The country music festival Windy City Smokeout returned to Chicago in 2021 at the United Center parking lot, 1901 W. Madison Street. The successful street party, created by the Lettuce Entertain You restaurant group, continues to thrive even during recent challenging times and added an extra day this time.
For four days, July 8-11, the festival has a nice range of country music artists, some new ones such as the sweetheart Lainey Wilson, with only a few singles released so far, to Darius Rucker, who has had six studio albums under his belt as a solo artist, after lead singing for Hootie & the Blowfish. Grammy nominated Dierks Bentley headlines Saturday night and non traditional country crooner Jon Pardi finishes out the festival on Sunday night with a bang.