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an afternoon with Phantom Note Productions

Last Friday, we hung out with Sam Edgin, founder of Phantom Note Productions. The idea was just to get to know him a little better, hear how things were going, and get enough info to write a good feature for his website. We drove around for a couple hours as he showed us the venues he books for, and as we chatted, we realized that what Phantom Note is up to is way way cooler than we’d thought.

Sam, a Chicago native, has been part of the local music scene since high school. He’s spent the last several years working for different production companies around the city, booking for well-known venues including Subterranean and Beat Kitchen. Though enjoying his job, he became increasingly frustrated with how the industry interacted with bands. In this city, a band is bookable if they draw a good crowd, not if they’re a good band. From a venue’s perspective, this makes perfect sense, but for new bands, it’s a very difficult thing to navigate. You have to get your foot in the door somehow, but if you take a show and don’t draw the right amount of people, you hurt your chances of getting booked again. And if you’re just starting out, you most likely won’t draw enough people.

Sam also plays in a band, and knows exactly how that feels. It is this tension that led him to start his own company, Phantom Note Productions, and to found it on a love of music and Chicago, not numbers. Using his connections, Sam landed a few nights he books weekly at clubs around the city, including the Volcano Room at the Bottom Lounge, and the legendary Fireside Bowl.

Volcano Room

Fireside Bowl

He has also turned a neighborhood dive bar, El Mamey into Chicago’s newest venue. El Mamey is a block from Humboldt Park and is as inauspicious as could be. With no stage and filled with kitschy decorations and Christmas lights, it seems an unlikely place to host bands most nights of the week. It works, though, and largely due to Sam.

El Mamey

The vision behind Phantom Note is to put together a bill of good bands every night. It’s to draw together the Chicago community based on their love of music and desire to support each other, instead of focusing on which bands bring the biggest crowds. It’s a mindset that goes back to the pre-internet days, where you had to see a band live to know if you liked them, and bought their CD if you did. Of course, those days are long gone, but what Pandora and Spotify can’t offer is the sense of community that is shared by a crowd at a live show.

This isn’t the kind of thing that just happens, though, which brings us to the second value held by Sam and Phantom Note. He is a huge believer in doing it yourself. And it’s not easy. Because of the commitment to helping the local scene, Phantom Note does not generate a lot of profit, meaning Sam also works two separate jobs. “I’m a big believer in doing it yourself,” says Sam, “but I’m coming to realize how important it is to do things together.” And then we realized that Sam doesn’t just want to start a production company. He’s not trying to just book shows. He wants to change the face of music in Chicago. Because Phantom Note has the power to books shows, it’s the perfect tool to give bands a foot in the door and make them a part of a Chicago family. And even though the shows are at dive bars with 100 person caps, the point is to build something together. On any given night, Sam wants people to show up at one of his venues just to see who’s playing, even if they’ve never heard of them. That is truly supporting local music.

If you’re part of a band in Chicago, you’re invited to be a part of this. If you’re not in a band, you’re still invited. Phantom Note wants to do it together. And if you question how committed they really are, we happened to a go to a show at El Mamey after the interview. Sam was the doorman. He spent most of Friday night sitting at a table by the door, checking IDs. No one other than the bands knew that he’d put all of it together. So how’s that for doing it yourself? Sam’s all over that.

Now it’s up to us to support our local shows, support Phantom Note online, and get in touch with them to book a show. But become a part of what’s going on and let’s do it together.

.Dan Hawthorne

 *all photography by Kimmy from Birchblue Photography (click)

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