Bonnie Koloc - Wild and Recluse 1978

Folk singer/songwriter Bonnie Koloc was a major presence in Chicago's songwriting scene during the 1970s, recording two albums for the major Epic label at the end of that decade. Born February 6, 1946, Koloc grew up on the outskirts of Waterloo, Iowa, in difficult circumstances. Her father made a meager living at a John Deere tractor factory, and her parents divorced when she was 12. "I wore a lot of hand-me-downs, and I thought that people who had indoor johns must be rich," she told The Chicago Tribune in 1988. But she loved singing from the age of three. At the University of Northern Iowa, she did poorly in classes because she was beginning to find club gigs, and she dropped out in 1968 to travel to Chicago and try to make her way in the city's burgeoning folk music scene. A fixture at the Earl of Old Town club, she rivaled John Prine and Steve Goodman in popularity in the early '70s. With a distinctive songwriting style shaped by jazz and blues inflections (the Ed Holstein composition "Jazzman" became one of her trademarks, and she also often appeared in his club, Holstein's), she was signed to the Ovation label and released the album After All This Time in 1971. Five more albums on Ovation followed, with enough success that Koloc was signed to Epic, issuing the Close-Up and Wild and Recluse albums in 1976 and 1978, respectively. She took time off to begin a second career as a visual artist in the early '80s but returned with the Flying Fish album With You on My Side in 1987. In 2010 she issued Beginnings, collecting live recordings of some of her early shows in Chicago and downstate Illinois. As of the late 2010s, Koloc was living in Iowa and teaching art but often returned for performances in Chicago, where she has maintained a strong fan base. An appreciation of her role in the city's folk scene has been impeded by a lack of CD reissues of much of her work and its absence from major online music services. AMG.

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Bonnie Koloc - You're Gonna Love Yourself In The Mornin 1974

Folk singer/songwriter Bonnie Koloc was a major presence in Chicago's songwriting scene during the 1970s, recording two albums for the major Epic label at the end of that decade. Born February 6, 1946, Koloc grew up on the outskirts of Waterloo, Iowa, in difficult circumstances. Her father made a meager living at a John Deere tractor factory, and her parents divorced when she was 12. "I wore a lot of hand-me-downs, and I thought that people who had indoor johns must be rich," she told The Chicago Tribune in 1988. But she loved singing from the age of three. At the University of Northern Iowa, she did poorly in classes because she was beginning to find club gigs, and she dropped out in 1968 to travel to Chicago and try to make her way in the city's burgeoning folk music scene. A fixture at the Earl of Old Town club, she rivaled John Prine and Steve Goodman in popularity in the early '70s. With a distinctive songwriting style shaped by jazz and blues inflections (the Ed Holstein composition "Jazzman" became one of her trademarks, and she also often appeared in his club, Holstein's), she was signed to the Ovation label and released the album After All This Time in 1971. Five more albums on Ovation followed, with enough success that Koloc was signed to Epic, issuing the Close-Up and Wild and Recluse albums in 1976 and 1978, respectively. She took time off to begin a second career as a visual artist in the early '80s but returned with the Flying Fish album With You on My Side in 1987. In 2010 she issued Beginnings, collecting live recordings of some of her early shows in Chicago and downstate Illinois. As of the late 2010s, Koloc was living in Iowa and teaching art but often returned for performances in Chicago, where she has maintained a strong fan base. An appreciation of her role in the city's folk scene has been impeded by a lack of CD reissues of much of her work and its absence from major online music services. AMG.

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Bonnie Koloc - After All This Time 1971

Folk singer/songwriter Bonnie Koloc was a major presence in Chicago's songwriting scene during the 1970s, recording two albums for the major Epic label at the end of that decade. Born February 6, 1946, Koloc grew up on the outskirts of Waterloo, Iowa, in difficult circumstances. Her father made a meager living at a John Deere tractor factory, and her parents divorced when she was 12. "I wore a lot of hand-me-downs, and I thought that people who had indoor johns must be rich," she told The Chicago Tribune in 1988. But she loved singing from the age of three. At the University of Northern Iowa she did poorly in classes because she was beginning to find club gigs, and she dropped out in 1968 to travel to Chicago and try to make her way in the city's burgeoning folk music scene. A fixture at the Earl of Old Town club, she rivaled John Prine and Steve Goodman in popularity in the early '70s. With a distinctive songwriting style shaped by jazz and blues inflections (the Ed Holstein composition "Jazzman" became one of her trademarks, and she also often appeared his club, Holstein's), she was signed to the Ovation label and released the album After All This Time in 1971. Five more albums on Ovation followed, with enough success that Koloc was signed to Epic, issuing the Close-Up and Wild and Recluse albums in 1976 and 1978, respectively. She took time off to begin a second career as a visual artist in the early '80s, but returned with the Flying Fish album With You on My Side in 1987. In 2010 she issued Beginnings, collecting live recordings of some of her early shows in Chicago and downstate Illinois. As of the late 2010s Koloc was living in Iowa and teaching art but often returned for performances in Chicago, where she has maintained a strong fan base. An appreciation of her role in the city's folk scene has been impeded by a lack of CD reissues of much of her work, and its absence from major online music services. AMG.

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Bonnie Koloc - Wild and Recluse 1978

Bonnie Koloc (born February 6, 1946 in Waterloo, Iowa) is an American folk music singer-songwriter, actress, and artist who was considered one of the three main Illinois-based folk singers in the 1970s, along with Steve Goodman and John Prine forming the "trinity of the Chicago folk scene.". Koloc was the least successful of the three, but her material did sell modestly.
Koloc was born to a working-class family: "I guess you could say we were poor; we lived in a cement block house outside the city limits of Waterloo, IA, and my dad worked in the John Deere factory. Money was very tight. I wore a lot of hand-me-downs, and I thought that people who had indoor johns must be rich. I had a really unstable childhood, because my parents were divorced when I was 12, and there was a lot of chaos. I spent a lot of time during my high school years trying to get myself together from my childhood."

The first of her family to attend college, she enrolled in the University of Northern Iowa, first majoring in drama, then art, paying her way by singing, but earning poor grades. She abandoned her studies to go to Chicago, where she became a fixture of the influential Earl of Old Town.
She had a minor hit with "Roll Me On the Water" from the 1974 album You're Gonna Love Yourself in the Morning, but never achieved the national recognition many predicted for her.

In the 1980s, after the death of her long-time companion, she pursued a career as an actress, and performed in plays such as Joseph Papp's Broadway production of The Human Comedy, but by the late '80s, she focused on her art studies. She has resumed her musical career, and continues to tour bars and clubs. Thanks B.

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