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Chicago magazine
by Marcia Froelke Coburn
HOLDING A NOTE
Lonie Walker has ended up where she planned to be long ago--singing and playing the piano at her own unpretentious joint. The neon sign sums it up: REAL FUN MUSIC
IT'S 11 P.M., NOT QUITE THE WITCHING HOUR, yet something magical happens when Lonie Walker struts into the Underground Wonder Bar, at 10 East Walton Street. This is her place, her home-away-from-home base, and she performs here every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday night. Most of the customers know her--they have, in fact, been awaiting her arrival, and now that she is striding onto the small down-front stage, the place begins to buzz.
Walker is a striking woman, 47, with a whiskey-stained voice and a long silver mane that she tosses freely as she plays the piano. Surrounded by her six-piece Big Bad Ass Band, she commands the rest of the evening with her original jazz and blues compositions and Janis Joplin covers until 4 a.m. The neon sign in the window sums up the critical response of her faithful audience: REAL FUN MUSIC.
"It's totally unpretentious place, " says Robin Kay, who has also been singing at the bar for the past 12 years, ever since Walker brought the former blue humor club and turned it into a late-night hangout. "Snobs go somewhere else."
The next afternoon, Walker is back at the Underground Wonder Bar, swigging Evian from a bottle and explaining how she developed into an entrepreneur. "I always had a plan," she says. "A master plan, 1 15-year plan that by the time I was 20 I'd either be a millionaire or the equivalent in my career. OK, I had to add a few years because I took some time off when I had my kids, but in the end I made it. I worked hard, I never lost sight of my plan, and I ended up buying this place when I was 34." She acknowledges the accomplishment wit a laugh. "Hey, the 'Wonder' in the bar's name comes from me being Wonder Woman."
SHE GREW UP IN GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN, one of nine children. Her father's mother played the piano; her mother gave classical piano concerts. Walker started playing when she was four. "Everyone was very musical, and there was a lot of singing," she says. "We were like the von Trapp family." She left home when she was 16, after falling in with some hitchhiking hippies who were traveling to Chicago. By then she had her plan in place.
"First, I lied about my age so I could get jobs," she said. She did a little modeling and waitressing and gave piano lessons. By the time she was 17, she was passing for 21 and tending bar at night. She also started studying jazz theory at DePaul University with Alan Swain, who has his own music studio in Evanston. Through him, she heard Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, and Scot Joplin. "He changed everything for me," Walker says.
"I couldn't do the girlie thing." Walker says, "but I learned how to work the comedy-cabaret thing."
"When Lonie first came to me, she was a near beginner in terms of harmonizing and improvising creatively," Swain says. "We concentrated on building a foundation. Once she had that, she turned from one kind of performer--someone very set in her ways--to and experimental musician. She just took off. It was like placing Michael Jordan on a basketball court--it was where she was meant to be."
When she was 18, Walker was playing at the piano bar at Ratso's, a jazz club on Lincoln Avenue. The next year, she moved on to the legendary Gaslight Clubs at the O'Hare Hilton and the Palmer House, boudoir-style establishments popular with businessmen and conventioneers. "The glamorized me, so I had this very done-to-the-hilt look," she says. "And I worked in the Roaring '20s speakeasy and then The Library room. Every waitress sang and we didn't use microphones, so it was good training for the projection of your voice. But I couldn't do the girlie thing. I was too shy to do the pat-on-the-head and sit-on-the-lap thing, but I learned how to work the comedy-cabaret thing."
The money was lavish at the Gaslight Clubs ("Some nights I'd take home $700 in tips," she says), so Walker felt financially stable. When she turned 24, her emotional life picked up as well. She met a tradesman-rehabber and was ready to start a family, but the idea of "the paperwork of marriage" held little appeal. "I added two years to my career plan for my first child," she says. Two years later, she had a second son, so that added four years total. During that time, she and her partner worked at buying and renovating buildings in Old Town.
When she was 28, she went back to the Gaslight Clubs with a cabaret act of her own. "It was me with five sleazy kick-turn girls behind me," she says. "For the Gaslight crowd, that was showtime!" Soon after, Walker began to look around for her own place. She married her longtime partner,k had a third child, and scouted real-estate possibilities. When the Domino Lounge, a blue humor and insult club at Walton and State, went on the market, Walker bought it. "We opened in 1989, when I was 34" she says.
