If you’re the kind of person who likes a low-key Saturday night where you can have dinner, catch up with friends, and still hear the words to the songs, this one is right in that lane.
We’re heading back to play for the Loyal Order of Moose in Joliet on October 3. It’s a dinner night for the lodge, so most folks will already be there for the meal and to see their regular crowd. Our job is basically to be the soundtrack while people eat, talk, and maybe sing along a little when a familiar song shows up.
Moose nights are a bit different from our usual public shows. Since it’s members and guests only, the room tends to fill up with people who actually know each other. You can feel that in the way they talk across tables and call each other by name between songs. We just kind of slide into that and try not to get in the way of the conversations—more like adding a layer on top of what’s already going on.
For this one, we’re planning on a lot of songs people recognize right away: some 70s and 80s tunes, a few country favorites, and a handful of newer songs that still work fine over dinner. We usually start the first set a little softer while plates are coming out, then lean into the sing-along songs once everyone’s settled and the coffee (or second drink) has shown up.
If You Are Planning To Come Out
This is a Moose Lodge event, so it’s for members and their guests. The lodge will handle their own announcements and details on the dinner side of things.
- When: Saturday, October 3, 2026, from 6:00 – 9:00 PM
- Where: Loyal Order of Moose, 25 Springfield Ave, Joliet, IL 60435
- Who: Bell & Field (piano, guitar, and two voices)
- What to expect: Three hours of mostly familiar covers, starting easy during dinner and getting a bit livelier later on—some classic rock, mellow pop, and a few country and soul tunes mixed in.
- Venue info: Joliet Moose Lodge #300 on Facebook
About Bell & Field
We’re a piano-and-guitar duo that builds our sets around what the room seems to want—anything from Elton John, The Eagles, and Fleetwood Mac to newer songs that still work in a laid-back setting. At nights like this, we pay attention to the volume, keep the talking between songs short, and try to land on those tunes that make people at the tables nudge each other and say, “Oh, I remember this one.”
About The Venue
This one is at the Joliet Moose Lodge #300, just off Springfield Ave in Joliet. Moose shows tend to be pretty straightforward: people come for the dinner, the lodge business, and to see their usual crew, and the music fits in around that. It’s a comfortable setup for us—steady crowd, clear timing, and a room that’s used to having live music during events like this.
We’re looking forward to settling in at 6:00, letting the night build at its own pace, and seeing what songs land best with the Moose crowd this time around.
Outdoor gigs in July are always a bit of a gamble. Heat, humidity, storms – usually at least one shows up. Our live acoustic duo performance for Valley View Club’s 60th anniversary in Cambridge managed to flirt with all three and still let us get through the show.
his whole night was about anniversaries – 250 years of America and 60 years of Valley View Club. The course has been there for about one-fifth of the country’s history, which is kind of wild when you think about it.
We wrapped the main part of the night with “Wild Night,” which is always a fun one to end on, and then closed things out with “America the Beautiful” on the eve of the 4th. Greg and Paul leaned into a version that stays close to the Ray Charles arrangement – soulful, patient, and not rushed. It felt like the right way to nod to both the country’s birthday and Valley View’s 60 years.
We don’t play a lot of museums, so getting asked to be part of the Kewanee Historical Society’s 50th birthday party already felt a little different in the best way. Instead of a stage or a corner of a bar, we were set up on the mezzanine, looking down over the main floor while people came in, grabbed food, and found old friends.
The star of our setup area, though, was this bright orange vintage sofa under a painting of a Hawaiian woman who is… let’s just say, not overdressed. The painting used to hang at the old Waunee Farms restaurant, and once we saw it, we knew there was no way we were getting through the night without a photo or two.
Our second Father’s Day at Tuggers in Port Byron looked pretty different from the first one. Last year it was all sunshine on the patio and people hanging out by the river. This year: nonstop rain, temps in the upper 50s, and us hauling gear inside instead of out to the deck. Still, by the time we finished playing, it felt like exactly the kind of Father’s Day we both needed.
This show had an extra layer for Tom: his whole family was there—parents, kids, significant others, Malissa—taking over a couple of tables and making it very clearly a Father’s Day thing. Somewhere in the middle of the set, Tom took a short break to open his gifts. From Greg’s vantage point, it looked like a mini living room scene right there in the bar, which fit the mood of the day perfectly.
This was Tom’s first gig since turning fifty the week before, and that milestone was definitely in the back of his mind, as he reflected on his appreciation for family, life, and music.
We’ll be at Coal Creek Brewing Company in Princeton on Tuesday, July 21, from 5–7 PM.
Rams Riverhouse is starting to feel like our own little experiment in how many tiny things can go sideways before a show and still add up to a really good night.
Kewanee has one of those downtowns where you can still picture what it looked like a few decades ago just by walking a block or two. The Historical Society sits right in the middle of that, with the murals and old storefronts close by and the museum quietly holding all the details the sidewalks don’t show anymore.
Some Saturday nights are for squeezing into a crowded room and shouting over the music. This one at Tiny Acres is the opposite. It’s a work thing, a corporate night out, where people will probably be trying to finish a conversation they started in a meeting three months ago.
The drive over set the tone. The forecast was calling for heavy rain and possible storms, so we were half-joking, half-serious about whether this was going to turn into an “adventure gig.” Somewhere along I-80, we passed a red pickup that Tom thought might be his parents. They took an off-ramp, we kept going, and we didn’t think much of it.
About half an hour in, the skies just opened up. It poured for what felt like an hour. You could see sheets of rain pounding the patio and, in a few spots, water started sneaking into the room. The Cedar Ridge staff hustled with squeegees and towels, pushing water back out the doors and toward the drains while we kept playing.
Tom’s parents made it to the show, along with his mom’s cousin and cousin’s husband from Cedar Rapids. It had been a long time since Tom had seen them, so having them in the crowd added another layer to the day. After the set, we caught up, and that’s when the full “red pickup / side-of-the-road pee / mystery honk” story came out. That spiraled into Greg telling the story about making his wife, Noriko, stop at every floor in a Japanese elevator years ago when she really needed a bathroom. “She did not think it was funny then,” Greg said, “but 20 years later it’s… kind of funny. Maybe.”
Paul and the crew had us dialed in before we even opened a case. They’d set up a big canopy over the patio “stage” area, plus the camera feed that sends our set inside the bar. From a musician’s point of view, that setup is gold — you feel like you’re playing to two rooms at once.
One of our favorite parts of the afternoon was a couple who drifted over to this little corner lounge area just off to our side and a bit behind us. From the stage, that spot almost feels like backstage seating. They were grooving, hanging out, and applauding between songs.
Edison’s was packed on the patio from the first song, and it looked just as busy through the windows inside. A lot of folks stayed with us the whole three hours, which we don’t take for granted. Between sets and song changes we had a steady stream of conversations, requests, and people just coming up to say hi.
