St. Charles native and folk-rocker Dan Tedesco returns to Hey Nonny

Singer-songwriter Dan Tedesco will be celebrating a homecoming of sorts when he makes a tour stop at Hey Nonny in Arlington Heights this weekend.

The St. Charles native, who now lives in Des Moines, Iowa, with his family, hasn't been back to the Arlington Heights venue since he last played it on Leap Day in February 2020, two weeks before Chicago-area venues started to shut down because of the pandemic.

Interestingly, he was promoting his just-released album "Who Knows How Long This Will Last," which was not meant to foreshadow what was lurking just around the corner.

Now, the folk artist is looking forward to moving on and getting back to performing live, bringing some new songs from last summer's "Dopamine" EP and other recent projects on both guitar and grand piano to the Hey Nonny stage.

"More than anything, I'm just excited to get back in front of my fans in the area. It's not usually a year and a half in between," Tedesco said, talking about his regular visits being delayed by the pandemic. "It was a wild thing at the time seeing how fast all of that happened."

While his performances were on hold, Tedesco used much of his time - when he wasn't creating new music - to build his latest project, the Dan Tedesco Music Channel.

The membership outlet builds on an idea Tedesco said he had 9 or 10 years ago, but with regular performances and touring he never had the time to commit to perfecting the plan.

The music scene lockdowns solved that problem. Launched in July, the channel ties together multiple sides of Tedesco's life as a musician - new songs, performance videos, written perspectives on music and fan interaction - in a unique way.

For $10 a month or $100 a year, members get a weekly email packed with links to his entire back catalog, exclusive releases on SoundCloud, private videos on YouTube and more.

"I think of it as creating a space to interact with my fan base and give them access to my artistic world," he said. "I want it to be something that opens up my world in a way for me to easily and directly communicate with my audience, but also to have a way to hear back from them."

<h3 class="briefHead">Dan Tedesco and Trevor Sensor</h3>

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday Sept. 24

Where: Hey Nonny, 10 S. Vail Ave., Arlington Heights, (224) 202-0750 or heynonny.com

Tickets: $15 for general admission standing, $20 for GA seated, $25 for cabaret seating, $35 for premiere seating