By Matt Martin
Lonie Walker is tenacious. For decades, she has survived the often tumultuous Chicago music, theater, and performance scenes. Not content with just surviving, though, she flourished. Starting out performing at the original Gaslight Club, Ms. Walker parlayed her performance and business skills into creating a Chicago music destination: the legendary Underground Wonder Bar.
Ms. Walker has released five studio albums, two live albums, a solo album, an album to accompany her prose/poetry/dance musical Isadora, I Love You, and countless other ditties on bar napkins. She has been written up by the The Chicago Sun-Times, The Chicago Tribune and recently The New York Times.
No longer a drinker, Ms. Walker and I shared a six-pack of decaf green tea while discussing her illustrious career, her creative process and, among other things, the best place to pick up a vegan quesadilla in Chicago.
MM: Owning a night club, performing four nights a week, raising children (both your own and others’), I have to ask, ‘Is that a ‘S’ on your T-shirt? Are you, in fact, Super Woman?’
LW: It’s a ‘W’ for Wonder Woman! During those early original wonder years, I worked and played 6 nights a week for seven years! I released a cassette (yes…a cassette!), five CDs, completed and performed my prose/poetry/dance musical numerous times, produced my sons’ Taggart Transcontinental CD, opened and closed my restaurant (within the confines of the Underground Wonder Bar), and birthed and raised another baby in addition to my first three. I also volunteered weekly at my kids’ public school, assistant coached soccer four times a week, ran three miles three times a week, practiced yoga daily, then for fun took on a one hundred year old building rehab, traveled the world extensively in very different kinds of adventures (including a five-day Inca trail hike). Recently, I produced and acted in The Vagina Monologues and will do so again in February 2014. I reopened the restaurant. The list goes on, but we may run out of space! Oh yeah, my T-shirt would also have BBACB for Big Bad Ass Company Band — because my band is beyond super human. They’re maniacs, like me.
MM: It’s funny because a lot of young artists often complain about creative block. They ask, How do I sit down and produce art when I have to work this stupid day job? Not only were you smart enough to make your day job part of your art, but you created something new every night. Talk to me about the way you ended up making your dream your art, and your art your commerce.
LW: Like many other artists, it was born of necessity! There literally was no room, no house, NO PLACE in Chicago for me to express myself musically. I also love the challenge! I’m a daredevil, gotta do it NOW, don’t want to miss something, plunge ahead. This may sound silly to some people, but I actually made up my mind when I was seventeen years old, living on my own in Chicago, having left home, with permission, at sixteen, to find fame and fortune. I was inspired after watching the movie Cabaret. I decided then that, if I didn’t make it to the notoriety and stature I was determined to get to by the time I was 35, I would open a cabaret. I was three months short of 35-years-old when I first opened Underground Wonder Bar. It started out cabaret, but quickly morphed into this fusion, risk taking, in your face, top notch musicians’ hang. The tiny room was barely a hindrance for twenty-one years, until they tore it down. Then and now, I have been blessed with many, many, many beautiful souls who have helped out in so many ways. I gotta tell you, I sure ain’t doin’ this alone. Countless friends and family members and people I didn’t even know came to the rescue when it came time to re-locate. What an ordeal. Nothing short of a miracle, really.
(Editor’s Note: After 21 years at 10 e. Walton, the Underground Wonder Bar’s building was sold, demolished and turned into a retail outlet. After two years of being a nomad, occupying space in two different locations, the Wonder Bar finally found a new home at 710 N Clark, where they will stay, hopefully, for another 21 years.)
Okay…back to writer’s block… I have been chewing on and stopping and starting and quitting working on a new musical work for 10 years. ARGGH! My first one took over nine years to complete. Writers: JUST KEEP DOING IT, the magic WILL happen.
MM: Quincy Jones recently said at his Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame Induction ceremony, “The only true indigenous American art form is Blues and Jazz.” Yet, Blues and Jazz suffer commercially, at least in record sales. They fare better in Chicago live music venues. How have you and the Underground Wonder Bar survived as a purveyor of “the only true indigenous art form?”