"So I was on target for my plan. I painted the walls black, moved the stage around, and tried to create a smaller version of Gaslight. I used an all-female, very glamourous wait staff; everyone had to sing, and we had props and music revues and all the shtick." The conventioneers stayed away in droves.
"The clientele I thought I could bring over didn't come." For one thing, the location of Walker's club wasn't very appealing. On East Walton at that time, ladies of the night strolled the sidewalks. "Other than the women using the cars out in front, there was ample parking around here then," she remembers with a laugh.
Walker changed her concept. She went from a glamour lounge to a clubhouse atmosphere. Out went the singing waitresses, and in came a small stage with musical acts. It took several months, but the Underground Wonder Bar found its clientele. Then, almost one year to the day after the club opened, Walker was served onstage with divorce papers.
"That was a hard time," she says, "a time when I really had to reassess what I was doing personally and professionally." One immediate problem: The kitchen at the bar was failing (back then, it served dinner), in large part because Walker insisted on trying to serve too many kinds of cuisine simultaneously. The neon sign in the window then read INTERNATIONAL NEW AGE CUISINE. "I was ahead of my time," she says now. When the latest chef, John Collins, came to the bar, he laughed at the sign. "Where's Chef Yanni?" he asked>
The two were romantically involved, and Collins earned Walker's trust with his shrewd business decisions. "He is the love of my life," says Walker. "Eventually we decided to have our wonder baby." Emma, their daughter, is eight years old. Walker's sons are now 16, 21, and 22.
With Collins helping with the business, Walker was able to turn more of her energies back to her music. Last November, she launched her third CD, Change Is Good, on her own Underground Wonder Bar label. It is her first CD of all original music. (Her first album, All That I've Got I Gave to Music, was Janis Joplin covers; her second, Live in Paris, was a recorded concert.)
"It took me a long time to reach this point," says Walker. "Some of the songs in recent CD I started back in 1986. But I never lost sight of my goal."
Volume 51, Issue 3
March 2002
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Barfly
by Rich Webster
Are you sick of the meatheads of Lincoln Park?
The glorious freak-fest at the Underground Wonder Bar rages on in the face of the high-volume, low-brain world of the Gold Coast --- and to some, freak isn't such a bad thing to be called --- a badge of honor --- a way to be distinguished from the brutes in Armani suits sucking cocktails with hookers down the street.
It's like the difference between plastic and flesh, the pale and the psychedelic, rich bastards with deep pockets blow and the weird sub-culture of musicians with well, not all things are different.
But, this is neither the time nor the place for such rantings as the name indicates, the Wonder Bar is underground, a gaudy neon sign hovers in the window, four steps down and you're in where you'll be met by Glen. Hand over a few bucks and you get your mojo on, work it for all it's worth, this is a place conductive to drunken-ness.
A small bar bathed in green light stands to the right --- to the left is a row of stools, beneath red track lighting, hugging the wall with a narrow ledge to rest your martini, gin and tonic or whatever the hell is your choice. Straight back to an intimate section of tables leading to a stage where Lonie Walker, co-owner of the Wonder Bar, wails and whispers her heart's jazz-stirrings.
The droid-boys are nowhere to be found --- inside is a collection of societal outsiders and fringe. Americans --- men in rubber suits, Mafioso jackals, blinded flappers of old, tormented souls of beauty, long-legged models and hip young kiddies with their one-hitters, and dilated pupils. Not exactly the type of bar Kerouas and his cronies hopped around during the Chicago fifties.
The Wonder Bar is more of a time capsule of 20th Century America --- ultimately weird, but musically fanatical. Guest performers have included Tiny Tim, the Commitments, Steve Winwood and Herbie Hancock. Music begins at 10 p.m. on weeknights and 7:30 p.m. on Saturdays.
For those with an insatiable appetite for alcohol and chaos, the Wonder Bar, open until 4 a.m. on weeknights and 5 a.m. on Saturdays, is a constant. When the lights of all the other local night spots are dim, this place is only getting warmed up. It's jammed until closing when the bartenders have to shove the glorious barflies out the door with a cattle prod.
