Courtney Barnett performing at the Warm Love Cool Dreams festival 2026/Photo: Rachel Zyzda

This story appears in our 2026 Fall Arts preview, featured in our September issue.

Chicago hosts nearly ninety neighborhood festivals each summer—roughly one for every 30,000 residents. Of the largest cities in the United States, Chicago has, by some considerable margin, the highest event density per capita in the country, even when compared to New York (one festival per 107,000 residents) or Los Angeles (one festival per 184,000 residents).

Still, the festival landscape has shifted since the pandemic. A couple tough years led many to speculate that the music-festival bubble had burst across the country, with increasing costs and declining audience interest both blamed for their struggles. Some music festivals ended outright, including our city’s own Pitchfork Music Festival, which was shuttered by corporate parent Condé Nast.

In the wake of this turmoil, the contours of a new music-festival era began to take shape. In Chicago, this has meant a shift to more small, boutique festivals, often with a stronger focus on genre, an unconventional approach to locations or a local creative force acting as the face of it. This September, longtime Pitchfork Music Festival producer Mike Reed will host the second edition of Sound & Gravity. The experimental festival takes place in venues across the Bricktown neighborhood, rather than in a single park. Brent Heyl will co-produce Plantasia, an ambient and electronic music festival hosted at the Garfield Park Conservatory.

Heyl is the director of music at 16” On Center, the hospitality group behind the Salt Shed, Thalia Hall, the Empty Bottle, SPACE and Beauty Bar, and has long been a noted talent buyer. Through Empty Bottle Presents, he’s also a primary architect behind the Warm Love, Cool Dreams festival as well as Plantasia and the Beyond the Gate cemetery series.

Lauren Auder performing at the Warm Love Cool Dreams festival 2026/Photo: Ricardo Adame

He finds himself at the center of this new era, as both the producer of festivals and the music director of the Salt Shed, which he hopes can grow into a campus for smaller festivals. In his interview with Newcity, he offers layered, compelling and provocative insights into the economics of Chicago’s festival scene post-pandemic. He also discusses the growth of Warm Love, Cool Dreams, a two-day festival that wrapped its second edition over Memorial Day and has featured acts like Pixel Grip, Tortoise, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Courtney Barnett, Toro y Moi and Whitney.

The festival is finding its place in Chicago’s summer entertainment calendar, which remains crowded from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Every weekend offers at least one (and most weekends, many) street, food or music festival. Factor in the year-round calendar of live music performances spanning small neighborhood watering holes (Phyllis’ Music Inn, The Beat Kitchen, Empty Bottle) and larger, historical music halls (Aragon Ballroom, Metro, Thalia Hall), and it becomes difficult to argue against the capacity and vitality of our city’s music scene.

It’s worth pointing out that the majority of Chicago’s most influential music festivals are homegrown affairs. Riot Fest, North Coast Music Festival, Spring Awakening, Sueños and the former Pitchfork Music Festival—among the city’s largest and most well-known—have all been produced by Chicago-native concerns, reflecting a curatorial touch responsive to local audiences and artists. Lollapalooza, run by Austin-based, Live Nation-owned C3 Presents, is the city’s only major music festival managed by a producer without a grassroots affiliation. It’s also by far the largest, though with the least locally sourced talent on our summer event calendar.

An argument could be made that Chicago’s congested festival and live-show calendar is a limiting influence on bands and fans alike. Does it hurt upcoming bands to have so very much going on every night? Are music fans even interested in going out that often anymore? How is the new festival era taking shape?

Plantasia 2025

Brent, how did you end up in Chicago? Your journey from L.A., to Arizona, to programming for the Empty Bottle and running Warm Love, Cool Dreams—how does that happen? 

What I always think about when it comes to how I ended up here is a genuine interest in music. I grew up around it. My dad played drums all throughout his life and was in a band. My brother was really into punk and hip-hop and turned me on to a lot of things at a younger age.

