Just a few hours after setting out for Florida, Scott Ligon realized what he’d gotten himself into. He was on his way to a gig he’d impulsively accepted the day before–a month playing keyboard on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. His latest band had just broken up, and he’d been thinking that it was time to leave Morton, Illinois, the Peoria suburb where he’d spent much of his life, and try out the music scene in New York. But the cruise seemed like an easy way to earn some money while he thought about it a little more. So, with passport in hand, he climbed into a van headed for Miami with a bunch of musicians he’d never met.
That was five years ago. After the cruise, Ligon abandoned the New York idea and moved to Chicago, where he knew more musicians and where he’d be near his girlfriend in DeKalb. Approximately eight bands later, he’s earned a reputation as a versatile guitar player, keyboardist, and singer with a vast repertoire. He’s played with legends like Mighty Joe Young and Wanda Jackson, appeared on The Tonight Show with the Redwalls, and collaborated with Kelly Hogan, Anna Fermin, Robbie Fulks, Nora O’Connor, Kevin O’Donnell, and Joel Paterson, among others.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
His low profile doesn’t seem to bother him. “I’m not going to get out there and bust my butt trying to get on some label somewhere,” Ligon says. “I’ve completely stopped thinking of music in terms of the music business. As far as I’m concerned, there is no music business. I don’t care about selling anything. Let the rest of the world sell shit. I’m just not going to do it. When you’re a kid and you tell somebody, ‘I want to be a musician,’ they think that you mean, ‘I want to be famous. I want to be a star.’ I never wanted to be a star. I just wanted to play good music.”
In 1981, when he was in sixth grade, Ligon and his best friend, a fifth grader named Josh Shane, started a band called Jam. “We didn’t know there was a band called the Jam,” Ligon says. Rounding out the group were Shane’s older brother and another friend, both of whom were in junior high. Their first gig was a talent show in a church basement. “We all wore tan jackets–how rock ‘n’ roll is that?” Ligon says. “We had this huge marching bass drum that we laid on its side, and Josh played it with a maraca. We played ‘Let It Be.’”
In 1992 Ligon moved to Chicago with his girlfriend at the time. “We both just kind of thought it was a good idea, probably more so her than me,” he says. He kept touring with Dollface and did the occasional River City Soul Revue gig, but he also took a day job at a nursing home to help pay the bills. “I did all right at that,” he says. “I’m pretty proud of that.” But between the job and his girlfriend, who he says had a knack for starting arguments right before a gig, he had less and less time for music.
“I had a deep sense of foreboding when I got off the phone,” Hogan says. “It was either going to fly or it was going to crash horribly.” The night before the show they rehearsed in her living room. “I have a recording of that night, and I swear to you that you cannot tell the difference between that night and Kelly and I singing three years later,” Ligon says. “It was that instinctual.” They started performing together once a week at the Hideout, singing harmony-heavy tunes like the Louvin Brothers’ “I Wish You Knew” and “Pitfall.” At first Ligon drove up from Morton every week, but within a month, Hogan says, “I forcibly extricated him to Chicago.”
“Everybody wants to make music with him,” Hogan says. “It’s like having five guys in one. He can do everything.” A few years ago, he started doing a party trick called the Hypnotic Wheel at the country calendar shows. The bit consists of Chris “mesmerizing” Scott by spinning a cardboard wheel painted with a red-and-white spiral, then shouting something along the lines of, “You are Buck Owens! You are the Lovin’ Spoonful!” while Ligon jumps from one musical imitation to the next.
