Joliet East alum creates ‘coming-of-age’ song with Joliet nostalgia

In 1979, Joliet resident Dave McBride stood on the Route 80 overpass on Cherry Hill Road, feeling lost and without direction.

So McBride decided to head west, and he didn’t stop until he reached California in 1980. Last fall, the Joliet East High School alumnus returned to Joliet for his 50th class reunion and reconnected with people he hadn’t seen in 50 years.

Some of those former classmates also had attended Culbertson Elementary School in Joliet with McBride, the now singer-songwriter said.

The reconnections spurred McBride to write and record the coming-of-age, semi-autobiographical, straight-from-the-heart song “Joliet.” McBride also created a “Joliet” music video filled with his own “then and now” photos.

Music is the one thing that reaches people. That’s especially neat, I think.”

—  Dave McBride, Joliet East High School alumnus and creator of the song "Joliet"

“I’ve had that longing to get reconnected with Joliet for some time,” McBride said in an email, “and having lost my mother right before the trip, it was indeed a very soulful journey.”

McBride said he traveled the California Zephyr route by train from his home in the San Francisco Bay area to Naperville. McBride said he also sang cover songs and played his acoustic guitar for about “25 fellow travelers in the lounge car as we pulled out of Denver Union Station.”

He later played a benefit in Saugatuck, Michigan, he said.

“I’ve strummed the guitar since college – having given up the clarinet and marching band after The Beatles played ‘[The] Ed Sullivan [Show]’ – but didn’t have the nerve to sing in public until I turned 60 in 2015,” McBride said in an email. “I played over 400 open mics over the next three years, making up for lost time; got to meet and sing with my distant cousin from the Grateful Dead at his Terrapin Crossroads venue here in San Rafael [in California]; and started getting my own gigs around Marin and Sonoma counties.”

In 2022, McBride attended a songwriters boot camp in Nashville, Tennessee, and recorded his first single, “My First Rodeo.” McBride said that song was inspired by his first love and first heartache in his youth.

He pointed out a line in the song about never having been west of Route 52. He was a shy child who “didn’t get out much,” he said.

McBride said that’s ultimately why he left Joliet.

“I really felt like I had to escape Joliet to find myself,” McBride said in the email.

In retuning to Joliet, McBride also reconnected with landmarks and parts of himself that he’d left behind.

McBride said he drove all over Joliet, reacquainting himself with places such as Highland Park – “It’s a lot smaller than I remember” – Pilcher Park and the site of the former artisan “flowing” well, and Woodruff Golf Course, where he once worked.

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“I went to McBride’s to see if they were related,” McBride said. “They’re not.”

He parked his car near downtown Joliet and walked over one of the drawbridges.

“I’d never walked over one of those bridges before,” McBride said.

He visited the area in downtown Joliet where his grandmother lived on Webster Street.

“I just went bumming all over Joliet,” McBride said.

He recalled the major fire at Washington Junior High School in Joliet when he was in the seventh grade. And he recalled one of the youths who had killed 14-year-old David Stukel of Joliet in 1968.

“You just wanted to avoid eye contact and stay out of his radar,” McBride said, adding that he has since read “Fourteen: The Murder of David Stukel” by former Joliet resident Bill O’Connell.

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McBride said he even went out to the site on Laraway Road where his brother Jeffrey McBride was killed in a car crash in 1979.

“It’s weird, but I’d never gone out to that site,” he said.

McBride said his “Joliet” song, although rooted in his Joliet memories, really embodies universal human emotions that should resonate with most listeners.

“Music is the one thing that reaches people,” McBride said. “That’s especially neat, I think.”

Listen to “Joliet” on McBride’s YouTube channel at youtube.com/@davemcbride415.