“You take the man out of the city, not the city out the man.”
Those lyrics, from Djo’s “End of Beginning,” have never been truer as musician and actor Joe Keery prepares to return to the Windy City for a set at Lollapalooza.
Many fans will recognize Keery from the Netflix show “Stranger Things,” in which he stars as Steve Harrington, or from Season 5 of FX’s “Fargo” as Gator Tillman.
But for the better part of 2025, it’s been all about music for Keery. And because Chicago is where he came up as a musician, as guitarist and vocalist of the indie rock band Post Animal, there’s no better venue than Grant Park.
In a recent interview, the Newburyport, Massachusetts, native said he’s “excited” to get back to Chicago, where he studied theater at DePaul University.
Besides performing at Lollapalooza, he said he has plans to catch up with old friends and may even hit up Allende Restaurant, just steps away from the Lincoln Park campus. And at the top of his mind is a dip into Lake Michigan at Montrose Beach.
“In terms of a place to be during summer, Chicago is such an amazing spot,” Keery said.
Djo’s music soared in popularity last year with “End of Beginning.”
The last time the Sun-Times spoke with Keery, “End of Beginning” was one of the most popular sounds on TikTok. Though the song was released in 2022, fans made edits using the popular verse: “And when I’m back in Chicago, I feel it.”
It’s a song about closing the chapter on his life in Chicago before moving to New York City.
The last time Keery was in the city for his first Lollapalooza, he said the moment was “a real blur.”
“Singing that song, specifically in Chicago, was a real out-of-body experience that I feel like I went somewhere else for,” Keery said last year of singing “End of the Beginning” at Lollapalooza in 2022.
Three albums later (including Post Animal’s “Iron,” which dropped Friday), Keery said he feels like he and the band have “a lot more experience.”
Playing festivals is always difficult, Keery said, because attendees move from stage to stage, hoping to catch a bit of everything.
But he’s intending to “relax a little bit more” this time around, soaking up the experience for the “special weekend.”
It’s the first album Post Animal has dropped since Keery left in 2019, and it includes vocals and instrumentation from all six original members.
“We wrote the whole thing together,” Keery said.
Post Animal’s “Iron” is playful, collaborative and showcases the deep friendship among all six musicians. It blends the classics and explores genres like vintage rock and folk music on the 10-track record.
Keery and Post Animal will also kick off the Another Bite Tour, with stops all across North America, including Thalia Hall in Pilsen, this fall. Djo will not be at that show.
The project felt like a reunion, Keery said, adding they picked up right where they left off on the band’s 2018 album (the last one Keery worked on with the group), “When I Think of You in a Castle.” To record that album, they all traveled to a friend’s lake house in Michigan.
This time, Keery and his bandmates similarly packed up their things and headed to Bloomington, Indiana, to work on “Iron” with music producers Charles Glanders and Dalton Allison.
“We just wanted to make music again together,” he said. “And they were happy enough to have me along. … It felt like even more than ever, the egos were kind of put aside, and everybody was playing different instruments. And it was the most fluid I think it ever felt.”
In April, Keery dropped his third solo studio album, “The Crux.” His first two albums were recorded in his bedroom and then during the pandemic, respectively, so by his third album, he wanted to write and be in the studio as much as possible.
The third album focuses on themes of identity, disorientation and the growing pains that come with starting a new chapter in life. Keery’s vocals cover a wide range of styles, but Djo’s synthy pop-rock sound remains the musician’s signature.
“The Crux” took about two years to come together, especially between filming for his various acting commitments. In addition to his television obligations, Keery was also in the 2023 Italian period drama “Finalmente L’Alba,” which became available for viewing in the U.S. on streaming platforms in July.
For now, Keery is focusing on his music but hasn’t ruled out returning to his theater roots.
“I’d love to do that,” he said. “I spent all my time at DePaul doing theater, so it’d be great to maybe hop back into that. And it would be, I’m sure, extremely terrifying after taking a pretty long break from doing that, but that could be a nice way to sort of shake things up.”
And though Keery couldn’t dish out details of what happens in the final season of “Stranger Things,” he said closing out this chapter of his life feels “bittersweet.”
“It’s always hard to say goodbye to things,” he said, noting that this is the end of an era. “But the friendships and the work relationships that I feel like I’ve made throughout the process of doing this show are not something that are going to go away.”
Netflix is set to drop the first part of the final season of “Stranger Things” on Nov. 26.
Djo will perform at 6:40 p.m. Friday on the T-Mobile Stage.