Photo Gallery: The Format • April 2 • Chicago
The Format
The Salt Shed
Chicago, IL
April 2nd, 2026
Recap and photos by Curt Baran
Nate Ruess FINALLY made it back to Chicago. His band, The Format, announced in 2020 that they would once again hit the road as a live touring band. They booked shows in New York, Phoenix, and the previously mentioned City of Big Shoulders. Life’s chessboard, however, had its own agenda, and it called it COVID.
The tour was then moved to the middle of 2021, again pushed into early 2022, and ultimately canceled in its entirety. So when Ruess and his bandmates finally clamored onto the stage at The Salt Shed on a stormy and tumultuous Thursday evening, the greeting they received was a voluminous sigh that had been waiting a near half-decade to exhale.
Those in attendance savored every note. Over the course of twenty-two songs and a double encore, the dream, held aloft like the proverbial carrot on a stick, had finally come to fruition.
The band’s blend of genres was too vast to mention, making the wait worth it, prompting sing-alongs that felt like redemptive baptisms, using aural shapes in place of holy water. But that’s sometimes the biggest kind of payoff. When anticipation takes greatness and elevates it into a legend.
Category: Featured, Stage Buzz
