After 4 months with no shows, on April 24th of 1996, Thomas Dunning's Hoot Night was launched. It was Barbra Streisand's birthday and Schubas had their chef bake a birthday cake for her!

I wanted to hear a night of Prince music so I planned the "Royalty Hoot." The theme also worked with Barbra's birthday. Queen of the Universe! I hung a 6x6 poster of her EMOTION album cover behind the drum kit as our back drop for the evening. This Hoot will officially go down in history as the LONGEST HOOT NIGHT EVER! We started around 9:30 and ended somewhere between 2:00 and 3:00 AM. Some wonderful things happened at that first show I did. I met these really cute boys...Liam Davis, Worth Wagers and Ross Bergseth. Well, I didn't really
meet Ross; he was out in the car being sick. My friend Brian Vaughan had told me that I should invite The Moviegoers to play the Hoot. Wanting everyone to like me, I said "sure!" I also said "sure" to 23 other acts. 23!! A normal Hoot night has 12 acts on the roster. I had no clue what I was doing. These cats - The Moviegoers - let us borrow their instruments for the show and when they finally got to play it was 2:00 in the morning and there were 7 people in the room! They couldn't leave because everyone was using their gear! Thank
goodness they came back the next time...of course for the next show they asked if they could go up early. I put them up first for like the next year because I thought they would never forgive me for making them stay so late that first Hoot!

My friendship with Liam was born out of that first night at the Royalty Hoot. He later would be a primary mentor to me on the Kate Bush tribute album and pretty much any other project I could get my hands on. At a later Hoot, Nora O'Connor would ask Liam to sing with her and Steve Frisbie on "The Preamble" from Schoolhouse Rock. The FRISBIE egg was fertilized. Thank you NORA! Worth eventually started collaborating with the lovely Steph Turner and Ethan Semone and made beautiful music as COWLILY. Ross took a break to teach music and eventually joined back up with Liam to play trumpet and keyboards for FRISBIE.

Near the end of my first year with the Hoot Nights, I invited Steve Darnall to share hosting duties with me. He served very well for over two years in that capacity and he brought quite a sophisticated and dry, yet enthusiastic vibe to the whole Hoot experience. The beautiful thing was that we were doing Hoots every other month and we would alternate the captain's chair for each show. We each did a Hoot Night every 4 months, so the stress associated with each production was minimal and we supported each other however we could. Steve and I would each invite whoever we wanted to perform for the show and this created a diverse and eclectic experience for everyone! It was an exciting time in Hoot history. Steve finished his term with the brilliant and
oh-so-challenging "Burt Bacharach vs. Bob Dylan Hoot." He introduced us to some great music at the "Stevie vs. Neil Hoot" among others and he introduced us to some great musicians like DIAMOND JIM GREENE, KELLY KESSLER, JANE BAXTER MILLER, and that crazy SINGING CAB DRIVER guy. Steve carried the Hoots in his capable hands and molded it and nurtured it and loved it. He was a treasure to work with and a very good friend. Thank you Steve!

I should mention that I WANNA BE KATE: The Songs of Kate Bush was born during this period and it features primarily Hoot Night performers. If you've been looking for a Hoot Night soundtrack, this is the closest thing we've got, so please go buy it! Thanks. http://www.heardiagonally.com

It was at this period in Hoot history that we started getting noticed by other venues in the city and the invitations came in for us to perform at places other than Schubas, including the legendary LOUNGE AX. I never wanted to take the Hoot Nights away from Schubas, that's where they belong. However, despite the money they were willing to pay, I was willing to do an occasional one-off show here or there strictly to help promote the show and the artists...you understand.

The North Halsted Market Days Street Fair, the largest street fair in the midwest, asked us to HEADLINE on Saturday night at one of their main stages. Actually, it was LesBiGay Radio who asked us and we happily said YES! The problem was that Hoot Nights require a theme. I was worried a transient audience like you would find at a street fair wouldn't get what we were doing. Thus, I decided we should do "The Best of Hoot Night" Hoot! Many of the performers sang their songs from IWBKate and then performed a song they had done at some earlier Hoot.

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