40 Years of Smartbar (Resident Advisor)

The building holds a special, uncanny energy in its walls, the kind forged only by the passage of time. Over the years, smartbar has hosted everyone from Jeff Mills and Thomas Bangalter to Ben UFO and SHERELLE, while upstairs, the 1,100-capacity Metro has been equally important for rock music, welcoming iconic bands like Sonic Youth and The Smashing Pumpkins. Sonic Youth even recorded an early live album inside the original smartbar, which was located on the building’s fourth floor. (It now houses both venues’ administrative offices.)

For smartbar and Metro founder and owner Joe Shanahan, it was never about being in the live music business. It was about records and having a place to share them with his service industry peers. His relationship with DJing goes as far back as his grammar school days on the South Side of Chicago, where he collected records and played them in the garage for his friends, neighbours and family.

“I always had a good collection of records, mostly 7-inch singles that I could afford with my paper route money,” he said. “For 99 cents, you got two songs, and sometimes the A and B-sides were just as good. I amassed about 100 7-inches, spanning labels like Stax, Motown, Chess Records, Cadet and Wand, many of which were based in Chicago. That’s where my love of music comes from—records. It wasn’t seeing a live band that sparked my interest in this business. It was the dance parties I hosted in my garage.”

In his late teens, Shanahan bought two turntables and a Numark mixer. He was working as a bartender and waiter at the time, and he would invite groups of people who also worked late nights to his live-in loft, where his sets would start at about 4 AM. (“We were afterhours before we ever really knew what afterhours clubs were,” he said, laughing.)

“I found myself playing the early roots of what would eventually become house music, mixing the best of disco from the late ’70s and early ’80s,” he added. “The Warehouse, where they played similar music, served as a guiding influence, as did Frankie Knuckles and a DJ named Noah Boudreau from La Mere Vipere, who played punk music.”

Joe Shanahan behind the decks. Right: Scenes from the original smartbar on the 4th floor in the 1980s.

As Shanahan’s loft parties became a regular thing, he found a way to formalise his hobby by leasing a space above a music hall on N. Clark Street called Stages. Before long, his “record parties” found a permanent home there. He renamed the venue after a passage in John Kennedy Toole’s 1980 novel A Confederacy Of Dunces, when two characters decide to leave a venue for a better one:

“Someone turn on that record again.”
“Dear, dear Lena.”
“Where is my coat?”
“Let’s go to a smart bar.”

After coming up with the name, Shanahan needed a logo. He took inspiration from the invoices of the laundromat where he cleaned his work uniform. “The ticket they gave me was this little image of these two women, one looking towards the future and one looking towards the past, at least that’s the way I looked at it,” he said. “And that’s where smartbar lives. We look at smartbar as a club, a dance culture community center that looks to the future, always moving forward, but regulating and honouring history and the past. So that’s why you could hear a house track from 20 years ago alongside something current.”

Not long after smartbar launched, Shanahan’s creative reign at 3730 N. Clark expanded to the entire building. He renamed Stages to Cabaret Metro—or just Metro, as it’s now known—which continues to host all kinds of live performances. According to one interview, Shanahan estimates he’s seen at least 8,000 concerts from the venue’s stage-right balcony. And sometime in the late ’80s, smartbar also changed, moving down into the building’s basement. Today, its subterranean dwelling serves as a metaphor for the “underground” focus of its programming, exploring the deepest and most foundational elements of house, techno, club, jungle, drum & bass, electro, breakbeat, new wave, disco or footwork on any given night.

With all that musical variety, there’s a strong emphasis on supporting locals at smartbar. The club’s residency programme is world-renowned, and the bookings focus on putting the best DJs in Chicago on an equal footing with international headliners. “We need to take care of the folks in our own backyard, period,” smartbar’s current musical director, Severin Delabar, said. “There’s so many great artists who’ve come from here who’ve had to move away at various points in their careers, because they weren’t being supported like they should [have been].”

