Shannon Ward has business cards, finally.
It has taken a very long time and the cards will tell you that she is a musician and singer of various genres, among them “folk/rock,” “Irish traditional,” and “Americana,” and is available to do so in various places, such as “senior homes,” “private parties” and “restaurants and bars.” And so, there she was, one late February Saturday night, playing her guitar and singing in the crowded bar of a wonderful Beverly restaurant named Ken’s on Western with people sitting and standing, drinking and dancing.
In the adjoining dining room, also jammed, people could hear the music as they drank and ate dinner and listened. Some of these people were Ward’s friends. Debbie and Dennis Furlong, Katie and Jack Hughes, and Kathy Hession. All three of the women had known Ward since high school at Mother McCauley High School, class of 1990.
Also there was Ward’s companion of nearly five years. Rob Kennedy is a bearded, lively and worldly man, a longtime local and ever-busy plumber.
“When we first started dating, when he was courting me, he was in the crowd wherever I performed,” she says. “Now, not so often, and that’s OK. We are in this for keeps, ready to enjoy life’s back nine together.”
Ward is a talented singer and guitarist, a charming and exciting performer.
“I love music and love what I do,” she says.
She does not aspire to stardom. She is not looking to be famous or rich. She is satisfied and creatively rewarded doing what she does, comfortable in her South Side realm. She’s part of a vanishing breed who perform apart from the spotlight’s glare. I remember when these people were more common: Judy Roberts a glorious five-nights-a-week fixture in the lobby of the Hotel Inter-Continental; Bob Djahanguiri having live performers in his Yvette, Toulouse and Yvette Wintergarden restaurants; and Buddy Charles behind the piano at the Drake Hotel’s Coq D’Or, who once explained to me the appeal of hearing music in saloons, telling me, “What makes it work is that people are inherently eager for intimacy.”
These sorts of performers (and owners) began to vanish some time ago, and COVID has erased more, so consider yourself lucky if you still have such an oasis and such a performer. They are still out there.
It may seem to some members of the cultural elite that such environments are inappropriate for experiencing art. Nonsense. This city has a rich and lengthy tradition of restaurants and saloons catering to most of our entertainment and cultural needs. It can be traced to early settler Marc Beaubien, who would often enliven his Sauganash Inn with fine fiddle-playing and balladeering in the 1830s.
In the 1940s, New Yorker writer A.J. Liebling observed, “A thing about Chicago that impressed me from the hour I got there was the saloon. New York bars operate on the principle that you want a drink or you wouldn’t be there. … Chicago bars assume that nobody likes liquor, and that to induce the customers to purchase even a minute quantity, they have to provide a show.”
Ward tells me that she has loved music since childhood, the youngest of five kids growing up in Oak Lawn, “singing songs on the porch to my family, having them pay me with tree leaves in place of money.” At McCauley, she participated in theater and after graduating went to work at the Chicago Board of Trade. A boyfriend at the time bought her a guitar and she began taking group classes at the Old Town School of Folk Music. She formed a band called the 45s.
“I suppose there was some thought of us going really professional, heading to Nashville, hitting the road,” she says. “But I just didn’t have that drive.”
The guitar went into a closet. She married and had two children and settled into family life. As her kids got older (daughter Drew is now 20 and a student at Western Michigan University, 17-year-old son Roman attends Brother Rice High School), and the marriage ended, she found herself drawn back to music.
In 2015, she joined with a couple of longtime friends to form a band (called WEL, for the first initials of their last names). They performed here and there.
“One night my bandmates were both busy and they convinced me to take the gig we already had booked, and play alone,” she says. “I did, reluctantly, but it went really well and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I can do this.’”
And so she began playing solo and over the last decade has found steady work at places such as Ridge Country Club, street festivals, Fox’s, Franklins Public House in Palos Heights, farmer’s markets and Krapil’s in Worth. She appears once a month at Ken’s (next on May 25; more at www.kensonwestern.com), which is a great restaurant and tavern, in business for more than 50 welcoming years.
“Ken’s is the Mecca for South Side characters who still can cocktail with the best of them,” says Mike Houilhan, writer, filmmaker and area booster. “Ken was the uncle of my old pal and childhood friend, the one and only Jackie Casto, who owned the joint for many years. He died a few years back but his spirit lives on in the booths and bar stools, where stories are told and re-told again over scrumptious feasts amidst the clinking of glasses, laughter, music and the occasional tear shed for the memory of many friends. I haven’t been lucky enough to hear Shannon Ward yet, but if she plays at Ken’s she must be pure class.”
That she is, and busy too. In addition to her working as a professional caretaker, she plays as often as possible. She does not have a web site, relying on her Facebook page to keep her increasing crowd of fans up to date.
Taking a break at her Ken’s performance, she spent some time talking and laughing with her former classmates, grabbing a bite to eat with Kennedy. Some strangers came up to her table to offer praise. Some of them asked for one of her new cards.
“When did you get business cards?” asked one of them.
Ward smiled, hugged Kennedy and got back to the lovely business of playing and singing.
rkogan@chicagotribune.com
