Donna Herula

Summer (Music) in the City – Five Concerts, Four Venues – June 9-14, 2026

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With construction going on at St. James Cathedral, this year’s weekly, Tuesday evening, summer Rush Hour Concerts have moved to Holy Name Cathedral, which I had never before entered, so I figured what the h – – -, oops, sorry, not in church. Very elegant. And the music, Price and Mozart, was good.

Another opening, another show at the 2026 Grant Park Music Festival in Millennium Park.  I dodged the rain before and after the performance, which affected attendance, but the orchestra also showed up, and the music was excellent, Tower, Bernstein and Barber. The Symphonic Dances from West Side Story made me wonder whether musician auditions include demonstrations of finger-snapping skills.

What a long, strange journey to get to that concert. It took me three and a half weeks of begging, and desperately going over people’s heads, to get my tickets when they didn’t arrive as scheduled because, I was told, of a “unique and quite astounding” software problem that affected only me.

I hadn’t been to the Fourth Presbyterian Church Noonday Concert for a few weeks, and the next time I go will be for the outdoor season, in the beautiful courtyard, but I made it a point to see Jennifer Woodrum (clarinet) and Marianne Parker (piano), who, as I’ve written before, impresses not just with her technical excellence, but also with her performance style. On this day, she also demonstrated her ambidextrous, page-turning abilities, having forgotten her foot pedal at home, which she knew I would razz her about afterward.

The weather that day remained too good to pass up, so I doubled up, heading back to Millennium Park for that night’s Grant Park Music Festival program, featuring Ives and Brahms, before leaving early so as to avoid having to listen to a mass of people making vocal noises from the stage during classical music.

Two days later I made my annual trek to the Old Town Art Fair, not to see the art, such as it is there, but rather to see local blues star Donna Herula and her band do their thing, which I expect to do more of this summer when they appear at Navy Pier.

Donna Herula – Navy Pier – August 30, 2025

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After seeing Donna Herula at the Old Town Art Fair, and good to my word (see my June 14 blog), I went to see her at the Navy Pier Beer Garden, or, in my case, the bottled water garden.

As before, she played some classic blues numbers and a bunch of songs from her award-winning Bang at the Door CD, adding some recently-recorded ones that are part of a forthcoming release, including Backseat Driver, not to be confused with the three other songs of the same name I found online.

The biggest difference from June was that her husband Tony was in attendance, resulting in Herula calling him up to the stage to sing Can’t Wait to See My Baby with her. Thankfully he then went back to his seat. The duet was better (and amusing) last time when he was absent and she sang both parts.

There was a short interruption at one point for Herula to adjust her guitar (one of four she had on stage), whereupon she apologized by saying “we tune because we care.” I’m guessing she’s used that line before. I’ll be waiting for it next time I see her play.

Donna Herula Trio – Old Town Art Fair – June 14, 2025

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I really got my money’s worth – there were four musicians in the Donna Herula Trio.

I’d never heard of the Independent Blues Awards (given out by Making the Scene!, the self-proclaimed #1 resource for the independent artist and the fans who love them), but winning anything is probably better than not winning it, so I figured Herula’s 2022 awards for Best Acoustic Blues Album (Bang at the Door) and Best Traditional Blues Artist might be indicative of someone I’d want to hear.

I was right, though, interestingly, this was not an acoustic performance (still, no earplugs necessary).

I liked all the songs the trio (quartet?) played from the album, starting with the title song, and followed by Can’t Wait to See My Baby, which, we were told, is normally a duet sung by Herula and her husband, Tony Nardiello (but he apparently could wait, because he wasn’t there, and she instead sang both parts herself).

Herula enlisted the audience to repeatedly repeat the hook in I Got No Way Home, a lyric that, perhaps, explained her husband’s absence.

The album contains two versions of Black Ice, a song Herula wrote based on the couple’s survival of a driving mishap. She originally wrote lyrics, but her husband told her that a blues song can’t have a happy ending, so she also recorded an instrumental version, which is what she played for us, even though hubby wasn’t there to know.

The hour and a half set also featured legendary blues songs, including Walkin’ Blues, Give Me Back My Wig and You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Dead and Gone.

The next good opportunity for me to see Herula will be in August at the Navy Pier Beer Garden. I’ll be there. I don’t know if Nardiello will make it.