Toni Shelton, known throughout Chicago as Disco Tony, has been throwing parties since 1979. As the city's first solo female house music promoter, she's built a legacy that spans over four decades: the flyers with her face on them, the DJ battles, the iconic all-white parties that have brought Chicago's South Side community together for twenty years running.

But behind the magnetic presence and the bright red lipstick is a story that starts much harder. Toni lost her mother at seven years old. By seventeen, her grandmother was gone too, leaving her to navigate the world on her own terms. She finished high school. She went to college. She picked up a camera at nine and never put it down. And somehow, in the midst of finding her footing, she created a place where everybody else could feel at home.

In this conversation around host Lori Branch's kitchen table, Toni opens up about grief, resilience, and what it really means to be a promoter. Not just booking venues and printing flyers, but mothering a community before she ever had children of her own. Because when you grow up with nowhere to go, you learn how to build the place yourself.

Some of the best history gets told between old friends. Before there were house music producers, there were kids in basements with cheap turntables and cheaper cassette decks, staying up all night trying to get the pause button just right. Craig Loftis was one of those kids.

Craig Loftis, aka Grand High Priest, will tell you he doesn't run around waving flags about being one of Chicago's first house music producers. But the receipts are there. A track made in 1982. A night at Mendel with Frankie Knuckles that made twenty thousand dollars. Years at DJ International where the entire Chicago house music canon was being built in real time. And Mary Mary, a track that lived on the gay scene for six years before the straight market ever heard it. This is that story.

Produced by Lori Branch and Hannah Viti. Funded by a grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Events. Music provided by Craig Loftis, Boo Williams, Vick Lavender, and Steve Ty Maestro.

Without Robert Williams, there may be no house music, or at least not as we know it today. As the founder and owner of the legendary Warehouse club, the space where Frankie Knuckles first DJ'd and where a genre was born, Robert is one of the most important figures in the culture's history. And yet his full story, from foster care in Chicago to the backrooms of New York's gay nightlife scene, then back to Chicago becoming politically connected enough to keep his club untouched, is rarely told in its entirety. Host Lori Branch sits down with the man affectionately known as The Senior for a wide ranging, unfiltered conversation about the real history of the Warehouse, the Music Box, Ron Hardy, and why he believes the genre's gay roots have never been told correctly.

Produced by Lori Branch and Hannah Viti. Funded by a grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Events. Music provided by Craig Loftis, Boo Williams, Vick Lavender, and Steve Ty Maestro.