McHenry County Cubs fan writes song celebrating Chicago’s successful summer

Add songwriter to the list of titles STAR 105.5's Stew Cohen has collected through the years. That, and Cubs fan.

An author and a familiar radio voice in McHenry County as the news director for both STAR 105.5 (WZSR-FM) and 103.9 The Fox, Cohen’s lyrics celebrating Cubs fans will be performed at 9:50 a.m. Oct. 10 on WGN-TV Morning News.

Cohen teamed up with John Ryan, a guitar player and songwriter for the five-member classic rock band Vertical Jam, and the band’s lead singer, Don Mills, to turn his lyrics for “Summer of Fulfillment in Cubbie Blue” into a song. The two wrote the music, and Vertical Jam performs the song.

“It’s a song that celebrates how loyal the fans have been over the years,” Cohen said. “Hopefully, this will be the year, but, because I’m superstitious, I won’t say the words. I just say, ‘summer of fulfillment.’ I don’t want to jinx the team.”

Cohen regularly writes lyrics, but doesn’t write music or play an instrument. After he’d written the Cubs tribute song, he posted about it on a Facebook page for former students of Maine East High School in Park Ridge, from which he graduated. A mutual friend saw the posting and connected Cohen with Ryan, also a graduate of Maine East – although he and Cohen didn’t know each other back then.

Ryan and his brother, Jim (not a member of Vertical Jam), have earned Grammy nominations in the past for their instrumental albums.

“It’s funny. We just happened to all be Cubs fans within the band,” John Ryan said. “We saw the lyrics and it was like, ‘Oh, yeah, this seems really special.’ It was kind of the hopes and dreams of all the Cubs fans, and this particular year, they’re doing so great.”

It only took Ryan, who immediately formulated ideas for the music in his head when he saw the lyrics, and Mills about two hours to put the lyrics to music.

“There are about 100 Cubs songs out there,” Ryan said. “Ours rocks a little more. That gives it an edge, I think.”

With its own YouTube video, the song has been performed by the band throughout the area, and parts of the song already were played on WGN-TV Morning News the day after the Cubs clinched the NL Central Division. The station invited Vertical Jam in to perform it live Oct. 10. Cohen will be there, as well.

He’d love to see the song played during the playoffs and – if all goes well – even the World Series, alongside other Cubs songs, such as “Go, Cubs, Go.”

“I would never want to replace ‘Go, Cubs, Go,’ ” he said. “The thought was because there are nine songs the Cubs use during a game, they could use this song in addition to ‘Go, Cubs, Go.’ ”

Cohen actually wrote the song before the Cubs season began, knowing what a great year the team had last year and feeling optimistic about the upcoming year.

When he first heard Vertical Jam put his words to music, he said, “I thought it was fantastic.”

“I said, ‘This has to go somewhere. It can’t just go nowhere.’ ”