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Chicago · Venue

Hungry Brain

A compact Roscoe Village bar where Chicago’s improvised-music tradition shares space with indie bills, DJ nights, and a deep-cut jukebox.

Upcoming shows
21
Address
2319 West Belmont Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618
Phone
(773) 687-8230
Next show
Wed, 30 Sept 2026
Official siteDirections
Hungry Brain in Chicago

About Hungry Brain

Hungry Brain is a small-capacity Chicago bar and concert room in Roscoe Village, with capacity unlisted publicly. Its defining feature is Sunday Transmission, the weekly jazz and improvised-music series Mike Reed and Josh Berman launched in January 2001; by 2021, the series had reached its 20th year. The setting is a neighborhood pub, while the musical roll call includes Wadada Leo Smith, Fred Anderson, and Ken Vandermark.

A closure, then a new keeper

Hungry Brain opened in 1997, and Janis White and Luz Cordova ran a bar and stage used for music, readings, comedy, and lectures by 2014. The small stage faced the body of the room with its back toward the door, making performance part of the bar’s main social space. White and Cordova announced a December 15, 2014 closure after 17 years; scheduled events, including Transmission, continued through that final date.

Late-2015 performances signaled a return, and Mike Reed bought and reopened Hungry Brain in 2016. Reed retained improvised jazz as a center of gravity, later describing Hungry Brain and his nearby Constellation as rooms serving local and touring avant-garde jazz and experimental artists. The survival story matters because the original weekly series remained a living thread through the ownership change.

The show from the floor

The current calendar makes the booking approach clear: jazz fills much of the week, alongside indie, DJ and dance bills, electronic exploration, and forward-looking singer-songwriters. Residencies and paired sets give regulars a reason to follow players across several dates, while most listed shows begin at 8 or 9 p.m. Expect a bar-first, close-range arrangement around the compact stage. A post-reopening refresh kept cheap beer and a jukebox stocked with deep cuts in the mix.

Sources

  1. About — Hungry Brain
  2. Calendar — Hungry Brain
  3. Hungry Brain Bar Closing After 17 Years in Roscoe Village — DNAinfo Chicago
  4. The Hungry Brain jazz club is back in business — Time Out Chicago
  5. Hungry Brain Closing in December — Gapers Block
  6. Mike Reed plays on — through Chicago music scene’s highs and lows — Chicago Sun-Times

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