The year is 1990, and Carbondale is booming. Southern Illinois University enrollment is at an all-time high, and on a Friday night, there is no better place to be. The night would start in a friend’s basement, and take you from bar to bar until the sun on Saturday morning started to peek through the windows. Then you’d do it all again the next night.

“That was before you had anything to worry about,” said Cash Johnson, lead singer of Cash & Company, and SIU class of 1991. “Anything other than what you were gonna do that night.”

If you ask Carbondale natives, the 1970s through the ‘90s are considered the heyday of the city’s music scene. Bars like Hangar 9, Pinch Penny Pub, Copper Dragon, PK’s and Booby’s Beer Garden were all in full swing, and students and beer-lovers packed the houses every weekend. The city had gained a reputation for its local charm and talent, and had been known to host not only up-and-coming artists, but also big-time names.

Elvis Presley, Elton John, Bob Dylan, The Talking Heads, Johnny & June Carter Cash, KISS and nearly a dozen more famous musicians have passed through Carbondale, selling out stadiums and sneakily performing in bars.

While artists like Elvis and Cher could draw crowds, the smaller musicians fed the city’s soul. Tawl Paul, Hoopla, Jim Skinner Blues Review and Massive Funk are just a few of the small names that, if you weren’t around to see them, you’d likely never know. But these were the performances people remember; looking back on the best days of their lives, crowded in bars with their friends and singing along to the band that was likely more drunk than they were.

“You would go down to the Strip, and it was just, like, swarming with people,” said Rick Johnson, a Carbondale native and lead singer for FiddleRick & The Collective. “Just youngsters…kids, everywhere. Boom, out to the bar, to the restaurant, to the whatever — swarming the streets.”

The city was alive with multiple genres, offering a little something for everyone.

“Carbondale was a full-on, raging live music and party experience,” journalist and Carbondale history buff Craig Wilson said. “There were more bands than you could possibly take in, and parties were going strong, especially on the weekends but also during the week.”

There was an undeniable energy in the air of the city, and it was noticeable to everyone, even those just passing through. These would go on to be the years the city reminisces about, giving locals the ammo to say, “When I went to SIU…”

The city has, undeniably, undergone many changes in its music scene. An incident that many blame is the crackdown on partying and alcohol taken by the university in the ‘90s and early 2000s. Prior to this, Halloween weekend had become one of the biggest parties of the year, with hundreds coming into Carbondale with one mission only: get as drunk as possible.

This led to many riots, arrests, and the destruction of the city, prompting the university to eventually shut down the entire holiday, effectively ending the iconic SIU Halloween Weekend. Despite this being just one weekend out of the year, many ultimately blame the school and the city’s response to partying as the downfall of the city’s party scene.

“Carbondale got the reputation that you could come here and get f—– up and sometimes cause real damage, then just leave,” Wilson said. “The city and SIU had to crack down, and in many ways I don’t blame them, as their hand was forced, but they also overstepped.”

“They [The City of Carbondale] passed encroachment laws so you couldn’t even stand on the Strip and eat an ice cream sandwich from Dairy Queen and passed ridiculous noise ordinances that killed the beer gardens,” Adam Fletcher, Murphysboro native and singer/bassist for The Copyrights, said. “There was a real puritanical turn in the mid-’90s into the early 2000s, where they were trying to, I don’t know, clean up the image and whatnot, but I guess it worked.”

The university’s and city’s efforts to push back against drunken citizens, no doubt, led to a decline in both tourism and enrollment, damaging the mystique behind the city’s once rowdy music scene. But is it really fair to say that it was the death of music in Carbondale altogether?

The Halloween street festival returned last year, and the city even shut down the Strip for the celebration. Although this most recent Halloween was more tame than the parties of 30 years ago.

There seems to be a fatigue of nostalgia across this city. Everyone loves to look back on their Golden Days and swear that when they were younger, everything was more fun, more alive, more than it is today. Did the Carbondale music scene really die, or are things simply different?

For many, the Carbondale music scene has never stopped being fun.

“I mean, we went out Monday through Sunday, there was never a dead night on the Strip,” Kayla Raney, class of 2005, said. “We’d go to Sidetracks, and well, we’d go to Pinch if it was warm and Copper Dragon if it was cold. Every single night.”

Eric Church, Dierks Bentley, Wiz Khalifa, and many others performed throughout the 2000s and 2010s. Notoriously, Kendrick Lamar made an appearance in 2011 at Hangar 9 while on Adult Swim’s Block Party Tour. Surely, those who graduated in 2015 feel similarly to those who graduated in 2000, and those in 1990, and those in 1980, and so on: This is the time to be alive.

Students still go out every weekend, albeit to different bars than in the past. People still pack the Banterra Center stadium when famous artists come to town. Bars are constantly booking bands to perform. The landscape has changed, and maybe things have died down a bit, but to say things will never be what they once were is a bit melodramatic. Everyone yearns for what they once had, and, in turn, it makes the younger generation feel they’re missing out on something that, in reality, they already have.

“I had a realization one day when I was in Target in like 2022 because I kept being like, ‘Damn, I wish it was the ‘80s,’ but then I just all of a sudden decided…It lowkey is? Like, I can live like it’s the ‘80s if I want,” Jack Hopkins, 26, Carbondale resident and member of Parallel Play, said. “We all have free will. Get out there and do the s— you wanna do. It’s all there, and it’s all still happening.”

Lost Cross, one of the longest-standing punk houses in the United States, has been going strong and constantly pulling crowds since the ‘80s. PK’s, Booby’s, Hangar 9, and many other bars have remained in business for decades, becoming weekend homes to many bands and bar-goers.

There have also been many citizen efforts over the years to keep the party going, such as the construction of the Robbie Stokes Memorial Stage, the tradition of Sunset Concerts, and many different music festivals throughout the years. The city and university themselves have also taken several actions reversing some of their previous rulings on noise, drinking, and age restrictions on seeing live music. Plus, constantly, new bars and businesses are opening, all for the same goal: bringing people together to dance, sing, and have a good time.

“There’s always music at Buckwater, Tres, PK’s, Booby’s, Lost Forest Café, you know,” Johnson said. “It’s all just evolving. The style of music is different, and the people, it’s just a generational thing.”

“It’s [the Carbondale music scene] stable. It’s not diminishing anymore,” Chris Walczak, musician, professor, and organizer of SIU’s Outside the Box festival, said. “The people who like to come out and do things are, and the people who come to concerts are, and so we’re still putting on these concerts and we always will.”

Any notion that Carbondale is no longer “hip” or “bumping” is a false pretense being spread by an epidemic of nostalgia. No city or school efforts can truly destroy the youthful desire to get drunk and party. The bars’ business will always be booming, and there will always be a stage just waiting for someone to perform on it. The year is 2026: It’s a Friday night in Carbondale, and for many, there is nowhere better to be.

“Those were the days,” Jennifer McSparin, a Carbondale resident, said. “But for you, these are the days.”

This column was published in collaboration with JRNL 316: Daily News Reporting. Cali Roy can be reached at [email protected].

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