Chicago · Free · All-ages

Sing with your neighbors.

When people sing familiar songs together, strangers become friends. The Freebird Gathering Collective hosts free, all-ages community singalongs in Chicago — no stage, no tickets, no experience needed. If you can hum along, you're a full participant.

Get an invite What a singalong is

What a singalong is

The room is the choir

For two hours, thirty to sixty neighbors sing through a songbook of songs everyone half-knows — classic rock, folk, pop standards. One song leader with a guitar keeps things moving and teaches the shy verses; the room does the rest.

Lyrics in everyone's hands

Printed pages, a phone version, or projected on a screen where the venue has one. There's no divide between performer and audience, so there's nothing to be good at — nobody's watching, everybody's singing.

You build the songbook

Between songs, add a request from your phone: scan a QR code, pick a song, done. Each month's setlist is partly built by the people in the room.

Our story

Our song leader, Brandon Pfeiffer, has spent nearly his whole life as a band member and singer-songwriter, leading singalongs everywhere from stages to living rooms. In his hometown of Bloomington, Indiana, he created a free holiday singalong that packed a 630-seat theater — a wonderfully mixed crowd singing songs drawn from many traditions. This past June he hosted a neighborhood singalong at a storefront on Chicago Avenue. The same thing happens every time: people arrive as strangers and leave having sung — and laughed — together.

The collective exists to give that experience a free, public, monthly home in ordinary neighborhood spaces — community rooms, cultural centers, parks in the warm months — starting in Chicago's West Town. The first events in the regular series are planned for winter 2026.

The tool we built

The songbook, on your phone

At our gatherings, the song request line is a QR code: scan it, pick a song, and it lands in the song leader's queue — no app store, no account. We built that tool ourselves, and it works anywhere people gather around live music; performers and song leaders use it for their own shows, too. It's called freebird.fm, and it's currently in beta.

See the app

Who we are

Freebird Gathering Collectiveis a new, informal community organization — one organizer and a growing circle of neighbors. Our events are free and open to everyone, we don't sell tickets, and we're seeking a fiscal sponsor and grant support to give the singalong a permanent home. Want to sing, offer a room, or help organize? Write to us — hello@freebird.fm.