Practically speaking, I grew up in Arizona after being born in California. When I finished school out there, I came to Chicago with a girl I was dating. Within the first few weeks of being here, I heard WLUW 88.7, and it blew me away. I’d never heard a radio station playing music that I actually listened to.

We didn’t have much of a college radio or community radio presence in Tempe. I’m sure there was one around—it just never connected with me. This was back in 2006, so internet radio wasn’t nearly as popular yet.

I started volunteering there (WLUW 88.7). I also got an internship at Thrill Jockey Records, and I started bartending at Sonotheque. Those three things quickly got me ingrained in the Chicago music scene.

Sonotheque eventually closed. It was part-owned by Empty Bottle, and I’d developed a good relationship with those guys. They asked me to help manage and book Beauty Bar. We had, I think, Danny Brown’s first Chicago show there. James Chance played there. Freddie Gibbs played there.

One thing just led to another. I started helping with Empty Bottle Presents and booking shows at Empty Bottle. When we opened Thalia Hall [in 2014], 16” On Center was taking shape as a company.

After Thalia Hall opened, I managed that calendar with Jake Samuels, who’s still my booking partner. Then we opened Salt Shed about five years ago and developed a few festival concepts.

That’s thanks to my relationship with Empty Bottle and Bruce [Finkelman] at 16” On Center, who has always encouraged trying new things.

Empty Bottle Presents has always been about finding unique opportunities for bands in non-traditional venues. We did shows at the Logan Square Monument, a Chinese restaurant and even on boats.

The concepts that stuck were the cemetery series, Beyond the Gate, the Garfield Park Conservatory series, Plantasia and, most recently, Warm Love, Cool Dreams. At its core, it’s an opportunity to showcase bands we love in a new way.

I’d love to hear your perspective on the Chicago scene generally before and after the pandemic. What has changed for artists, fans and programmers? What have we lost that might be impossible to recoup? Is there anything we’ve gained?

There’s a lot of ways to think about that, but funnily enough the first thing that comes to my mind is drinking habits. And that informs a lot of what’s changed.

Before the pandemic, things felt a little more reckless. Bar sales were much higher, and there weren’t nearly as many sober people.

Now there’s such a movement toward sobriety and more thoughtful partying. It’s a beautiful thing to see, but I think that’s definitely reflected in programming.

Before the pandemic, we’d often put headliners on at 11:30pm or midnight because that was just the norm. It was pretty understood that that was punk-rock time. Now even younger audiences are asking why shows have to be so late. Speaking for ourselves, we shifted set times earlier. I don’t want to overthink it, but I do think there’s a greater sense of health and awareness around how people spend their time, and that has probably played a role.

Plantasia 2025

I’ve been speaking to a lot of promising indie bands in Chicago. Many say it’s become much harder to fill a room because people aren’t discovering bands organically anymore. The idea of people just walking into a bar that hosts a stage without knowing who is playing feels much less common.

That’s something we always try to get around. We do have a bit of an advantage there at Empty Bottle; we really think of ourselves as a neighborhood spot. A place to hang out, with a history of good live music. We want people to trust our calendar and our curators, and we’ve been fortunate that we’ve created a community around that.

One thing that’s worked really well is our Free Monday series. Every Monday is free; no exceptions. We use that slot to showcase local bands, and people can discover artists with zero investment. That said, I don’t deny it’s hard to fill a room. We’ll still get surprised with lighter nights with bands we think are great.

I think for bands that really have something but are struggling in this area, it’s just a matter of hoping the city catches up to them. At the same time, there are so many venues and so, so many shows. So on the flip side, maybe it’s not necessarily that people aren’t interested. Maybe we’re just blessed with a shitload of great bands and places for them to play. I mean, even thinking beyond traditional venues and all of the competition they provide, there’s also the thriving DIY scene. There’s just a lot of competition.

Is there almost too much happening? Can saturation hurt bands that haven’t broken through yet? I’ve heard of bands that kill it on Instagram—and that informs how they make their art, to feed that monster—but struggle to get people to show up to their shows.

