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The Ivas John Band performs at John Brown's on the Square on Tuesday evening in Marion Originality, and a love for live music, is what you will find in Southern Illinois. Those looking for a live show in Southern Illinois don�t have to look very long or hard to a find young, local band paying its dues to play for a crowd. Most of the shows take place in Carbondale, but venues are available in Marion, Murphysboro, and several of the smaller towns that make up this region. Southern Illinois is full of artists who are looking to play for somebody, or jump in with a band that has a vacancy, and the ones who reap the benefits of a vibrant, energetic region are the music lovers filling up the venues. In Carbondale, the city has recently started hosting the Live on Main shows, which have been a success since the Jason Isbell concert in August 2015. The Carbondale Music Coalition also takes over The Strip once a year with the Carbondale Rocks Revival. The festival takes over s...

In memory of his wife Virginia, Lexington resident Robert Schwartz brings intimacy and accessibility to the music scene. �Partly in honor of my wife and to continue the thread I wanted to start a series where people locally can come and hear live music not at symphony hall, but in an intimate venue,� said Schwartz, of Patterson Road. During the past year, Schwartz turned his home into a 40-seat concert venue bringing three professional music performances to Lexington. He is preparing for another set of performances, which he calls Musical Chairs, to start this fall. The point of the smaller venue is to give audience members the chance to get up close and personal, according to Schwartz. �One of the advantages of a house concert is it�s the way it was done during the Renaissance,� said Sheila Beardslee-Bosworth, whose band Concordia Consort plays Renaissance-era music. �In a house concert, everybody�s sitting there in an informal setting, and even though we treat it as a pro...