Musician and songwriter Dean Schlabowske spent nearly 40 years building an audience by returning to their towns, sharing meals and drinks after shows, and connecting with people through a common love of music.
He is now witnessing the payback. Last month, after returning from playing shows in the United Kingdom with his band the Waco Brothers, Schlabowske received a surprise medical diagnosis: Acute Myeloid Leukemia, an aggressive cancer of the blood and bone marrow that leads to heightened fatigue, shortness of breath and easy bruising.
Suddenly, his life turned upside down.
Instead of writing his next record or playing shows around town, he is now facing full days managing multiple medications, specialist appointments and chemotherapy treatments. Looming on the horizon: insurmountable medical costs, heading into the six digits.
For a musician whose income is built through touring and side jobs, both of which were no longer possible, the shift left him facing a dire outcome: “Put everything on credit cards and go bankrupt,” he said.
But then a friend in Austin, Texas, launched a fundraising campaign through GoFundMe to see if friends could help. Within a week, donors met the limit of $65,000 and it is now hovering around $80,000. Schlabowske said he does not recognize many of the donor names but suspects they all have a common trait: “They’re fans.”
“When I was super young and toured, me and the guys in the band thought it was cool to have this punk rock attitude where we were more cynical and not as outgoing and friendly, but I learned pretty quickly what you’re doing while you’re touring is creating goodwill,” he said. “You put that good karma out there for a lot of years and it pays dividends when you need it. I’m not going to lie. There are times I get pretty emotional about it.”
Schlabowske, 61, grew up in Milwaukee but moved to Chicago in 1987 where he got a job working at the legendary Wax Trax! record label. Through his noise rock band Wreck, he became a part of the city’s thriving post-punk scene for years. The trio recorded its debut EP with Steve Albini in 1990 and four years later hired Mekons co-founder Jon Langford, who had recently moved to Chicago from Wales, to produce its follow-up.
By then, Schlabowske had discovered country music and, with Langford and his fellow Welshman Tracey Dear, he formed the country punk band the Waco Brothers. The group performed its first show standing atop the bar at the Rainbo Club in Wicker Park. By 1995, the group released “To the Last Dead Cowboy,” their first recording which served as a pioneering statement for the burgeoning alternative country movement in Chicago.
With three principal songwriters — Schlabowske, Langford, and Dear — the Waco Brothers remain one of the most enduring bands out of Chicago that have tackled political and social injustice in their music for decades.
Over the years, Schlabowske released records with his side project Dollar Store and, in recent years, he collaborated with his wife, Jo Walston, who once headed the Austin band the Meat Purveyors, on playing bluegrass and honkytonk country.
Schlabowske received his diagnosis at an urgent care clinic where he went after a few weeks of feeling fatigued and nauseous. Not long after, Walston raced him to emergency care after his breath became dangerously short. After a week of procedures, he started his first round of chemotherapy. Complicating matters is the discovery of a weak heart valve that will require open heart surgery. He is commuting weekly from the couple’s Old Irving Park apartment to Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge.
Since his diagnosis, Schlabowske has put music on the back burner and is instead focusing on his regimen of appointments and medication, and taking a daily walk. He cannot see people for fear of an infection. At first, he had to board his two dogs, but they are expected home soon because he says he needs the emotional relief.
Despite the life change, he is taking everything in with a healthy dose of humor. “I’m 61. I’ve done a lot of cool [stuff]. Do I want to live to 100? Sure, but if that’s not meant for me, that’s not meant for me. This didn’t happen when I was 30. Any other way of looking at it leads to a dead end of depression,” he said.
Schlabowske and Walston recently relocated back to Chicago after living for a spell in Louisiana. He is insured through Walston’s job as a bookkeeper for a local business, but Schlabowske says the combination of a $10,000 deductible for this year and next, plus skyrocketing medical costs, make it not enough.
The response to the GoFundMe, he said, has been humbling, especially as he scrolls through donor names of people he knew or even briefly met five, 10, 20, 30 or more years ago. They are living proof of the community that music and audience can build together over years across cities, towns and even countries.
“A lot of those names that I don’t recognize are probably people I had a really pleasant conversation with at some point along the way,” he said. “I’ve always shied away from promoting myself. But I’m immensely grateful and incredibly touched that there are so many people who wanted to help out in such a big way. I never expected it.”