I was introduced to the hole a 10 E. Walton by a poet who has since moved to Dallas --- it was like having sex for the very first time --- to continue the analogy --- I crawled back on a weekly basis moaning for a repeat performance.
Sometimes, she's cruel and others she wraps her arms around me and it's love all over again. I've dragged many a friend to the Wonder Bar. Some dig it, and others don't get it. I've been kicked out with a fiendish grin on my face and hazy eyes, have lost consciousness in Technicolor lights and have been moved by random artists hunched in dark corners.
Every night has been different. Take the good with the evil and know that whatever happens, however far the brain wanders, there will be Lonie perched on the stage holding you tight with her soulful and tormented voice.
Volume 3, Issue 4
April 10 - May 8, 1996
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CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Arms raised at amazing Wonder Bar
By Rick Kogan
At certain late-night moments at a subterranean Walton Street saloon, you could wander in and think you had mistakenly walked into a convention of referees or a robbery, for most of the people in the joint would have their arms raised in that two-arms-above-the-head signal made when a football team scores or when an man with a gun say "Stick 'em up."
This arm raising happens when the woman behind the piano decides to celebrate. She shouts, "Wonder Bar." and most in the crowd respond accordingly, raising their arms and shouting "Wonder Bar."
The Underground Wonder Bar, a determinedly engaging and entertaining night spot serves food and drink but most of all it serves music in a markedly untrendy, intimate, colorful and lively setting.
The club occupies the last Walton Street home of the bygone Domino Lounge, which was once a must-stop for most reveling conventioneers and, when it finally closed a couple of yeas back, was one of the last vestiges of the Rush Street area's raucous raunchiness past. It featured the comic Frank Penning, a great practitioner of the vanishing art of blue humor.
We thought we recognized the bleary-eyed look of the conventioneer in a couple of people who wandered into the Wonder Bar the night we were there with our dark-haired wife and our tennis-playing, media-watching friend. It was a wonderfully mixed crowd.
The Underground Wonder Bar, 10 E Walton St. (312-266-7761), is the creation of Lonie Walker, a singer/pianist/personality who's been a fixture on the local club scene for the better part of two decades. She describes herself as "zany and unpredictable," and is exuberant in the pleasant extreme. She manages her nightclub as if she were the hostess at some ongoing party.
"Shut up!" she shouts while flashing a smile at a particularly noisy table.
Sitting behind the piano, surrounded by a trio, Walker offered several tunes and then brought to the bandstand a number of other singers. It seems most of the staff are singers of varying talent but similar enthusiasm. Local professional clubfolk often drop by, and they're sure to be in large numbers this Sunday during a Christmas Party for Musicians Only from 2 to 7 p.m. The public is welcome to that, and welcome every day from 11 a.m. to 4 a.m.
It is, of course, every singer's dream to have a club to call his or her own. The fact that Walker's dream has come true is amazing. That the reality is such a ...well, such a wonder, is astonishing.
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CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
Underground Wonder Bar is hidden gem
By Jae-Ha Kim
When I first descended into the Underground Wonder Bar, the regulars stared at me, as if they half expected me to turn around and flee. I felt as though I'd just crashed a private party. But that feeling quickly dissipated as I got drawn into the vortex of this tiny, subterranean club.
Just a few corners away from the meet-market fern bars on Rush Street, the Wonder Bar is tucked away in the former home of the Domino Lounge. That place attracted a rambunctious crowd that was more interested in drinking and dirty jokes than anything else. It could be easy to walk right past the Wonder Bar, because there's nothing spectacular about its neat appearance. But the one thing that does grab your attention is a bright, neon sign boasting "new age cuisine." Not sure whether that meant food so light it floated, or meals that were prepared by a chef named Yanni, I had to go in to check it out. At the Underground Wonder Bar, the music is the driving force. Everybody seems either to be a musician or the friend of one. And in the relaxed atmosphere, it's difficult to differentiate the customers from the employees. They're dressed alike and address each other with a familiarity that is neither coy nor fawning.
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The narrow bar has no dance floor, and no need for one. The place is suited for couples who are past the stage where they're too nervous to talk to each other for extended periods. The music isn't so loud that it overpowers chit-chat, and the tiny, beat-up candles on each table cast warm, romantic glows.
