe

Getting ready to say goodbye to a staple in the Chicago music, art, and even the political culture on the far northeast side of the city. Heartland Café has been a staple in Chicago culture over 30 years and on Monday December 31st it will be closing its doors. Located in the Rogers Park community, known as the home of Loyola University’s main campus, many major political officials, regional as well as national artists not to mention one hell of a Sunday brunch the Heartland Café was truly at the heart of the Midwest largest city.

When I was managing rock bands and hip-hop artists, I did a lot of shows around the Heartland Café but never actually at the performance venue. Nonetheless if it’s one thing I could always count on was that the Heartland Café would have a very interesting show, and crowd we could promote to on anyone are there live concert nights.

This Chicago native can’t help but notice the trend of losing significant staples in our local art and entertainment community what comes to mind is the closing of the Double Door which happened earlier in 2018 another recent potential loss was the fundraiser for survival that the Chicago Reader newspaper, which is one of the more nationally-known free news outlets based in the Midwest. Night clubs come and go because that’s just the nature of that industry. The trends of nightlife culture changes from generation to generation but live entertainment is the reason why groups such as The Rolling Stones, artists like Paul McCartney, and major contemporary recording artist like Jay-Z still command hundreds and thousands of attendees to performances as well as millions of views from live streams or videos posted online. There’s nothing like live entertainment.

Chicago will be losing another one of our notable facilities for local entertainers to get there shot in front of family, friends, and the potential to create grassroots following.

Below is a message from the Heartland Café from there newsletter.