Green Mill nightclub in Uptown revives late-night live music on weekends
The Green Mill is a Chicago institution, famous for jazz.
The nightclub recently made a change designed to bring back more of what made it famous—late-night live music on the weekends.
On Fridays at the Green Mill, the jazz starts in the afternoon and goes until the wee hours of the morning. That's about 10 hours of live music.
"The city should have a great late-night place to go to again," said Jill Skintges, co-owner of the Green Mill.
Skintges is one of the new owners of the club. She and co-owner Jason Cole recently brought back the late-night weekend hours that were a key part of the legendary jazz club.
"Friday night, bringing back the jam session is to me a really big deal because it's going to foster young musicians again to get experience," she said.
"We have musicians from all over the world play here, and ... but the late nights always gave us our cred, you know, the street credit," Cole said.
History of the Green Mill
The Green Mill traces its roots back to 1907 when it was called Pop Morse's Roadhouse. It eventually grew into the Green Mill Gardens that took up the whole block in the Uptown neighborhood.
The current bar is a small part of it.
"It's old, it's dusty, but it also is a thing. You feel it when you walk in," Cole said.
"It's got soul. I guess that's the biggest thing. It's got soul," Skintges said.
The late-night music was a big part of that soul. Then came COVID.
"We were shut down for a year and a half, basically, and when we reopened, we reopened without the late-night hours," Skintges said. "We tried it in the summer of 2021, which I think might have been a little too early."
"Ended up being the staff in the band drinking in a booth together and just going, is this ever gonna come back? How can we do this? How is it even gonna be possible?" Cole said.
But it is possible, and it's happening now. Skintges and Cole thought the time was finally right.
"Part of our culture is the late night ... the anything can happen part of life that has always been the Green Mill. We're the dark corner. We need the dark corners in this world. We still need that mystery that anything can happen. Kind of like those places, that late night, that was always this. And we want it back. And I think people do, too. I think it's important," Cole said.
The late-night hours have been back for several weeks now, and the Green Mill owners say they've been popular.
Where did the name "Green Mill" come from?
Jason Cole says the Green Mill got its name from the legendary Moulin Rouge in Paris.
Moulin Rouge means red mill in French, but the Chicago bar's owner didn't want it to get confused with the seedy red-light district nearby. So he changed it to the Green Mill.
