From the jazz clubs featuring a young Louis Armstrong to the churches that birthed gospel to the dance clubs that brought house music to the world, Chicago has been home to some of the world’s greatest working musicians.

Matt Brown, who teaches at the Old Town School of Folk Music, wanted to pay homage to the city and the players who’ve made Chicago a “musical ground-zero” for performing and recording.  So he gathered an eclectic stack of songs with Chicago roots, and put together a crack studio band to record them let by guitar player and vocalist Steve Dawson. The project is called ‘On Big Shoulders’ and Brown and Dawson joined the Morning Shift to tell us more about it.