I think it naturally corrects itself. Especially for bands starting out, playing a lot of shows isn’t a bad thing if you can afford it and can stomach playing to ten people. I think you do have to kind of embrace that slog, and at the end of the day, playing a lot of shows is a good thing, regardless of how many people show up when you’re just coming up. People talk about marketing, positioning and aesthetics, and those things matter. But if your set really rips, that’s what gets people talking.

You tighten your set, people become familiar with you and who you really are on stage, and it only takes a handful of people talking before, hopefully, you’re off to the races. You kind of just need to grind it out. Keep fighting the good fight.

Plantasia 2025

I’m obviously biased, but I think Chicago is the best music city on the planet. Running a music festival anywhere is excruciatingly difficult, but it feels like we lose at least one or two small festivals every year, and then a big one every few years. 

Pitchfork is clearly the biggest one, but there’s also Mamby On The Beach and the whole Re:Set thing. Why is it so difficult to sustain music festivals here? Is it a municipal or administrative issue?

Chicago has a ton going on—not just musically, but across the board. A fun exercise is to take a look at the event calendar—especially in the summer—and try to find an open weekend. Particularly in the summer, it’s pretty much impossible. Sometimes I’d argue we have too many festivals. It’s hard to find a weekend where you aren’t competing with somebody, and I’ll wonder, “Do we really need all of these street fests?” It can make it difficult to survive.

When we moved Warm Love, Cool Dreams to Memorial Day weekend to try and get around this, Sueños was there. We figured we were distinct enough where it wouldn’t be an issue. Then Forever Mine [an R&B and house fest at Union Park] popped up that same weekend, too—but again, much different than the programming we were putting up. I’m not sure we were really competing with each other because we offer such distinct options, but it’s a dance you’re doing for every single weekend.

But to be honest, no, I don’t think the city is making it especially hard.

Yes, there are challenges with the Park District and it’s extremely expensive to rent parks. And I’m not sure how people will receive this, but Chicago doesn’t really have a purpose-built year-round festival site. Grant Park, Millennium Park, the beaches—these are all more than anything parks for people to hang out in. But the competitive aspect is what I think, probably more than anything, makes it more difficult. The dream with Salt Shed is eventually to have more of a campus where we can host more smaller-capacity festivals.

Did you go to Re:Set?

I did. For me, it was an opportunity to catch an LCD Soundsystem set. I heard there was a lot of baggage that came with it, but it was genuinely a great day and very well put together.

Yeah, look, they tried to do something really cool. They had some amazing names attached to it.

Plantasia 2025

On that note, what do you see as the future of Warm Love, Cool Dreams? Do you seek to make it bigger and feature artists with roots outside of Chicago? It’s been written that it’s the spiritual successor to Pitchfork. Is that the aspiration? 

Whatever it is, I just want it to be natural. If it stays what it currently is for a long time, great. If it progresses into something larger or different, as long as it’s authentic, then we will embrace that. Truthfully, by year two, we were much more comfortable with what we were trying to accomplish.

The festival exists to showcase the kinds of artists we already book while also creating opportunities for visual artists like Arts of Life. This is probably the biggest change. I do want the visual component to grow. But like I said, whatever happens, I want it to feel organic. If it grows into a 15,000-person-per-day festival someday, great—but only if it happens naturally. I don’t see Warm Love, Cool Dreams as replacing Pitchfork. I see it as taking cues from what Pitchfork did well and building on those ideas.

You come from L.A., grew up in Arizona, and have seen a ton of shows elsewhere. What makes Chicago audiences different?

There’s a genuine curiosity and warmth among the people who go to shows. That is one-hundred-percent unique. It’s common to see members of other bands in the audience supporting each other here. That’s just like the norm. I took that for granted until I traveled more. That’s not normal.

People show up because they genuinely care—not just to take a photo and say they were there. The support, venue to venue and artist to artist, is not something you see in other places—at least not as viscerally.

Any new, under-the-radar Chicago bands you’re excited about right now?

Double Extra Large is one people have been really excited about, myself included.

Published in the print edition of Newcity’s September 2026 issue.