As we take the time to say thanks for the multitude of blessings in our lives this Thanksgiving, let’s give a shout out to the music-makers that make said lives more interesting, inviting and illuminating while also aiding to avoid those unbearably intolerable times that sometimes come along for the ride. You can best thank these purveyors of the music arts by supporting performances with as much verve and gusto as you can muster.
As faithful readers of this newspaper surely know by now, this week Illinois Times comes out on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, rather than the usual Thursday edition. Not only does that allow all those hard-working IT folks an opportunity to enjoy the holiday, we here at Now Playing world headquarters get a leg up on all the action happening the extra busy night before Thanksgiving. Now a mere prince, once upon a time New Year’s Eve held the proud title of partying king, while every so often St. Patrick’s Day would push a red nose and green hat into the lead. But for decades now, Thanksgiving Eve has been the clear leader in the biggest drinking night of the year contest – so much so that the day has acquired notorious nicknames such as “Blackout Wednesday” and “Drinksgiving.”
What does this have to do with a column about live music you might well ask? I would likely answer that where the bars go, so go the bands, musicians and listeners of it all. If you need to see the proof in the Thanksgiving Eve pudding, our normally sleepy Wednesday night listings burgeoned to nearly 25 scheduled performances for this week. With Thanksgiving, of course, being on Thursday (thanks partly to the wily wisdom and presidential powers of our very own Honest Abe), the day’s listings are as empty as your after-meal turkey platter. But through the rest of the weekend, our musical plate is as stuffed as your Thanksgiving turkey was before it got gobbled up.
There’s a pattern to all this as Wednesday you go all-out going out, and Thursday you rest, recover and recharge while Friday, Saturday and Sunday are wide open to enjoy your favorite live music delights. Now that I’ve jibber-jabbered my way through most of this space I think I will just keep blabbing and ask that you look up online or look at in print the entire entertainment entities available to you and yours merely by attending the venue of your choice.
I do hope readers who are aware of the infamous Black Friday shopping mania on the day after Thanksgiving will also take the time and care to support Small Business Saturday on, you guessed it, the Saturday after Black Friday, Thanksgiving and Blackout Wednesday. An online search informed me SBS was started by American Express in 2010 and then became officially co-sponsored by a U.S. government organization known as the Small Business Administration in 2011.
I mention this because, as a working musician myself, I can assure you that nearly all the venues hosting live music around here are truly small businesses, usually with a single proprietor and occasionally a group of owners. So give thanks to them by going to their place to see live music and support locally owned small business bars as much as possible on Saturday and every day after that you are genuinely able to do so within reason.
Well, I hope that was as much fun for you as it was for me. Please enjoy your holiday time and we will see you in December for more music happenings. Gobble on, from Turkey Tom.
This article appears in November 27-December 3, 2025.
