You can do that.

Stew: The Chicago project that we’re trying to do here is kind of a continuing in the series of shows that Heidi and I do. We call them “live song cycles.” We write songs about cities that we basically know very little about.

Now you don’t know me, and I don’t know you. [singing]

Stew: The idea is, we take on the expert mantel, we’re expert observers. We don’t claim to be able to tell anything about a city in a documentary fashion, it’s more impressionistic. So what you’ll get from our show will be the way Chicago looks through our eyes.

For 10,000 days of one-night stands, and oh, by the way can . . . [singing]

Heidi Rodewald: We did a show on Brooklyn, that’s what started this all happening; we did a show at BAM.

Is that alright? [singing]

HR: It was so great to live there and be putting real thought into it and having these songs about it.

We’re gonna do a little play since you paid for that. [singing]

Stew: My whole life has being trying to figure out issues through art –

. . . where this band tells you where it’s at . . . [singing]

Stew: – through song, through visuals.

So just follow along, just follow along . . . [singing]

Stew: I was never the guy to go and pick up the gigantic history book, but I will listen to some music, and read some poetry. If you want to teach me about a city, I go I read what the poets wrote about it and listen to the songwriters, that’s just how I do it – and the filmmakers.

Just ask the song. Just ask the song. [singing]

Stew: Artists to me are my tribe, so I go to my tribal members to find out the truth of a place from them and in turn, when I’m trying to figure a place out, I try to figure it out through trying to create art about it.

Now since it’s my job, ah’ma set the scene . . . [singing]

Stew: That’s how I understand things. I work things out in song.

. . . with all the mod cons, the manicured lawns, some savings bonds, a boy and his mom. [singing]

HR: We’re going to be doing this same kind of project with Iowa City, with DC, and Philadelphia, so we’re lining ’em up. This is our thing now.

A colored paradise where the palm trees sway. [singing]