I first became aware of Fenne Lily in early 2017 when her song “What’s Good” showed up in my weekly Apple Music playlist. The song was a slow burn, too quiet to immediately draw me in, but catchy enough to play a few more times, and as my attention was drawn deeper into the lyrics, I became enamored. It was my most played song of 2017, remaining on my daily playlist even now.

I imagined, from this first song, Lily was someone akin to Brandi Carlile or Dar Williams: an American in her mid to late thirties who’d spent decades traveling the country, drinking in people and places, and ruminating deeply on her self. I can't speak to her process or experience, but she turned out to be English and was barely out of her teens at the time. I still can’t square the depth and insight I read from her lyrics with her youth.

On initially seeking more of her music, there were less than a handful of songs to find, but over the course of 2017 and 2018 she released a new single every couple of months, and in this way, bit by bit, she unintentionally provided my personal soundtrack for that year.

I was excited and inspired when it popped up in a Facebook post that she'd be embarking on her first American tour at the end of 2018 and one of the cities she would be visiting was Chicago.

My original vacation plans for 2018, a followup visit to Iceland, got scrapped early on in the year by a handful of emergencies, so with the funding for my original plan tapped out, I had started working on a back up: a trip back to Chicago and the Art Institute to dig a bit deeper into the enchantment the city had cast on me during my brief visit the year prior. I‘d started putting the money together for such a trip but hadn’t actualized an itinerary when I learned of Fenne Lily’s tour. She was only going to be playing two days in Chicago, and the second of those dates were already sold out, thus giving me the center I needed to build my trip around.

To me, after almost two years of listening daily to her music, she was already a fully fledged rock star, but it seems that wasn’t so much the case writ large, and her initial dip into the American touring scene was as the opening act for lad named Andy Shouf, whom I had never heard of, and didn’t care much for when I played through his more popular songs.

The club they were playing, Constellations, is one of those places which I believe qualifies as a dive. The front room where we waited for an extra half hour as sound checks were being finished (not so well one assumed from the delay), was dark, squalid, had a small, cash only bar, and bathrooms which appeared to have been haphazardly addended into the space.

My first view of Fenne Lily came as we waited in that dark holding area. Sneaking from the performance area, she made her way gingerly through the small crowd of us, heading for the front door and a smoke. Easy to spot with her bright yellow hair, I was caught off guard seeing her weave her way to the door, but outside of one or two people who apparently knew her personally, no one seemed to notice or even make way for her.

When we finally got into the performance area it wasn’t much better. The venue floor was large for the size of the space with rows of stadium seats three deep around three sides. Cheap folding chairs were set out in rows on the floor itself taking up most of its space, leaving maybe a quarter of it for the performers. We were in just a bit too late for the front row, but grabbed seats in the middle of the second.

It took most of another hour for the show to actually get started, and during that time Fenne Lily herself would wander out into onto the floor to talk to a gentleman she didn’t seem to know who was sitting with one she did. With no knowledge at all I assumed he was some important-ish person, a producer or promoter or some other actor in the music industry who had been brought in to see her perform by the gentleman she knew.

Again, to me this young lady was already a talent of renown stature, but here she was, wandering around out in the mass of us like a normal, and no one else seemed to notice.

When the set was finally ready to start, Fenne came out with her band: one young gentleman named Joe with an assortment of guitar peddles he would later entertainingly introduce us to.

She looked trepidatious donning her guitar, a scratched white electric I recognized from videos and pictures, commenting she was used to playing from an actual stage and was feeling nervous being so proximate to her audience. She had the lighting person turn the spots way down, saying, like sex, she preferred it when she couldn’t see what was happening.

She opened with “Car Park” and closed with two new songs, and never did play “What’s Good”, which I took as portentous, but in a good way which I shan’t explain.

My favorite part about being there, seeing her perform these songs I’d grown to adore and had spent a year internalizing, was the change in delivery. Where the songs as recorded tended towards the quiet and ethereal, here there was growling in place of sighing, a dark, angry passion, a clearer and more energetic rebellion against rejection and misuse as told by the lyrics.

Between songs she was entirely charming, speaking of discovering pancakes in America. Apologizing for the lack of drums, but she couldn’t afford to bring her drummer with her. How she had no label and so had to self fund her album and her part of the tour. She told us how one of songs had been inspired by a visit to a German S&M club, and the story of how she’d died briefly as a child.

In the middle of one of her songs, the strap popped loose from the bottom of her guitar swung free, hanging awkwardly from her hold on its neck. Her jaw dropped just as fast as the guitar and she stood for several seconds, mouth open, music abruptly halted. She was obviously embarrassed, and while I don’t remember the words of her comeback, I remember it being witty and spot on to the point where it felt as if the whole incident could’ve been scripted for our entertainment. Then she reattached the strap, gave Joe the go ahead, and picked up the song right where she’d left of. It was adorable.

There was an intermission after her set and before Mr. Shouf was due to come on, and at this point Dawn and I decided to go ahead and leave. If I had thought Ms. Lily was going to be doing any accompanying during the main set, or would get to do an encore with Mr. Shouf we would’ve stayed, but the impression she gave at the end of her set was of her being quite done for the evening, so as our day had started at 4 am in Dallas, we decided to be done as well.

Outside the club I ordered up a Lyft, and while we waited Ms. Lily came out for yet another smoke. She spoke for a few minutes with a group of people just out side the entrance, then started walking our way down the street.

I wasn’t sure it would be warranted or wanted, but was driven none the less to address her as she walked by: “That was amazing. Thank you so much.”

She stopped and thanked us, asked if we were going back in for the main event and I told her “No, we came to see you.”

At this point our Lyft pulled up and I was torn between continuing to engage in the embryonic conversation or leaving the lady be and making sure our Lyft driver didn’t take off in impatience, so went to get the door and great the driver. As such I didn’t hear Fenne’s response, but Dawn, who was closer and whose attention was less split, assures me she responded that we had made her night.

While she was undoubted being kindly facetious, it’s no exaggeration to say she certainly made mine.