LW: We fit perfectly into that quote. We also go one step further in our dedication and expression of that true art form: we don’t censor the artists genre that they wish to perform/explore/create. We are eclectic. We cross lines, we blend lines. For example, my genre is Rock/Soul/Funk/Jazz/Blues. Where else but Underground Wonder Bar?
MM: Each Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday you go out and play at the Wonder Bar, sing and play the piano like you are twenty years old – what’s the secret?
LW: I AM ENERGY! The MUSIC IS ENERGY! The AUDIENCE GIVES ENERGY! There is no place I’d rather be than creating LIVE!!!! Plus, I may be a robot, because I don’t need sleep.
MM: The club is in River North. You have played Paris, Berlin, Prague, numerous clubs in Germany and Austria, New York City, all over the lower forty-eight, Peru, among others. What’s your favorite venue?
LW: Probably, Quasimodo in Berlin, the oldest jazz club in Germany. It was a real high playing where so many famous musicians had played. The eerie and exquisite feeling that I was playing the same piano! I also loved playing The Bitter End in Greenwich Village, for the same reason, although no acoustic piano. Here in Chicago, hands down, my favorite is The Park West, where I held my CD release party in 2001. Another dream come true! Honestly though? There’s no place like home. I mean it. I love UWB.
MM: If you didn’t play the piano, which musical instrument do you wish you played and why?
LW: I’ve been playing piano since I was five, so it’s not really an option for me it’s an “ism.” It just IS. However, I did play some guitar and can still play a little. I love cello, too. I also play a helluva tambourine!
MM: Best movie you saw in the last three months?
LW: I watch so many movies that my brain goes mush on titles. I did like Cloud Atlas a lot! I thought it was brave and quirky and I understood it perfectly!
MM: Which game show would Lonie Walker dominate?
LW: Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? Ha ha. Funny because I am a grateful high school dropout. Coloring outside the lines!
MM: Best live music venue other than the Wonder Bar?
LW: In Chicago? Andy’s.
MM: Best vegan restaurant in Chicago and why?
LW: The New Wonder Cafe……it’s all the food I created and love! It’s an array of global, wonderfully spiced food and you don’t know you’re eating healthy.
MM: Have you ever farted on stage? Just kidding. What’s the craziest thing that has happened to you on stage?
LW: Recently, I cut a pretty good size chunk of my pinky off while chopping eggplant. I bled for an hour, fixed myself, and two hours later, completed the dish. Pinky bandaged, of course, I went to play that night for four-and-a-half hours. Much to my dismay, I saw drops of blood all over the white keys on both the acoustic and the electric piano. I think I was still in shock, too, because I usually introduce my trombone player, “Please welcome a young man with a long horn!” But out of my mouth I heard myself saying, “Please welcome a long man with a young horn!” The whole band laughed and laughed, giddy and goofy until finally Maurice (the trombone player) could get his mouth closed to blow his horn.
MM: You’re famous for saying on stage, “This is my dream people, and you’re all in it.” Where does the dream take you next?
LW: Yeah, the same year I opened UWB, in 1989, I wrote a song called ‘Dreamin’ and, guess what folks? I’m still dreamin’ and don’t plan on waking up any time soon! You know, this is the hardest question of all. I have a dream band, a dream family, complete with me as a very active Nana, of course, a dream girlfriend, a dream house. Okay, the dream takes me next…to finish my musical, travel more, get more video footage of myself and my band, more recognition for my son’s band, open during the day for lunch and brunch, book music, and book more readings in the early hours with “Come Alive After 5”, and have more plays and live music in the Wonder Lab. Talk to me in a year — because I’m sure the list will get longer! Lastly, as always, in a year, I hope there will be Peace, Love and Wonder.
MM: Thanks, Lonie! See ya at the Wonder Bar!
For all things Underground Wonderbar, schedules of music, and of course, Lonie Walker, click here and here.
MATT MARTIN is a writer, actor, and producer, a graduate of the Second City Conservatory program in Chicago, owns a bachelors and is working on a MFA in Fiction Writing from Columbia College Chicago. Matt is the Interviews Editor for Hypertext Magazine. Has been published in Hair Trigger, Trilling, Mad Licks, and Fictionary. Matt also writes a sports blog for Chicago Now, and would love to be able to make a living from doing something related to the arts, but until then he’ll work toward collecting a pension from the city in 25 years.
