A Completely SFW Chat with Porn and Chicken [Interview]

Some of electronic dance music’s biggest names, past and present, originated in Chicago, Illinois: Kaskade, Flosstradamus, the legendary Frankie Knuckles; and in the original home of house music, the scene in the Windy City, today, is as diverse as ever. To learn more, we sat down with Porn and Chicken during our first venture to Spring Awakening Music Festival, Chicago, earlier this month. Not actual porn. Not actual chicken. But, that is the name of the actual group, and their story is as wild as they come.

Comprised of four members (five if you count a costumed chicken mascot) Porn and Chicken is taking Chicago by storm with their unique blend of metal and bass music, and wildly popular, award-winning, Monday night parties at Evil Olive– a nightclub located in the city’s Wicker Park/Buckhorn neighborhood. Spring Awakening saw the group throw down its biggest and most important performance of the year. So how did this whole PxC idea come about?

DMNW: Being in Chicago, this is new territory for us…

PxC: Oh, wait- you guys are here from Seattle? What are you doing here?!

Spring Awakening!

PxC: [Cheers]

So who better to talk about Chicago’s EDM scene than Porn and Chicken!? You guys have a solid, local fan base here in the city. In our region though, maybe not as much. For our audience, how did the Porn and Chicken name come about? 

PxC: I was managing a bar in Wrigleyville called Risqué Cafe. The special we did on Mondays was all-you-can-eat Chicken wings, and we played smut- class B films. 

We did that for two weeks, and it caught on really fast. So we were like, ‘let’s bring in some DJs’, and we called it Beer. Porn. Wings. 

And then, I saw her walking down the street one day. I was like: “I don’t know what you do, but I need you to come in and bartend!” She was like: “I don’t bartend, but this is what I do.”

Then I was at another bar, and I saw Orville shredding it on a Guitar Hero control- just like, ripping it! I was like “dude, come join me. Let’s see what we can do!” Literally four weeks later, the bar was at capacity. We got shut down with a ticket. 

Then we built a door to the bar next door so we could double the capacity. Two weeks later, we were at capacity; got shut down again. So then, we moved. We all came together and were like “what do we call this?” We took everything out and it was like ‘porn and chicken’. That’s it.

What inspires your musical style?

PxC: We love metal. We love rock and roll. We wanted to infuse that in our music style. Plus bass and melting people’s fucking faces.

How would you describe Chicago’s current EDM scene?

PxC: I feel like we’re on a wave. All our homies and everyone we’re collaborating with. We’re all producers of real cool stuff that’s on a wave- on the up right now. A lot of people are collaborating together; networking together. It’s a tight-knit group of us doing real cool, unique stuff and hopefully, it breaks out of Chicago further than it already has. 

What does Spring Awakening mean to you?

PxC: It’s the biggest festival in the Midwest. It means game time for us. We spend about a month and a half preparing for Spring Awakening making new music, getting new costumes made, getting new visuals together, writing songs, rehearsing…Spring Awakening means it’s time to put on for our city. It’s one of the biggest opportunities for us to show everybody what we’re made of, and a good opportunity for the fans to show support to the artists that move the city. 

What comes next after the festival?

PxC: We’re really excited to be headlining at Pride Festival in Chicago- which is something we’ve wanted to do for a really long time. We absolutely love the queer community, so we’re excited about that.

Outside of that, we’re going to be focusing on music. We’ve been releasing a track a month. We’re going to keep doing that for the rest of the year!

So, talking about chicken. What restaurant…

PxC: Harold’s! Listen. Don’t fuck around with nothing else. Fuck all that bullshit. Harold’s Chicken is the most fire chicken- get that lemon pepper, and that mild sauce. 

Mild sauce is pretty exclusive to Chicago. It’s like hot sauce and barbecue sauce together. 

It’s nowhere else!

You can keep up with Porn and Chicken’s raucous happenings on Facebook, and listen to its music catalog on SoundCloud. Oh, and that Harold’s chicken PxC? We tried some for ourselves. Bomb. Dot. Com.