Chicago has a long lineage of excellent dance music DJs, and smartbar’s residents are among the most knowledgeable in the world—DJ Heather, Michael Serafini, Justin Aulis Long and Ariel Zetina are some of many examples. One unsung hero who deserves a mention is Peter Lewicki, who was a regular DJ at Stages during its formative years. According to Serafini, his style was revolutionary, influencing people like Frankie Knuckles and Lil’ Louis.

“He was mixing disco tracks with non-disco tracks and playing soundtracks and movies over instrumental pieces and doing things that were different back in the day that other people were not doing,” Serafini said.

Derrick Carter, perhaps smartbar’s most famous resident, recounted his earliest days at Metro, which began around 1990 with a warm-up slot for UK artist Adamski. Around this time, Carter was co-hosting a college radio programme called Streetbeat with his friend Mark Farina at Northwestern University. There, he was introduced to Michael Santer, who wanted to throw a party called Metro Rave inspired by the UK rave scene.

“I wasn’t really familiar with Metro because I had literally just turned 21 and I wasn’t much of a concert or show guy,” Carter said. “I didn’t go to concerts that much or see bands or anything. I just wasn’t aware of it. These were those days where you had to be 21 with several forms of ID as an African-American to go out in Chicago, so I didn’t bother trying a lot of times. I think that was my first introduction to the building. And also, November 1990—this was one of the first-ever rave things in the city.”

DJ Heather recalls being with smartbar through many different eras and configurations of design. “Seeing it when it had a huge record room in that side room that’s now become more of a lounge area, that was one of the original booths,” she said. “It was also back in the corner behind the bar. There was also a DJ booth on the other side where the small tables are now. It used to be running along the wall on that side but in a different place.”

Speaking fondly of her long-standing relationship with the club, Heather has grown with the space: “I’ve had residences there since, I want to say different incarnations of residencies since ’97 and ’98,” she said. “I was playing some nights primarily focusing on hip-hop and soul and funk and stuff. And then I would gradually plug into different events, and then I think my first official residency might have been starting around 2000. So I think I’m on my fourth one now, which is incredible. Even if I wasn’t in an official capacity for a couple of years, I still felt like I was part of the kind of what was in the water for the club. I really appreciate that. But I also feel like I’m not really stuck in a particular era. I feel like I am able to shift a little bit depending on the night but still be true to what my sound is, and that authenticity that comes with that.”

According to Serafini, initially smartbar was much more casual than it is today. You wouldn’t need to do any promo to get people to come to certain nights or see out-of-town DJs. They would filter down from Metro or simply come to hang out and hear local DJs play.

“Everybody who worked there was like family,” he said. “You would play pool or maybe dance. Some nights could be house or hip-hop or punk rock, depending on who they had playing music. Over the years it’s transformed into something bigger than that, but it’s still in a basement club. It hasn’t changed a lot when it comes to the attitude of the space.”

In nightlife today, many clubs can feel like imposing environments, with an emphasis on bottle service, prohibitively expensive door and bar prices and insensitive or aggressive staff. By contrast, smartbar makes a point of treating everyone with respect. Its strong values and principles of inclusivity provide attendees with a level of safety and assurance that can be hard to find in other mainstream spaces.

“It makes people feel comfortable being explicit and deliberate,” said assistant talent buyer Alejandero Zerah. “The first thing they see when they walk down those stairs is our laminated policy on the wall, telling you that you’re safe here. You can be yourself here, you can dance here.”

Ariel Zetina, who became a resident in 2018 and now hosts a monthly residency called Diamond Formation, explained how smartbar’s socially minded policies created positive change in the way people interact with the club. She used the introduction of gender-neutral bathrooms as an example, a decision that was made largely because of Sunday gay party Queen!, as well as events thrown by Zetina and former resident Eris Drew, like the long-running Hugo Ball party. Eventually, it became a necessity: “When these big institutions make these big rules, it affects the culture,” she said. “And I think, I think that more people will follow suit (in the future to come) and I have in fact seen more people follow suit.”