The night I visited was open-mike night, and a smooth-voiced tenor gently strummed an acoustic guitar as he sang Ô60s-era folk songs and a couple Beatles tunes. One of the waitresses joined him for a cover of Elton John's "Your Song" in between serving beers and fancy waters. The beauty of their impromptu harmonizing wasn't lost on the customers or the performers.
The patrons of this club were both encouraging and polite to the musicians. The ones who were noshing on the Wonder Bar's reasonably priced food, which spans Mexican, Thai, American and Middle Eastern cuisine, put their forks down and generously applauded.
As I left the club, the tenor politely nodded and said, "Thank you for coming by."
No, no -- thank 'you'.
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DAILY HERALD
A great joint ... a great patroness and a great lineup for all you crazy late-nighters
(and remember, only your mama loves you more)
By Barbara Vitello
Ask the regulars why they come to the Underground Wonder Bar and they invariably respond with two words: Lonie Walker.
"Only your mother loves you more," says Walker, the spirited singer/pianist and owner of the Wonder Bar. It's easy to believe her.
There are a lot of things that make the Wonder Bar special, says singer and waitress Jennifer Nowlen, and the owner is definitely one of them.
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A smart, determined woman with a quick wit and an easy laugh, Walker is more than proprietor and performer. She is the heart and soul of this intimate club located on a patch of Gold Coast that is bordered by State, Walton, Rush and Oak. An engaging performer with a husky voice, she sometimes sits in at Dick's Last Resort, but usually she's on stage at the Wonder Bar.
"There is nowhere else," says Walker, who headlines three nights a week. "There is no other room I want to play."
Before its incarnation as a cabaret, it was a comedy club that specialized in humor of the blue variety. Six years ago, Walker took over and remodeled the club, which is flanked by a hair salon on one side and a check cashing joint on the other.
She renamed it the Wonder Bar, at the suggestion of her son Jordan, and added the Underground for obvious reasons.
The room is intimate, to say the least. A short flight of stairs leads to the small garden-level club. A mirrored wall makes the long, narrow space seem larger than it is, and red and silver Christmas ornaments hanging from the low ceiling add a whimsical touch.
A small, black bar takes up most of the front of the club. At the back is a tiny stage with room for a baby grand piano, a drum set and not much else, which means the guitarist and bassist sit off to the side. Lack of space, however, doesn't mean a lack of talent.
"I came here when it was the Domino Lounge, when there was live stand-up, and I've been coming for the last 10 years," says John Moore, 41. "You get top line entertainment here."
Because it's owned by a musician, the Wonder Bar draws a lot of musicians, many of whom sit in on occasion, says John Collins, who came on board three years ago as co-owner. Late night jams are common and Ken Chaney's on Saturday night is especially popular, he says.
"I would say it's just as good or better (than other jazz clubs), says Steve Bell, a Chicago musician who stops by every Saturday. "They still play traditional jazz here."
"It's about the last of the good cabaret bars," Moore adds. "And it's a way to hang onto a little old-fashioned entertainment.
"Real fun music" says the orange neon in the window, and the performers do their best to live up to the promise. Along with the pop-rock-soul-funk-jazz-blues combination, there is a solid dose of humor.
"Our music is eclectic," Walker says. "We're not strictly jazz, so we call it cabaret."
And they care enough about it to keep it live every night of the week, 365 days a year. The policy stems from a commitment as tavern owners, Collins says. The bottom line is this: it takes someone a long time to return after they've come to your club and discovered a "closed" sign on the door.
"We're in a big city, and there's a market to be open every night of the year," Collins says of the music, which starts about 7 p.m. and continues until 4 a.m.
"If I could," he says, "I'd open at 7 a.m."
There are a few mandatory rules that Walker et al. enforce. They consist of the following: when Walker exclaims "Wonder Bar," everyone raises their arms over their heads. The staff periodically reviews the rules for newcomers who -- obvious from the confusion on their faces -- are surprised when the entire crowd suddenly throws their hands in the air.
"We're not for everybody, and we know it," Walker says. "We've been called eclectic and Bohemian because we embrace all walks of life.
