Winnetka, Community

Taking music lovers to church in Winnetka

The Hallers Winnetka Chapel series is two concerts into another season

What do now-popular musicians Billy Strings, Caamp and Michael Marcagi have in common? They have all played in the same Winnetka living room. 

North Shore residents and music aficionados, Mark and Val Haller have since taken their successful living room music series to the Winnetka Chapel, where they bring new artists to hundreds of attendees twice a month, virtually for free (a $5 reservation fee, which Mark Haller compares to an artist “pre-tip,” deters no-shows).

“The biggest thrill for me of all of my work is that I can bring a ‘downtown quality show’ right up to people’s backyards in the suburbs,” Val Haller said. “And then these concerts are free, so over the years, people just walk over, they come to the show, they know it’s going to be an hour, then they go out to dinner. We just sort of made them a little cooler because now they know a band name that everybody is buzzing about.”

The prelude

I really thought they would laugh me out of the room, but they all said, ‘Yes.’”


Val Haller on bands playing in her living room

It all started 17 years ago, when Val Haller launched Valslist, a playlist business dedicated primarily to new music discovery and to bringing this new music to busy adults who otherwise might not have time to keep up with trending or emerging artists. 

When tell-it-like-it-is critic Bob Lefsetz did a writeup on Val Haller and her new business, the company took off and began generating quite the stir, including a feature in Oprah Magazine and an offer to Val from The New York Times to write a weekly music column, entitled Music Match, which she did until 2014.

As she wrote about emerging artists and placed their songs in her playlist, Val Haller began watching their tour schedules, doing cold outreach to their managers, and inquiring whether artists passing through Chicago would come to Winnetka and play in her living room. 

“I really thought they would laugh me out of the room, but they all said, ‘Yes,’” she told The Record. “They kept saying, ‘We love the intimate concert, we love the house concerts, they’re hard to find,’ so that’s what launched all of this.”

On top of the in-house performances, the artists would often stay overnight at the Haller’s Winnetka home (and, to this day, often do), providing the artists with free lodging.

The unique setup led the Hallers to purchase the name “There’s a Band in My Basement,” which garnered a reality-television offer.

“At first, (for) our then college-aged kids, it was like, ‘Mom’s in the music business, how awkward,’” Mark Haller said. “They didn’t want to talk about it, and then … when mom could get them tickets to shows, they started to warm up. At one point, one of our kids said, ‘Oh mom you should really know this band.’ Val had to tread lightly because she’s like, ‘Uh, actually, they’ve slept in your bed already.’”

The build-up

Don’t talk during the show … and fill the tip jar generously.” 
Val Haller’s two rules for the concert series

These house concerts quickly became a bit of a local phenomenon or, as Val Haller put it, “an underground scene in the middle of Winnetka.” Eventually, it got to the point where she would send out an invite and about 100 people would RSVP “yes” almost immediately.

The format, too, was deliberate. The concerts were (and continue to be) seated, free, pre-dinnertime (mostly at 4 p.m.), one-hour shows held on Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays. 

Val Haller only had two “rules”: “Don’t talk during the show — listen, engage with the stage; and fill the tip jar generously.” 

“It was a tip model from the very beginning,” Mark Haller said. “People were generous. … This was our way of directly giving to an artistic endeavor.”

To this day, the audience is quiet, in a way that, Mark Haller said, doesn’t foment a “sterile” environment but is attentive and respectful.

Those who can give are encouraged to provide a tip of $20 per person toward the artist.

While the heart and impetus behind this year-round concert series remains the same, after seven years of Haller-home concerts, the events moved to the Winnetka Chapel at 630 Lincoln Ave, which has a capacity of 250 guests.

The Winnetka Music Fest, held annually in the summer and now entering its ninth year, grew, too, out of these home-turned-chapel concerts. The Hallers and their business partner, Scott Myers, are currently in the process of developing the 2025 Music Fest’s lineup for which pre-sale tickets are now available online.

The bridge

A packed house for a Winnetka Chapel performance.

The Valslist live concerts at the Winnetka Chapel stage, however, are still Val Haller’s “baby,” as she put it. 

“These chapel concerts are really my passion,” Val Haller said. “They’re the underground thing that started all of this, and they make such a direct impact on these starving artists who are trying to make it in the world.”

The Hallers’ work takes some of the stress off of the artists; while at some venues, the artists might have to meet a guest quota by utilizing their own networks, Val Haller does the legwork for them and introduces them to new audiences by sending the invite directly to her well-established and ever-growing mailing list. 

“I almost could sort of weep because we have built such a robust, honest music community, one fan and one artist at a time,” she said. “We’ve literally built a community that’s grown by word of mouth. It’s grown by passionate people bringing their friends saying, ‘You have to get to one of these.’”

She recently instituted a new element, placing pieces of paper on every chair with one side having a QR code to digitally tip the bands and another side left blank for attendees to write notes to the band, creating another layer of the audience-artist connection.

The hook

The Winnetka Chapel itself has been given renewed life through this process. For years prior, the chapel, part of the Winnetka Congregational Church, had not been in use. 

When the Hallers and Myers launched the Winnetka Music Fest, a member of the chapel’s board reached out to propose the space as a venue, opening up the space and allowing the Hallers to help “breathe new life into it,” as Val Haller put it, through the concert series. 

With the collaboration and cooperation of the chapel board, the Hallers said they intend to put more effort and funds into the chapel to continue improving the space. 

As the concert series continues to grow, the Hallers are doing what they can to find out how to make the shows more accessible for parents with young children. 

They are considering the possibility of offering childcare at the church or near the venue so that parents don’t have to pay for a babysitter and can attend the show prior to, for example, going to dinner with their kids and supporting a local restaurant — a part, too, of the Hallers desire to support the North Shore community at large. 

Val Haller said she is trying to “fill a niche that” may not get as much attention, which is supporting audience members over the age of 30, aka, those who are “busy adults,” according to Mark Haller.

“We’re saying, you’re no longer in school, you no longer have quite the degrees of freedom that you had before,” Mark Haller said. “And if somebody can make it easier for you to stay engaged and to know what’s going on in music and to sample it from time to time, that’s a good thing.”

Picking up where he left off, Val Haller added, “It’s like a groovy sort of kumbaya  — everybody’s there for the music, and it’s exactly what music is supposed to do: bring people together for one hour. And the thing that I love is it’s a home run when I have every age group in there. It’s a home run because everybody is different and everybody might be hearing and consuming the music differently, but together.”

The schedule of the upcoming Valslist live concerts at the Winnetka Chapel Stage can be found below and online via the Winnetka Chapel’s website.

WINNETKA CHAPEL SCHEDULE

7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 7: Hot Like Mars (funk, soul, jazz, R&B)

4 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 23: Motherfolk (indie rock)

4 p.m. Saturday, March 8: Widemouth (indie folk)

4 p.m. Saturday, April 5: UR Mom (alt-rock)

4 p.m. Saturday, April 26: Jake Allen (guitar savant/singer songwriter/with rock harpist)

4 p.m. Saturday, May 3: Minor Moon (indie rock)


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Zoe Engels

Zoe Engels (she/her) is a writer and translator, currently working on a book project, from Chicagoland and now based in New York City. She holds a master's degree in creative nonfiction writing and translation (Spanish, Russian) from Columbia University and a bachelor's in English and international affairs from Washington University in St. Louis.

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