Ravinia 2022, Issue 6

Rolling Tobacco City grows a bumper crop of downtown country BY TRICIA DESPRES HE STORY OF TOBACCO CITY began in a café in Logan Square. “We would play records in there and we would be singing along while we were working,” remembers vocalist Chris Coleslaw during a recent interview with Ravinia Magazine. “And then, I heard her voice.” That was the distinctive voice of then co-worker and now Tobacco City bandmate Lexi Goddard. The two would soon find themselves singing together, often performing covers of cuts from a slew of Neil Young albums, including his 1977 album American Stars ’N Bars. One of those songs that they would cover was “Star of Bethlehem,” which originally included the vocal contributions of a certain Ms. Emmylou Harris. “That’s why this is literally a dream come true,” exclaims Coleslaw, who will find himself opening for Mary Chapin Carpenter and Emmylou Harris at Ra- vinia with the quintet of Tobacco City on September 2. “We had assumed, when we got the email asking us to open for them, that it was fake. It just seemed so unbelievable. [ Laughs .] I almost sent it to the spam folder.” It’s no surprise Coleslaw might still be pinching himself right about now, as the Chicago-based supergroup comprising himself, Goddard, Eliza Weber, Josh Condon, and Colin Croom are currently prepping for one of the biggest shows of their career on Ravinia’s Carousel Stage. “In my house growing up, it was basically Emmylou [Harris] and Mary Chap- in [Carpenter] on the CD player all the time,” admits Coleslaw, who grew up in the southeastern portion of Wisconsin, moving to Chicago just over 10 years ago. “It was them and Paul Simon and Van Morrison. They were about the only four things my mom ever listened to in terms of music.” This magical mixture of music that Coleslaw was raised on is a tad similar to the concoction now brewed by Tobacco City, a music that has been described with lofty words such as cosmic , psychedelic and somewhat mysterious , but still with an ever-present country backbone. However, the members of Tobacco City choose to refer to their sound by a completely different term. RAVINIA MAGAZINE • AUGUST 29 – SEPTEMBER 18, 2022 16