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More than 100 acts have graced Bookclub’s stage since it hosted its first publicly ticketed show on January 9. But the story of the newly renovated music venue in the former Elbo Room is as much about community building and D.I.Y. hustle as it is about sound and spectacle.
“The dream is that this eventually becomes a one-stop shop for artists,” says co-owner Cam Stacey (BBA ’18), an electronic artist, producer, and graduate of Loyola University Chicago’s Quinlan School of Business. “That’s a place to play live, but also to broadcast, record, and get your music produced.”
Months after opening, Bookclub is already becoming a buzzing nerve center for Chicago’s underground music community. While staying true to the artist friendly spirit of its predecessor—a venue known for hosting big-name acts like Cage the Elephant and the Smashing Pumpkins—Bookclub is remaking the space for a new generation of music listeners. With a powerful new sound system, two full-service bars, and plans for live punk, hip hop, pop, and laptop music five days a week, the venue is earning the praise of area performers.
“For local bands, in particular, this is a really nice way for people that were playing basement shows, D.I.Y. spaces, apartment house shows, to have a step up,” says Tate Meyer, a rhythm guitarist for the Chicago-based post-rock band Clowder, which played at Bookclub in late February.
Up from the shadows
The idea for Bookclub took shape during the “hot-vax” summer of June 2021 when Stacey and musical collaborator Kevante “K.O.” Weakley, who met at St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland, were quietly planning a show at KIP Studios in Logan Square.
They enticed one of their friends, Fraxiom, to make their live debut at the show. The popular electronic artist and producer had blown up during the pandemic, with tens of millions of streams on Spotify, and the event was slated to be a coming-out party for cooped-up music fans desperate to be out in the world again.
Then came the gut punch. Just four days before the show, KIP Studios got slapped with a cease-and-desist order. Fortunately, Stacey and Weakley had another location in mind: the Crowd Theater, a former Lakeview comedy club where Stacey had close connections, thanks to his friendship with members of Loyola Improv Club teams who had performed in the space before it closed during the pandemic.
Recalling a Loyola house party where he was deejaying, Stacey says, “the improv people were, like, this guy knows how to press buttons and make sounds. You think he could run sound for a comedy show? Let’s ask.’” They did, and Stacey started working as a sound engineer and playing live music at improv and sketch shows at the theater.
The relationship proved valuable. Days before the event, Stacey and Weakley approached the building’s landlord about the possibility of hosting the show in the vacant space. He agreed to a 30-day lease, and Bookclub was born.
Why ‘Bookclub’?
The name is a nod to the lacquered “pages of scripts, scores, all kinds of literature,” embossed in the original venue’s amber-colored floor, Stacey says. “Club” implies a kind of speakeasy-styled mystique. Over the next four years, Bookclub built a growing fan base by advertising shows on Instagram and the invite-only Facebook group DIY Chicago, which has some 22,000 followers and serves as an insider’s guide to edgier, often LGBTQ friendly, shows that bubble up outside the mainstream.
“Bookclub was always a place where people come to find community,” Weakley says. “It was never, ‘this is the community, now join it.’ It was always, ‘the gate is open and everyone who comes inside is our family for the two-to-three hours they’re in our room.”
The community’s rapid growth, however, soon strained the venue’s 60-person capacity, and fees charged to concertgoers to stage productions—without a liquor license to help recoup costs—eventually became unsustainable.
So, in October 2023, Stacey and Weakley set their eyes on the former Elbo Room, which owners David Cooke and Mike Kallis had closed and sold in 2019. For years, the space had languished under the ownership of a restaurant group whose renovation plans had been stymied by the pandemic. Now, it was once again up for sale.
Stacey and Weakley brought in Nick Heineman, executive director of the Chicago Independent Venue League, Maren Rosenberg, an actor and artist, and Rupert Murray, owner and production manager at Smart Bar, as co-owners, to help with the building purchase, remodel, and long-term management strategy.
After being shooed away by Chase and Wintrust, the team secured a loan from First Women’s Bank, whose focus on supporting women business owners, became a decisive factor in the decision to finance Bookclub’s purchase of the building.
Rosenberg, who designs spaces for immersive theater events and has worked with the Chicago Independent Venue League and Wicker Park & Bucktown Chamber of Commerce to promote opportunities for artists, saw Bookclub as an idea and space worth supporting.
“Nick and I both know each other through philanthropy, and I think in this day and age it was kind of a no-brainer to take hold of an opportunity to create more spaces that celebrate art and individuals for who they are, not in spite of who they are,” Rosenberg says.
Revamping the Elbo Room
When the new owners arrived in September 2024, the Elbo Room was a shell of its former self, with refrigerators, a jukebox, and toilets immersed in standing water and the stench of old beer lines souring the air. But after a massive $500,000 overhaul, including electrical and mechanical upgrades, a stage redesign, new bathrooms, and upgrades to the sound and lighting systems, the space was ready for prime time.
For the most part, Bookclub has kept the bohemian vibe of its early days. Bookclub’s bubbly wordmark, whose letter “O” characters are cartoons with names—Barry (the smiling one) and Benry (the dead one)—are characters Stacey created for a chalkboard calendar in the original Crowd Theater location.
A gold spray-painted wordmark featuring Barry and Benry now hangs above the first-floor bar, fashioned from an assemblage of recycled gear—dead cables, cassette tapes, headphones, a padlock, the guts of a mixing board. A massive 1080-pixel LED screen projects lower-level performances to the first floor for audience members who want a break from the noise.
Manae Solara Vaughn, a performer in the New Wave-influenced art pop duo Oux (pronounced like “awe’’), says the new radial stage design, with a catwalk extending into the audience, makes the venue a thrilling place to play.
“You have this little runway up front, and you get to have that front-person moment, where you have the entire crowd around you on all sides, and it makes you feel really powerful up there. It’s really freaking cool,” Solara Vaughn says.
By artists, for artists
Stacey’s time as a student at Loyola’s Quinlan School of Business has played a role in the business decisions he has had to make to get Bookclub off the ground. But even more important to his evolution as a musical entrepreneur was “the programming that I was able to enjoy beyond Quinlan that inspired me to figure out what the heck I was going to do after graduating,” he says.
As an undergraduate, he held a regular spot as a DJ on WLUW, 88.7, Loyola’s student-run independent radio station in the School of Communication. He recalls waking before the sun came up to play tracks by musicians like electronic music producer and DJ, Arum.
The experience led him to an internship at Vocalo Radio, a now-disbanded terrestrial radio offshoot of Chicago Public Media’s WBEZ, known for elevating hip hop, soul, and R&B artists, including Chance The Rapper. Conversations with artists and listeners helped Stacey overcome long-held insecurities and step into the spotlight.
“As someone who has struggled socially most of my life, that’s just the most effortless springboard to get conversation going with someone: If they make stuff, ask them what they made,” he says.
And he’s confident what he and his co-owners have made—a new home for artists in a vaunted brick building built in 1910—will help them shine. “Coming in here wanting a space to be run by artists who have other artists’ best interests at heart. I think that intention is what makes our remix of the Elbo Room something true to the original,” he says.
@loyolachicago Loyola alum Cam Stacey (BBA ’18) is amplifying Chicago’s underground music scene with @bookclubchi —a reimagined venue that’s all about community and creativity. @lucalumni #loyolachicago #bookclub #chicago #musicvenue ♬ Let Go NJ Edit VIP – h.o.l
