Not only is 2020 the Year of Chicago Music, it’s also the 35th year for the nonprofit Arts & Business Council of Chicago (A&BC), which provides business expertise and training to creatives and their organizations citywide. To celebrate, the A&BC has launched the #ChiMusic35 campaign at ChiMusic35.com. It includes a public poll to determine the consensus 35 greatest moments in Chicago music history (the Reader will publish the results on July 23) and a raffle to benefit the A&BC’s work supporting creative communities struggling with the impact of COVID-19 in the city’s disinvested neighborhoods.

Another part of the campaign is this Reader collaboration: a series spotlighting important figures in Chicago music serving as #ChiMusic35 ambassadors. For this final installment, we hear from Cadien Lake James, vocalist and guitarist in prolific indie-rock band Twin Peaks. The group is part of a young garage-band explosion that came out of Chicago around 2010. Their newest release, the four-song EP Side A, consists of material they finished remotely or under socially distanced conditions after the pandemic shutdown in March; it includes contributions from Ohmme, V.V. Lightbody, Lala Lala, and Tom Reeder, and it comes out Friday, July 3.

This interview was conducted by Ayana Contreras, who’s a DJ, a host and producer at WBEZ radio, and a columnist for DownBeat magazine.

Ayana Contreras: What is your favorite Chicago musical moment?

Cadien Lake James: I love the idea that Larry Heard—who was a jazz musician growing up—in 1984, when he was 17 or 18, bought a synthesizer and a drum machine and just dived headfirst into [the house-music] world. Within a week he had made “Washing Machine” and “Can You Feel It,” very groundbreaking singles. Given the influence he ended up having on the club scene in Chicago and house music, and how integral that is to Chicago’s music community, I think that’s a cool moment.

It’s not the easiest thing to draw a correlation with Twin Peaks’ music, but it’s still very influential to me.

Larry Heard’s single “Washing Machine,” released in 1986 under the name Mr. Fingers

How so?

First of all, it’s what I listened to the most traveling on the road around the country. I got into house music, specifically Chicago house, and then discovered how integral it was to an inclusive Chicago music community. . . . I feel like Chicago notoriously had this DIY inclusive scene [when Twin Peaks], White Mystery, the Yolks, and all these bands were cutting our teeth playing shows in Chicago. We made it playing in people’s basements and raw spaces and houses.

And I don’t know if Chicago would have developed that in its garage-rock community if it wasn’t for the organization done by the Chicago house community, setting the precedent that there were spaces to be made to play music that didn’t have to be in venues, and places that were inclusive to everyone.

You kind of tiptoed around this next question without even knowing it. What do you think it is about Chicago that’s made it a place that has continually given birth to music that’s influential around the world?

Well, I mean, it’s so indebted to Black artists. And the Black music community here, whether it was blues or jazz going into rock ‘n’ roll and then the house community, it’s just been an epicenter for the arts, and there’s so many legendary musicians who came out of here. 

Maybe back in the day, with the blues record labels, there was more of an industry presence, but as we entered the 70s, 80s, 90s, there was less of the industry being in Chicago, which I think also created space for artists to collaborate and perform without the competition that you might see in an LA- or New York-based scene, where people are catering to “My big break could come from playing this show, who’s going to be there, who can help my project.”

I think Chicago has been able to just produce so much wonderful music and other art that’s current and pushing ground, which I don’t think [Twin Peaks are] a part of, but it’s still happening in Chicago.

But you could . . . it’s not too late.

Yeah, that’s right.

We’re in the middle of a great big reset.

We’re doing a lot of learning right now.  

Read the article here!

Pictured here is Papou Emmauel, Yaya Lillian and Uncle Christ (first born of the Cotsones children followed by Georgia, Chrisanthe, Dorothy and John) in 1913. These are the Greek great-grandparents of Miss Alex White & Francis Scott White.

Chris Cotsones, the oldest brother of our grandmother, Georgia Alexander. He is wearing a traditional Greek costume, called a foustanella.

Parents of Emmanuel Cotsones, which are in turn the great-great-grandparents of Miss Alex White & Francis Scott Key White. The boy is the youngest brother of our great-grandfather, who is the grandfather of Gus and Pete Cotsones, currently of Kankakee.

Great-Grandmother, Lillian Vournazou Cotsones, Great-Grandfather Emanuel Cotsones with the first Parish Council at St. Constantine and Helen. Find your Yiayia too! Photo of our family at Maria K for Easter in the late 1970s that was on display at Hellenic Museum exhibit called “Family.”

Click here: 127th Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers

From our Dad, Francis L. White: “At some point, George T. Brooks sold his company to the Armor meatpacking company of Chicago. Come to think of it my law school is part of IIT which used to be called the Armor Institute due to the Armor Family’s charitable donations (how’s that for irony?). The only anecdote I heard as a boy was that when there was a fire in the bologna smokehouse George T. Brooks, who was not a tall man, picked up the company safe and carried it out of the building. 

That smokehouse and a detached home, where my Great Aunt Cat lived (George probably lived there originally as it was right next to the smokehouse) were located on a railroad spur between Willow and 10th Streets, and I would walk by them on my way to school for 11 years. 

Parallel to the tracks was a small creek that I would play around (planting clods of dirt and grass along it’s banks) which became a raging torrent that I waded through to get to the center of town during the Great Flood of 1972. I think it was called the Quitapahilla Creek.

In George Brooks’ obit I read that he also ran a cafe, “The Keystone Cafe” which may be the structure behind him in the photograph.

I was watching The Last Dance” just now, and they were showing early clips of the NBA Draft in which Michael Jordan was drafted by the Bulls. I mentioned that Jordan was actually the third pick, and that number two was a man named Sam Bowie, who grew up in my [Lebanon, Pennsylvania] neighborhood of Willow Street (he was years younger than me, but my Dad knew his dad). He was rated higher than Mike, but an injury sidelined his career permanently. And then the clips showed him.”

Here are the photos from Salem Lutheran Church with the headstone of the Brooks family that were removed by the city of Lebanon. Buried here were the great-grandparents to George T. Brooks, James and Jane, who immigrated from Ireland to Pennsylvania in the 1770s.