After becoming a North Riverside firefighter at age 35, lifelong Chicago resident Austin Nicholl took up another venture: writing.
“You spend quite a bit of time at the fire station. It’s 24-hour shifts, and instead of watching ‘Shawshank Redemption’ or some movie favorite at the firehouse for the 40th time, I decided to steal myself away in the back office and start the research,” Nicholl told the Landmark.
Those efforts led to the self-publishing of Nicholl’s first book, “Smile on Your Brother,” in 2013, a nonfiction work about the aftereffects of the death of a 20-year-old Marine who died in 1968 during the Vietnam War.
“It seems like a common thing. People think that they have a book in them in some way, shape or form,” he said. “I wanted to prove it to myself, whether I did or whether I didn’t, and the topic for the first book was dropped in my lap.”
Now, more than 12 years later, Nicholl has published two more books, both memoirs: “Minutes to Memories,” published in 2023, about Nicholl’s childhood loves of sports in the ‘70s, and “Expecting to Fly,” published last March, about his experiences in Chicago’s live music scene in the ‘80s.
Nicholl said the inspiration for “Expecting to Fly” began during the 2020 and 2021 COVID-19 lockdowns, when his family and friends would find refuge in music together.
“We would get together at friends’ basements, or a friend of mine owns a venue on Chicago’s lakefront, and he would generously open that up,” he said. “People were dealing with a lot. Death was everywhere. I was still on the fire department at the time, and the stress levels were off the charts … Music became a salvation. We would get together and forget the stresses of the day, enjoy each other’s company through the love of music.”
That period made Nicholl think of his time in college and in his 20s during the 1980s and the sense of community he and his friends found in the live music scene back then.
“We’d study hard all week, trying to do what we could, also working jobs to pay our tuition and put ourselves through school. I was going to Loyola University at the time. On the weekends, we would hit the clubs in Chicago, looking for music to unwind and have some fun,” he said. “With no cell phones, it was more of a communal atmosphere. People were focused on the music and having fun; they weren’t looking to make content or record the shows.”
Due to the book’s nature as a memoir, Nicholl said he only had to do a small amount of research, with the rest of its contents coming from his memories.
“I only had to do a couple of interviews with some of the people who were at the shows with me and the musicians who played with me to get their input. ‘First of all, do you remember the show? Do you remember it like I did? Do you remember the places we were at, the things we did, and the time of your life that we were going through at the time?’” he said. “‘Did it mean as much to you as it did to me?’”
The author, who retired from North Riverside’s fire department about five years ago after 24 years on the force, described the process of writing the memoir as gratifying.
“I was gratified to get the same feeling, same responses that I had thought about myself. What it can bring to our reality, [music] is kind of a remedy for everyone suffering with anxiety, depression, some people with loneliness. I was so heartened to hear people say that they felt music was a salvation for them, and I tried to encapsulate that in the book with all the stories that I told,” he said.
“I’ve been pretty gratified at the response to it, with people coming up to me saying, ‘Hey, I was at that show,’ or, ‘You really hit the nail on the head about what music can bring to our lives,’” he added. “Even those times back then, the 1980s, which gave a feel for a Chicago that’s long gone, but it was a really special time.”
“Expecting to Fly,” and Nicholl’s other two books, are available for purchase on Amazon.