"I'm here every Saturday night," says Suzanne Petri, who joins Walker late night for some Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich interspersed with bawdier, innuendo-filled tunes.
"Musically I love it because I can do things that I couldn't do in other places," says Petri, an actress, director and singer. When we're on stage it's like nowhere else.":
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"I come here, and I'm home," she says, and most of the regulars agree.
"People like to come here and let it all hang out." Nowlen says about the club, which has a reputation as a friendly, crazy place. And it's one of the few places where performers interact with the audience. Here, they're two halve of the same whole, she says, so it's only natural that most of the folks here -- especially the late night crowd -- seem to know and like each other.
"I love the bar," says Rolf Boettiger, general manager of Dick's Last Resort. "To me, it's a neighborhood bar. I love the music. It reminds me of Acorn on Oak, which doesn't exist anymore. This is the next best thing."
"Out-of-towners come here and feel they've met Chicago," he says.
That kind of feedback from other club owners is music to Walker's ears.
"They come in here and accept me," she says. "When the club owners come out, that's the biggest compliment."
The club attracts conventioneers, tourists (the foreign currency above the bar attests to that) as well as musicians, waiters, waitresses and hotel service workers.
"When tourists find us, they feel they've found the real thing", Collins says. "There are a handful of clubs that make up a cultural quilt in Chicago, and we're woven into that cultural quilt."
It doesn't take much to fill the place up, so get here early if you want a seat. On weekends, especially, almost every one is filled.
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CD REVIEW
LONIE WALKER
"All That I've Got I Gave to Music"
Lonie Walker
RPK Records
By Rich Webster
Lonie Walker's CD, "All That I've Got I Gave to Music," on RPK records is a rolling celebration of joy and survival. As the sounds of her piano dance around the head, her voice scats, moans and wails straight through the heart and into the soul where laughter rushes to be heard and tender memories rise from the deep sleep.
From Willie Dixon's " I Love The Life I Live" to Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now," she takes the beloved songs of our past and combines them with her contemporary arrangements. On the sensual but playful "Fever," Lonie becomes the mistress, sliding in and out of madness, while on the beautifully tortured " Vincent," she drops her voice to a soft lullaby and paints a sad, comfortable landscape on the piano. But it is on her roaring masterpiece, "Me And Bobbie McGee," where all the best in Lonie shines-- the piano rumbles as she sings through a wicked smile that can be heard over the glorious musical riot.
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Lonie Walker's music is a combination of rock/soul/funk/jazz and blues which lays bare her soul and expects no less of the crowd. As a jazz artist who believes in the importance of fun and the energy of rock n' roll, where the performance is impossible to separate from the music, she is the voice and lifeline to a time when piano bars reigned and the audience considered the performer a friend.
"All That I've Got I Gave to Music" was recorded live at the Underground Wonder Bar where Lonie has become a legend of the Chicago night, playing every night for the past seven years to a fiercely devoted audience. Her performances are emotional journeys- driven by a relationship of intense interaction with the audience, she pushes herself to the breaking point of agony and ecstacy. There are no lies when Lonie Walker takes the stage-a performer pure in her emotions whose travelled and driven heart paints smiles on the tortured and draws tears from the coldest of eyes.
Lonie's love affair with the piano began at the age of four when the steel tipped-pointer wielding nuns at her school first taught her how to play. At 15 she left home and hitchhiked across the country, playing her guitar--"because the piano was too heavy to carry on her back"-on the city streets and to the crowds at the rock festivals. After a year she arrived in Chicago where Alan Swain, teacher of jazz theory at De Paul University, became her mentor. Three years later, the 19 year old Lonie Walker found herself opening for the legendary Oscar Brown Jr. She went on to become the feature singer, with "five sleazy dancing girls" behind her, at the famed Gaslight Club, toured with Joe Kelly's Gaslight Roadshow and wrote and performed years of zany musical cabaret revues.
Lonie Walker is currently at work on her second cd on RPK records which will be comprised of original material. It will include the rock-soul ballad, "I'll Drop My Pride (to keep on loving you)" and a song officially known as "Baby Blue Blues," but also called "the New Mercedes Benz," the "Chonka Chonk song" and the "Beat Off song."
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