JUKEBOX HERO

Meet music man Steve Hill, a Minneapolis native who fell in love with Lake Bluff during a Fourth of July celebration and now spins vinyl at home in the village with his wife and three children.

ENTER A LIVING ROOM filled with the aroma of fireplace wood and a large cabinet of old distressed records below a spinning turntable and you’re likely to find Steve Hill. In addition to his role as Executive Vice President at Chubb Insurance, this father of three also sings and plays guitar in Bushwood—a Lake Bluff-based band consisting of Hill, Craig Pierson, Tom Cahill, Paul Bradley, and Hill’s college buddy Michael Goldsberry.

When speaking to Hill, it’s clear that he is a true music man—from his obsession with classic rock bands like Led Zeppelin and The Band to his vast collection of vintage vinyl records, ranging from crowd favorites like Bruce Springsteen, to obscure, “If You Know You Know” names such as Moby Grape.

It’s safe to say Steve has lived many lives, and his journey to Lake Bluff was not straightforward. Yet along that winding journey, music seemed to be his north star.

Hill’s first encounter with the North Shore came through one of the area’s most cherished traditions—Fourth of July. “I was interning one summer in Schaumburg, and one of my fraternity brothers from Drake University, Mike Goldsberry, convinced me to come up to Lake Bluff for the Fourth of July. One solid Fourth of July in Lake Bluff leaves an impression.”

Even though the grandiose nature of Lake Bluff’s Fourth of July celebration lingered in the back of Hill’s mind, he and his wife Anne still considered themselves “city people.” Three kids (Max, Owen, and Madeline) and multiple cities later, the Hills finally moved to Lake Bluff to put down deep roots. Since then, you can almost always find a Hill family member somewhere in Lake Bluff—whether playing baseball, grabbing a bite to eat at Bluffington’s, or venturing down to the beach for a dip.

A Minnesota native, Hill describes his upbringing in terms that sound almost cinematic. He recalls a symbiotic community where all the local Minneapolis bands knew each other and regularly played gigs together.

“I think I owe a great deal of my love of music to the Minneapolis music scene. I was born in ‘71, and I was about 12 years old when the Minneapolis music scene just erupted. You had acts like Hüsker Dü, Soul Asylum, The Replacements, Trip Shakespeare, and of course Prince,” he says. “I was 14, hopping on the bus to go skate with all the Minneapolis punkers, and that music was the soundtrack for that time in my life.”

Hill credits the Minneapolis punk scene of the mid-eighties as the father to the early ’90s Seattle music scene. Without the punks up north, big-name bands like Nirvana would have likely never existed.

Closely associated with his attachment to music is his bond with physical forms of music, mainly in the form of vinyl records. As soon as you walk into Hill’s house, the turntable and speakers are front and center, coupled with rows and rows of classic albums. You’ll find such iconic titles as Led Zeppelin III, Born to Run, The Last Waltz, and of course Dark Side of the Moon, many of them original pressings from their release dates.

What started as a necessity for Hill to listen to the albums he loves has turned into a passion for owning physical versions of incredible music.

“When I first started buying albums, it was all on vinyl,” he explains. “Then by the time I was in middle school, cassettes were there, and then that eventually turned into CDs. In about ’91 bands stopped pressing vinyl altogether, and it wasn’t until about 2010 that there started to become a palpable interest back in vinyl records,” says Hill. “For me, buying records remained a necessity. Used albums sold for a dollar and that was simply the cheapest way to consume large amounts of music.”

The funny thing is that a great portion of Hill’s discovery of great music was through older friends giving him old vinyl records that they didn’t want, or have use for anymore. A lot of the time, it was a ‘one-man’s trash is another man’s treasure’ type scenario, as the records that Hill was given were taste-expanding records. In addition to that, Hill has said there have been records he has come back to by chance, that initially weren’t his cup of tea, but now have become some of his favorites.

“I have this theory about records,” Hill explains. “There are records that right out of the gate, you’re like ‘oh who can’t love that?’ But you usually burn through those pretty quickly, it comes too easy. Then there are these other records, ones that take time to reveal themselves. I listened to them a million times, and the fact is that they’re not changing, but I am, and that makes me see and feel something different than I did when I was 15, or 22, or 42.”

He also shares how the 1977 record, Marquee Moon, by New York band Television, fell into the second category of his record theory. It was an album that upon first listen did not hit him, but years later, was an album that Hill came to love.

“You’ll see Marquee Moon on ‘best albums of all time’ lists pretty consistently, and it’s been that way my whole life,” adds Hill. “When I first listened to it, I was kind of like ‘I want to like it, but don’t quite get it’ Then flash forward 15 years, all of a sudden it just sort of clicked.”

Besides music, Hill is a family man at heart. His wife Anne, two sons, Max and Owen, and his daughter Maddie, are the epicenter of his world.

“All these other things you chase in life, seem to be lacking in dimension and true value. Even though I love music, my wife and children inspire me more than anything,” he says.

Today, whether he’s strumming his guitar in the living room, performing with Bushwood at a local venue, or enjoying a summer evening with his family on the Lake Bluff beach, Hill has seamlessly woven together his passions for music and family life.

In a town that first caught his attention during a single Fourth of July celebration, he’s built a life where both his musical ambitions and his role as a father can flourish. For Hill, Lake Bluff has proven to be the ideal stage for all the things that matter most.