Cofounded by Michael Serafini, Garrett David, Derrick Carter and Frankie Knuckles, Queen! has been a pillar of Chicago’s LGBTQIA+ community for 11 years. Knuckles stayed as a resident up until his death in 2014. The party recently commemorated its anniversary with an outdoor event on the festival grounds of Ravinia in Highland Park, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

“Queen started when Garrett and I were doing [another Sunday party called] Dollar Disco as a regular thing with Kid Color,” Serafini said. Kid Color eventually moved away, and around the same time, the long-running Monday party Boom Boom Room, where Serafini also had a residency, was shutting down. The lack of Monday and Sunday parties felt like an opportunity to Serafini, who approached Shanahan and former music director Nate Seider to propose a gay, Sunday-night party at smartbar. “I can remember many times [at the beginning] being asked ‘where is everybody?'” Serafini said. “‘Are we still going to be able to do this tonight?’ And me being stressed out because people wouldn’t be coming in.”

While Queen! is largely a gay night, Serafini was also quick to emphasise that, like all other parties at smartbar, everyone is welcome. “Queen! was always an open party too, just like the [other] gay parties were,” he said. “Where it wasn’t just white people, and it wasn’t just white DJs. When doing Queen!, we wanted to make sure that it represented where the gay underground party came from.”

Senior resident Justin Aulis Long described smartbar as a “beacon of hope.” Mentored by Traxx, Long has been DJing raves and parties since he was a teenager. He used to attend EBM and industrial nights at another legendary Chicago institution, Medusa’s, as well as many punk shows at Metro in the early ’90s. He champions a fiercely raw, esoteric and ecstatic approach to DJing that makes him a beloved resident.

“I was going to the Metro to all-ages shows to see Naked Raygun, Murphy’s Law, Circle Jerks, all these bands,” he said. “Who would have thought the 15-year-old skate punk music nerd would one day be selecting records on that stage and be the resident of the basement? Coming from a punk background, I came into this music because I was an outcast, I was a misfit. I wasn’t good at sports, I was great on a skateboard, but that was what I had. We come to these things to find our community where we’re accepted.”

He added: “When rave culture started in the late ’80s, it was underground, and what we see now, what is considered rave culture all these years later, is something very different from the beginning. Everything evolves and changes over time, and mutates, and maybe it gets consumed by mass culture. That’s why we have these places. smartbar still has those traits of the traditions of what this scene was about—the very bare bones—and never lost its shadow. It was always aware of what it was. And Joe Shanahan has always been a music-and-community-first guy, and has never changed that focus through all these years.”

In the end, what really sets Metro and smartbar apart is the unwavering dedication of their staff. Carter told me how genuinely supportive everyone was behind the scenes. Their ability to handle every night with expertise and meticulous care is a huge part of what makes nights there so special.

smartbar manager Joe Brandt is one of these characters. Brandt’s experienced smartbar through multiple angles, including as a promoter and attendee. He expressed gratitude for the way the staff create a safe and comfortable environment for guests, recognising the security coordinators, Skunk and Three, as the on-the-ground glue that keeps everything running smoothly.

Brandt also emphasised the way the history and culture of US dance music has been integrated into the smartbar experience—it’s a source of immense pride. “For my part, I’m just eternally grateful to have seen so many talented artists grace our square little dance floor over the years,” he said. “It’s part chosen home, part refuge, part local dive with really big speakers, and that’s what folks love about it.”

“I love all my European friends and artists dearly,” he added, “but ensuring that a cultural education component—house & techno were created in the Midwest by the queer community and communities of colour, period—is a part of the smartbar experience is one that I’m extremely proud of. As we move forward, I can only hope that younger generations discovering and getting excited about the music will be equally enthused about its rich history and want to participate in it for what the community can do for others.”