BY SCOTT — It was Lyle Lovett that got Kerry and me headed towards Chicago in the first place, so I suppose some of the thanks for our great time in the Windy City should go to him. We booked tickets to his Aug. 1, Saturday night live performance in the Chicago Theatre a couple months in advance of our trip. As the date drew closer, we set about filling in the blanks with other live acts to occupy us the rest of the weekend. I think we ended up with an impressive itinerary.

We decided to skip Lollapalooza, which also happened to be going on while we were in town. Based on our research, we figured the crowds would be a little too loud, a little too young for us. We resolved to try and catch Paul McCartney, Metallica and Alabama Shakes some other time. After seeing several thousand “Loozas” walking the streets on Saturday and Sunday — in various stages of dress and sobriety — we decided we had made the right decision.

Not that we didn’t consume a few alcoholic beverages ourselves. At one point Friday afternoon, we stopped by the Virgin Hotel on Wabash Avenue to relax our legs. At the Commons Club bar on the second floor, we bumped into a great young bartender named Paris. We tried a couple of his well-prepared mixed drinks, talked about upcoming movies, and left with goofy smiles and a list of local restaurants to try.

The first-floor exterior of the Tribune Tower is ringed with chunks and pieces of U.S. and world history, including a brick from Independence Hall and this bit of history from Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto’s visit to our home state (circa 1541).

We spent Friday afternoon in the area around the Michigan Avenue Bridge, where we stepped through the lengthening shadows of Trump Tower, the Wrigley Building, and my favorite, the neo-Gothic Tribune Tower with its ground-level display of bricks and other fragments from historically important sites around the world imbedded directly into the exterior. As the clear, blue sky faded to black, we ambled back to the Hyatt Magnificent Mile, where we settled into a couple of chairs at the bar just in time to hear Tommi Zender begin his first set.

Illinois-based artist Tommi Zender was the Friday night live entertainment at the bar in our downtown hotel. Zender, from nearby Evanston, Illinois, wasn’t playing to a huge crowd, but the singer-songwriter had our undivided attention. According to his website (www.tommizender.com), Zender plays a multitude of instruments and often walks well off the beaten path, musically speaking. He’s also played concert tributes to David Bowie, George Harrison, the Bee Gees and the Rolling Stones through the years. On Friday night, he showed infinite patience with a couple of mainstream music fans who struggled initially to find the appropriate genre from which to generate song requests. We finally got into the groove, and even came home with a copy of his 2005 music CD “Will Work for Harmony,” available for download at his website. Hopefully, the beer we offered to buy Mr. Zender made up for the fact that we had probably had one too many ourselves by that point in the evening.

On Saturday, our quest for live entertainment found us cutting through the suburbs on Chicago’s elevated subway, the “El”. The Green Mill Jazz Club is 30 minutes north of the Loop, and looks like it was probably a pretty cool place back in the 1920s, when it operated as an illegal speakeasy crammed with snazzily-dressed guys and dolls, Chicago crime boss Al Capone among them.

The Green Mill isn’t very hard to find when you step off the Red Line at Lawrence, with its panel truck-sized marquee and 500 twinkling lights — which is only about half bad, considering there's space for at least 1,000 bulbs in the sign.

The place isn’t very hard to find when you step off the Red Line at Lawrence, with its panel truck-sized marquee and 500 twinkling lights — which is about half bad, considering there seems to be space for at least 1,000 bulbs in the sign. Inside, the wall murals are well tanned thanks to nearly a century of wafting nicotine (the Green Mill opened as Pop Morse’s Roadhouse in 1907; Chicago outlawed smoking in bars in 2005); there’s a lamp behind the bar that is older than anyone whose name you’ve ever heard spoken at your family reunion; and either the booth we sat in was still sporting its original coat of avocado green felt, or I will kiss. Your. Ass.

The Green Mill has been around since 1907, and was once frequented by Chicago gangster Al Capone. If it sounds like I’m describing a bar that’s more “hole” than “wall” then I’m doing it wrong. The place has a charm I cannot describe. We paid $24 for one round of drinks (pay as you go, cash only) just past 2 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and still didn’t want to leave. I insisted on having my picture taken in front of the half-lit sign out front; that lamp was probably a damned fine antique; and the fabric in our booth was cleaner than anything in my house.

Sadly, the live jazz band was finishing up as we arrived. Unknowingly, we had stumbled into the regular Saturday afternoon performance of the “Paper Machete” live podcast. On its website (www.thepapermacheteshow.com), creator/host Christopher Piatt describes “Paper Machete” as a “free, weekly live magazine covering pop culture, current events and American manners.” The show often features performances by well-known comedians — including, in recent weeks, Hannibal Buress and “SNL” alum Julia Sweeney — and is not recommended for thin-skinned conservatives.

The 3,880-seat Chicago Theatre on State Street is practically a working museum. Gawking at the interior is a nice way to pass time before the show starts.

The major highlight of our weekend came a few hours later. I’ve seen a few live shows in my 45 years, among them Waylon Jennings, Bob Dylan, Edwin McCain, George Strait, Jerry Reed and Tony Bennett. I can state here, unequivocally, that Lyle Lovett’s performance in the 3,880-seat Chicago Theatre topped them all. We had splendid seats in a booth on the mezzanine level of the nearly century-old masterpiece, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places since 1979. It’s a good thing they turned down the lights when the show started, otherwise I would never have been able to stop staring at the French Baroque-inspired gilded ceiling, crystal chandeliers, bronze light fixtures, and hand-painted murals.

When the show started, I quickly turned my attention from the pretty interior to the plain-looking man playing lead guitar. Lyle Lovett and his Large Band will blow you away in person — literally, for four of the 20 artists on stage comprise the band’s horn section. Toss in a couple more guitarists, a drummer, keyboard and steel guitar players, backup singers, a grand pianist and Luke Bulla — the best damned fiddle player that ever was, or the next round’s on me — and I can just about guarantee that you’ll dance your way down the grand staircase and out to the State Street sidewalk when the show is over. We certainly did. If you don’t believe me when I tell you how unbelievable a live Lyle Lovett show really is, go see for yourself (www.lylelovett.com).

The mixed drink was stiff, the local IPA was ice cold and filling, and the laughs were non-stop at The Second City performance of “Soul Brother, Where Art Thou?”

The weekend’s minor highlight came on Sunday night. Kerry and I headed to Old Town, a few miles north of downtown, to take in a performance of “Soul Brother, Where Art Thou?” at The Second City (www.secondcity.com). Our seats inside the cozy, low-ceiling E.T.C. Theater were on the rail, only a few feet from the stage that has helped launch the careers of Bob Odenkirk, Chris Farley, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey and dozens of other well-known comedians through the years. Critic Alan Bresloff of “Around the Town Chicago” recently called the six-person show a “fast-paced, high-energy romp that will leave you in hysterics.” I couldn’t agree more. Director Anthony LeBlanc and cast members Carisa Barecca, Eddie Mujica, Tim Ryder, Lisa Beasley, Scott Morehead and Rashawn Nadine Scott will grab your funny bone and rattle it violently for two hours.

Looking back, those 120 minutes — and the entire weekend, really — seemed to fly by. If only we had known how much we were going to enjoy our weekend of live performances in Chicago, we’d have planned to stay a little longer and take in a few more shows. Certainly, there are plenty of places on the restaurant list Paris the bartender gave us that we never made it to. I suppose we’ll have to go back sometime soon.