hi friends

back in the day there where auditions by the city for a summer troubadour program. they actually called it the jane byrne troubadours. the auditions that i attended where held at "the body politic theater" on lincoln avenue. i remember the place was packed with every kind of musician street artist you could imagine. hundreds auditioned but only 50 where picked. i walked out on the stage for my audition in a great old pair of oshkoshbgosh overhauls that i purchased from wieboldts on milwaukee and paulina. i had my loverly 1970 yamaha twelve string guitar round my neck, which my mom bought me from "kagan and gaines" a great music store from the old music dealers row on south wabash ave. i decided to sing the beatles song "rocky raccoon" and i guess that did the trick and i was one of the lucky 50.

so the city sent us all a zerox copy of a song called "we've got it all in chicago" and asked us all to learn it and show up for a group rehearsal at city hall. so we all show up in the council chambers and you have this group of unruly musicians trying to put together this song and make sense of it. whoever was leading the rehearsal did not even know the song. as we where going through it, it was obvious i had worked on it and someone noticed i knew it and before i knew what happened i was at the front leading the song.

so for the grand unfurling of the chicago troubadours they had us all report to the old water tower building and sing the song. what this is all boiling down to is that there was a picture of this in either the suntimes or tribune with me at the head of the pack with my yamaha twelve string singing away " we've got it all in chicago". so this was the summer of 1981, if anyone knows how to find a photo like that or has the capability please be so kind to share it. peace, rich



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/25/2014 09:51AM by richard j. romanowski.