Empty Bottle celebrates its 33 & 1/3 anniversary and its place in Chicago’s live music community

When Empty Bottle opened in 1992, the venue quickly earned a reputation as a “cat-ridden hole-in-the-wall bar.” While some things have stayed the same (there’s still cheap drinks and a house cat, Peg, who has filled the gap of the late OG Radley), by now the Bottle has become more than a hole-in-the-wall. It’s become a huge launching pad for future stars and other live music venues in the city.

It’s where Lady Gaga, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Strokes and The White Stripes cut their teeth; Jack White explained as much when he returned for a very special one-off date in December 2022. It’s where people have met and gotten married. It’s where chili cook-offs, craft and gear sales and proms (like the one Lost Girls Vintage hosted in 2023) have added to the nearly daily entertainment at the intimate 400-cap room. Pitchfork has hailed the West Town institution “the Last Great Indie Rock Dive Bar Standing” and Rolling Stone listed it as one of the “Best Clubs in America.”

This week, the Bottle celebrates all those past and future spins for its apropos 33 & 1/3 anniversary (the speed that full-length albums are played) with a slate of 11 show dates that display the breadth of musicians who have graced its stage. In addition to The Hoyle Brothers (Oct. 31 and Nov. 7), the lineup includes Osees and Melkbelly (late show Oct. 31), Chicago's Teklife collective (Nov. 1), Whitney (Nov. 2), Facs (Nov. 3), Vivian Girls (Nov. 8), Deeper (Nov. 10) and a special record release party on Nov. 1 for “The Bottle Tapes: Selections from the Empty Bottle Jazz & Improvised Music Series, 1996-2005.”

“This is an opportunity for us to actually put a stick in the ground and say we're celebrating this moment from this period on and drawing some attention to the fact that we're extremely proud of what we do. … The fact that in this world that we live in, there's a place that celebrates community, that celebrates music, that has tried to be as unpretentious and welcoming to a community for over 33 and 1/3 years, it’s something that I'm so incredibly proud of,” said Empty Bottle owner Bruce Finkelman during a recent conversation. “I'm lucky and so blessed to be able to feel how important the Bottle is to so many people out there. I can forget it because this is something that's been so inherently part of my life for so long.”

As co-founder and managing partner at entertainment conglomerate 16” on Center along with Craig Golden, Finkelman’s aptitude has also led to the success of SPACE in Evanston, Thalia Hall in Pilsen and Salt Shed in West Town, among other spots, providing additional music platforms and revitalizing historic properties into modern spaces.

From pipe dream to launching pad

But back in 1992, with less than $1,000 in his bank account, the Chicago native opened the original club location near Western Avenue and Walton Street. (The landlord grumbled after the first show, and the Bottle quickly moved to its longtime home at Western Avenue and Cortez Street.) Opening Empty Bottle was a pipe dream that came to Finkelman while he was a college student at the University of Missouri and worked shifts at the notable Blue Note in nearby Columbia. Over time, he has carried the venue through an economic depression and the pandemic, which effectively shut down live music for many months. Today, he has help from Bottle’s managing partner Matt Ciarleglio and talent buyer Molly Mobley as well as longtime Empty Bottle Presents director Brent Heyl.

While this is not the first anniversary Empty Bottle is celebrating in such a notable way — for the 25th in 2017, there was another series of shows as well as the release of the oral history book “The Empty Bottle Chicago: 21+ Years of Music / Friendly / Dancing,” from Curbside Splendor Publishing — the 33 & 1/3 fete is one of the most significant in its timeline.

Empty Bottle may be just one of Chicago’s 250 music venues (according to data from the city), but it’s also been a huge launching pad for a handful of other important live music spots like the aforementioned SPACE, Thalia Hall and Salt Shed.

This month, it was reported that Salt Shed is looking to soon expand into neighboring territory for an outdoor venue. Finkelman noted the idea is “still in exploration phase,” adding, “Things at the Salt Shed have gone better than we ever could have expected. If you had told me that within three years, we would have been able to lease up that whole space and would have been able to build on that dream of having it be this complex where there were shops, food, games … I would have thought you not well.”

The team is not done yet, either, he said, and is continually eyeing additional prospects. “At this juncture, we’re looking at how we can maximize what we're doing and looking if there's other opportunities to continue to raise the bar as far as culture in the city that we love so much.”

All of the projects carry the same mission statement that Empty Bottle was founded on: “Building neighborhood places we like with the hopes that other people like them, too,” said Finkelman. As well, all carry the torch for independent venues. The Bottle, Thalia Hall and Salt Shed are all part of CIVL, the Chicago Independent Venue League, a nonprofit created by a group of local music venue owners, including Finkelman, in 2018 “in response to the proposed Lincoln Yards development, which threatened to introduce multiple Live Nation-owned venues which would be partially subsidized by Chicago taxpayers,” according to the official website. During the pandemic, the organization also became a lifeline with critical funding for venues at risk of shuttering.

“I think culture has always been something that [city administrators] bring up. And I think culture is always something that they want to see happen. But it's very difficult to gain the ear of legislature and of government to let them know that, look, we're a pretty important part, and you need to put some understanding about the things that we're trying to do,” said Finkelman about some of the hurdles that have come up for independent venues in the current landscape like bureaucratic red tape and lack of support. “This is why CIVL was created to recognize how much we do for the city, from tourism to restaurants to hotels to economic rejuvenation.”

A new report released this month by the National Independent Venue Association, “The First Economic Research Study of the Independent Live Sector,” showed that Illinois’ indie spaces have contributed $3.9 billion in total economic input for the state, producing more than 25,000 jobs and $1.3 billion in wages.

Supporting local music

For Finkelman, the bottom line always comes back to one important component: the community.

“Community can't go away. We can’t lose that sense of community, and that base of community has been what the Empty Bottle was based around. We welcome creative people,” he shared, noting it all starts with supporting local bands. “Chicago incubates its music. This city gives its artists a chance to try their stuff out, to work on who they are, to grow and change and become whatever artists they are after they cocoon,” he added. “We rally around our homegrown heroes.”

One of the bands that have benefited from the support is indie rockers Whitney who have played the Bottle many times and return for the 33 & 1/3 celebration.

“The Bottle and their sister venues have employed such a long list of our friends and peers that it’s almost comical. And on top of that all of the community-oriented events and fundraisers they’ve held have just been huge throughout the turbulence of the last handful of years. We will always jump at the chance to work with these people and we’re truly psyched to help celebrate a Bottle 33⅓,” the band said in a statement to the Sun-Times.

For Finkelman, it’s imperative Chicago venues continue to provide this local support in the midst of the expansion in the city’s live sector.

“It really is two-pronged. It’s helping the artists grow in a professional ability, but also to introduce their music to fans who, financially, sometimes aren't able to spend that cover charge. And we can still get that artist paid,” he said. Empty Bottle has long been a harbinger of this ethos. To this day, the club still runs a Free Monday series for anyone to see local bands.

These guiding principles still excite Finkelman, 33 & 1/3 years later.

“I'm one of the luckiest people in the world. I walked into a club in college and I never walked out,” he said. “And to be able to tell other people what this wonderful world of live music is about is really so wonderful.”