In 2005, what began as a modest multi-venue, fan-driven punk event in Chicago has morphed into a large-scale outdoor event that continues to mark its territory as one of the most impressive independent music fests in the country.
Over the years, it’s ballooned in popularity thanks to its anything goes and everything happens here reputation. Where else could you see this year’s lineup of Jack White, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Idles, Mac Sabbath, Hanson, and Rilo Kiley play on the same bill? What other event offers carnival rides, a wedding chapel, arcade, wrestling match, and museum to catch in between acts? Who else would stalk John Stamos for 12 years in a bid to try to get the fictional Jesse & The Rippers to reunite? (Organizers played the long game well as Uncle Jesse has finally agreed to make an appearance this year with the Beach Boys.) Riot Fest has led the charge in actual impressive reunions, too, like goading the Replacements, the Misfits, and Jawbreaker to take the stage together again. And they’ve been instigators for a range of exclusive full album plays—this year alone features Weezer playing the Blue Album, the Pogues delivering Rum Sodomy & The Lash, and Bad Religion doing a front to back of Suffer, among a dozen other bands taking part.
This is all to say it’s unfathomable that it almost never happened. Co-founder Mike Petryshyn (aka Riot Mike to many in the music community) can still remember a time when he never saw the homegrown event getting past a year-one fling.
“After 2005 was done, I didn’t want to do it anymore,” he admits during a recent call from Riot Fest HQ on the west side of Chicago. In the beginning, he was just a fan who worked days at a law firm and had a pipe dream to see all his favorite punk rock bands like Dead Kennedys, the Misfits, and the Germs play the same weekend. By the end of it, though, he was exhausted, stressed to the max and wanted out. “I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know the music business. I just did it by cold calling bands,” he adds. But one MySpace message in the spring of 2006 changed everything.
It was from Eric Spicer, drummer of Naked Raygun, Chicago’s legendary punk rock band whose influential sound—a blend of near-hardcore and melodic hooks with an underbelly of lyrical realism—helped develop a local breeding ground, extending its tentacles in Pegboy, the Effigies and Steve Albini’s Big Black while fostering a future line of descendants like Rise Against, Fall Out Boy, and Alkaline Trio. “They were the most important band to ever come out of this city. … And they changed the trajectory of Chicago music. One case in point is me,” says Petryshyn. When he got the memo from Spicer, Petryshyn recalls, “I didn’t believe it was real. He was like, ‘I saw what you did last year. I thought it was pretty cool. Would you ever consider Naked Raygun for it?’” At the time, the band had been dormant since 1992. But within a few months, Spicer, vocalist Jeff Pezzati, guitarist Bill Stephens and late bassist Pierre Kezdy were rehearsing again and Riot Fest was back on. “Without them, there’d be no Riot, nope. Zero chance,” says Petryshyn. “I would have never done year two.”
Riot Mike is just one of a handful of card-carrying members in the Naked Raygun fan club. Another is Dave Grohl. In his Sonic Highways documentary, Grohl tells of catching a pivotal 1982 show from the punk rockers at Chicago’s Cubby Bear club, which laid the seeds for his own music career. “And Billie Joe,” pipes in Petryshyn. “Every time Green Day plays Chicago, it’s always, ‘This song goes out to Naked Raygun.’”
When it comes to the band’s legacy, which will be told in a forthcoming biography on PM Press in 2027, Petryshyn has his own point of view. “They are one of the smartest bands I’ve ever seen. What I love about Naked Raygun is that you could always tell who wrote the song. I mean, clearly you have Jeff who’s the main songwriter. But Eric’s songs are phenomenal. Pierre’s songs are deep and a lot are not what you think they’re about. But besides that, they have their own sound. Nobody sounds like them … it was very experimental and when you hear [albums] All Rise and Understand? and Jettison, they sound like Chicago.”
He adds, “In many ways, there’s this parallel to Minneapolis, and not that they sound like the Replacements or Hüsker Dü, they really don’t. But that same kind of feeling, like we’re not from L.A. or New York … They are of a working-class kind. They’re from Chicago. It’s tough. Chicago has always been an island. But the influence lived on years later into Nirvana, to Jawbreaker, because the music resonated. … Before anybody knew what Riot Fest was in the early years, if a band or somebody heard about Naked Raygun, it was like, holy shit that’s cool.”
Naturally, the punk vets will help fete Riot Fest’s milestone year this weekend with a just-announced closing night after show at Chicago’s Metro on Sunday. “There was no better way to end it than with the band that really started it all,” says Petryshyn of the full-circle moment, which truly began when he first heard their music after picking up their CD at Home of the Hits in his native Buffalo, New York. “Daryl [Taberski] from Snapcase was working there because the band was in between tours. I went in and was like, ‘I’m tired of everything I’m listening to. Give me something different.’ And he was like, ‘You gotta listen to Naked Raygun.’” Years later, Petryshyn’s first time seeing the band live was their very first Riot Fest rehearsal in 2006, and it’s the only band he’d proudly tell the tale of breaking some ribs for while stage-diving.
“We did a couple of legendary secret shows. I saw [Pegboy’s] Larry Damore show up and stage dive. And he’s big, he’s like a linebacker. … So when he dove and he got caught, I’m like okay, I’m gonna pick my spot,” Petryshyn recalls. “One of my favorite songs is ‘Treason’ and when it gets quiet into that guitar solo … the best guitar solo in punk rock, that’s when I was like I’m going to do this. But yeah, nobody caught me and I slammed right into that hard floor at [Chicago’s] Cobra Lounge. I didn’t know right away that I broke anything. It wasn’t until the next day I went to the hospital and got an X-ray because I was having trouble breathing.” But if you ask Petryshyn if it was all worth it—the broken bones, the 20 years of making Riot Fest the unique unicorn it continues to be, he’s quick to answer: “Oh, absolutely.”
