at Brimfield Public Library
Monday, June 29th
6:30pm

Free Program, Ages 18+
No Registration Required
A Summer Reading 2026 Presentation

Barry Cloyd is an award-winning songwriter, as well as a full-time touring musician, with a special love for the history and music of our own Midwest, who typically performs more than 125 shows of all types per year. In addition to a concert schedule, he was the resident stringed instrumentalist/vocalist/historian on The Spirit of Peoria Paddlewheel Riverboat for 22 years, traveling the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, prior to its sale and departure from Peoria.

Barry has also created and toured dozens of edu-tainment programs which focus on our own history, with accompanying music – one of which is, Our Land Between the Rivers, Illinois in Story & Song. It begins with a whirlwind trip back through time to the early days of the origins of our State and where its name came from – the Illiniwek Nation of Native Americans. Original songs will be performed, and take us into the time of the French Voyageurs, the first Europeans, coming into this land in the late 1600’s.

From there, we move into a brief timeline through the 1700’s, as the French give way to the British, who in turn give way to the growing class of people known as Americans. We’re then ushered into events like George Rogers Clark’s part in winning the Revolutionary War from Illinois and the beginning of the settlement of Chicago.

Events to include The Lewis & Clark Expedition and the importance of Illinois in the War of 1812 precede the entrance into the Union of Illinois as a State in 1818. From that point, the narrative slows down a bit and begins to provide a more in-depth focus, both through narrative and song, into some of the most important events and people who have shaped the amazing history of our State.

Some of the “stops along the way” include Abraham Lincoln’s appearance in Illinois, The Black Hawk War, the creation of the Illinois & Michigan Canal, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates and The Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant’s contributions, The Great Chicago Fire, the First Skyscraper, The Columbian Exposition, The Pullman Strike, Frank Lloyd Wright’s genius, the Springfield Race Riots, “Lucky Lindy” in Illinois, Al Capone, Everett Dirksen, Carl Sandburg, and a whole lot more.

All of this amazing history will be presented with songs that are germane to the period, traditional and original, performed on guitar and 5-string banjo.

Illinois has been witness to, and a participant in, many of our nation’s most important historical events. And with all of that as the backdrop, the audience will have an opportunity to step back in time for a long-range look with Barry Cloyd.