Trip Report: Chicago to see George Gee!

Randy, Wally, and I headed out to Chicago to catch George Gee on a rare midwest visit. He played three times in the city over the weekend - Saturday evening at Grant Park, Sunday afternoon at Navy Pier, and Sunday night at the Willowbrook Ballroom. We only caught the outdoor shows, while Kevin caught the show at the Willowbrook.



The show at Grant Park was fun - it was a lovely night, and it's rare to have the opportunity to see a band we love at an outdoor venue. We didn't get much dancing in - you can see the dance floor was packed. We had Wally, and needed to stay near him, so we danced on the sidewalk near where we were sitting a few times. (But had to stop each time because a suspicious person kept heading towards our bag with our camera in it every time we got up, then he'd veer off course as soon as we stepped back over to protect it. Frustrating. Particularly since the bag was sitting right next to Wally.)

But it was fun nonetheless. The park was packed with dancers and non dancers. The dancers were all skill levels. We didn't see anyone dancing Balboa, though, which was odd.

This particular performance was part of a summer-long dance program in Chicago called SummerDance. I would LOVE to see Des Moines emulate the program, which involves free dancing of all sorts (Jewish to Swing) to live bands nearly every night of the week, all over the city. Of course, Chicago is about 20 times larger than Des Moines, making this undertaking a bit easier (more and more varied local bands, more dance organizations, more money in the city budget).





Sunday started with thunderstorms, but apparently George Gee made a few calls and fixed it so the weather turned beautiful by his afternoon show at Navy Pier. Randy and I were half of the people dancing there, which was a bit strange, but we had a great time. Plus, nobody trying to steal our stuff, so we could dance a bit more!




We had a chance to chat with George Gee after the show. He was very friendly and related how he was spending Father's Day apart from his 5 and a half year old, who was in Japan with his mother. He'll join them in a few weeks, but it was obvious he really missed him! He chatted with Wally for a few minutes, then agreed to this photo.

We completely didn't think about bringing the leaflet from one of our George Gee CDs to have the band sign, which makes this only about the second band we've seen that we've not had autograph their CD leaflet, which bums me out.

More pictures at Flickr