Since Monday’s announcement that Pitchfork Music Festival will not be returning to Chicago as it has done every July for 19 years, the news has rattled the local music scene. While some lament the community it’s leaving behind, and Chicago-bred acts lose a huge opportunity for exposure on a large stage, local club owners and bookers are also contending with the fact that their partnerships with the homegrown festival — netting a lucrative aftershows market — will also be a thing of the past.
“Pitchfork aftershows were a highlight of our summer calendar and their absence will be felt, especially in a month that is always tougher anyway,” Dan Apodaca, senior talent buyer for two popular aftershow venues, Lincoln Hall and Schubas, told the Sun-Times on Tuesday, adding, “Summer fest-type booking can be a double-edged sword — more fan demand, but also more competition. So it was always helpful for us to have a festival like Pitchfork lay the groundwork for cool artists to be in town. It’s certainly a bigger task for us to do so ourselves.”
Since its fourth year in 2009, Pitchfork Festival had worked with local venues to continue the party long after the last act has stepped off the main stage at Union Park. In the earliest days, aftershows were held at nearby Bottom Lounge, but in the years since have expanded to a number of small independent clubs like Metro, Thalia Hall, Sleeping Village, Cobra Lounge, Empty Bottle and The Hideout, among others, bringing in good revenue and plenty of excitement. Like when Questlove did an aftershow at Sleeping Village after The Roots played in 2022, or Kim Gordon at Thalia Hall in 2021, or Kurt Vile at Subterranean in 2010. The list goes on and on.
“[It’s] a loss for small business, for small independent venues, but also a loss of nights since generally those [shows] would sell out,” says Metro/Smartbar/Gman Tavern founder and owner Joe Shanahan, calling it a “sad day” when Pitchfork Media owner Condé Nast broke the news. (The Sun-Times has reached out to Condé Nast for comment.)
“It’s really a feeling of loss. I felt the same way when Riot Fest was being moved to the suburbs … it’s a loss for this city to lose a cultural gathering,” Shanahan adds. “And it’s a missed opportunity for some of these artists and management companies and agents and then the music fan. … There’s joy in the mechanics of working with a festival, and Metro is going to miss that.”
Both Shanahan and Apodaca personally attended the festival for many years and both fondly recall the year Wilco played in 2015, in particular — “that was like church,” Shanahan says. It was Apodaca’s first time at the event, having just moved to the city, calling it one of the many examples that “will hold a place in my heart as the setting for so many memories over the years.”