PEORIA MAGAZINE August 2023

Joe Shadid performed at the Peoria Riverfront Museum in July, with his parents (back row) in the audience

his childhood home in the Peoria neighborhood The Knolls. There, his mother Jane would play records and CDs (The Beatles, Crosby, Stills & Nash), while her relatives would drop by and request older pop (Henry Mancini, Perry Como). Said mother Jane Shadid: “In the household I grew up in, and the house hold my children grew up in, there was always music playing.” Little Joe took in all the sounds, but his ears especially perked up whenever The Beatles came on. When he was 5, he decided listening to music wasn’t enough: He wanted to play it. For that Christmas, he asked for a guitar. And Santa delivered. “I just wanted to learn those Beatles songs,” Shadid said. ‘HE WAS ROCK ‘N’ ROLL. I WANTED TO BE LIKE THAT’ As he got older, Shadid wanted more Beatles, more music. When he was about 9, he and brother Jim, 18 months his senior, stared longingly at the nearby Coconuts record shop at Sheridan Village. The problem: It was on the other side of Sheridan Road, a

busy thoroughfare their parents had forbidden them to cross. “It’s so close,” they’d say to each other, peering across traffic from The Knolls. “It’s right there.” One day, their pockets stuffed with meager funds, they waited until there was no traffic, then dashed across Sheridan. Opening the front door to the record store, they entered a new and wonderous world, one filled with endless CDs. That first day, Joe bought A Hard Day’s Night , while Jim opted for another Beatles’ soundtrack, Help! They’d return often, sometimes going for offerings by ‘90s acts such as Soundgarden and Stone Temple Pilots, but they’d routine ly buy more Beatles albums. As a teen, Shadid got serious about the guitar. He headed to Flores Music, where he took lessons from Danny Greuter. A gigging guitarist, Greuter looked the part, with long blond hair and legit rock swagger. “He was a pretty big influence,” Shadid said. “He was rock ‘n’ roll. And I wanted to be like that.” Greuter, now 63, still teaches guitar at Flores – and still has the long hair.

“Joe was just a great kid,” Greuter said. “He practiced and worked hard. “I just love that he’s taken my in fluence and turned it into his own space. I couldn’t be prouder. I feel like a Japanese sensei.” ‘A WILD TIME’ As a teen many years earlier, Greuter had played guitar on the streets and in the bars of Peoria. Shadid would follow in those footsteps, with bands outside and inside Kelleher’s Irish Pub & Eatery. His parents would drop him off, then pick him up later – though not on school days at Richwoods High School. ‘OMIGOSH! HOW IS THIS GOING TO WORK?’ — Mom Jane Shadid His post-graduation plans did not follow the workaday routines of his two biggest influences: his paternal grandfather, who before politics had long worked as a Peoria cop; and his father, James Shadid, an attorney who later became a state and federal judge. Instead, Joe Shadid told his parents that he wanted to keep playing his

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