Picture this: you’re sitting on a blanket on the Capitol Lawn in Madison. It’s a warm summer evening, and you’re listening to beautiful classical music.
You’re feeling very fancy, sipping wine and eating cheese. But at the end of the concert, when you start to pack up your blanket, a song with a very different vibe starts to play over the loudspeaker.
“Grilling brats on the barbecue. Friends and laughs and ‘Hey, what’s new?’ I’m coming home,” the singer croons.
This is “Home to Madison.” And despite its country twang and down-home lyrics, it plays at the end of every single Concerts on the Square show in Madison.
Concerts on the Square is a summer tradition. Each year, the free concert series brings some 250,000 people to the Capitol square to enjoy music from the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra.
“Home to Madison” is meant to leave people humming as they pack up their things after enjoying the concert, said WCO music director Andrew Sewell, who conducts Concerts on the Square.
Andrew Sewell, music director of the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, conducts during Concerts on the Square on Wednesday, July 19, 2023, at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Angela Major/WPR)
It was first written for Madison’s sesquicentennial in 2006. The city was putting together a time capsule to mark the occasion, and wanted a signature song to describe Madison. They asked for songwriters to submit entries.
“We got it down to four finalists, and I just wasn’t particularly enamored with any of them,” Sewell said. “And I thought, ‘I know that we can do better than that.'”
So, he called up a friend of his, a musician named Tracy Silverman, a graduate of The Juilliard School, best known for his work on the electric six-string violin.
A few days later, Silverman sent a demo of “Home to Madison.” Sewell and the committee loved it so much that they made it the fifth finalist, added it to the time capsule, and of course, started playing it at Concerts on the Square.
Attendees enjoy food and wine as the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra plays Wednesday, July 19, 2023, at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Angela Major/WPR)
Silverman lives in Nashville now, but does have Wisconsin roots. Although the song is called “Home to Madison,” he actually grew up in Beloit.
“But I spent a lot of time in Madison as a kid,” he said.
Looking back on his fond memories of the Badger State, he said it was easy to find inspiration for the song.
“I learned how to drive a car on the country roads outside Beloit,” he said. “And it was usually my job to grill the brats, and I’d have a grill full of brats just up in flames, you know, the way brats do when they grill. And all of that stuff was just in my mind.”
Musicians play violins in the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra on Wednesday, July 19, 2023, at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Angela Major/WPR)
Musically, he says he was going for something easy and fun to listen to.
“I was kind of thinking John Cougar Mellencamp or something kind of like that,” he said. “Just sort of real straight up the middle, kind of something that everybody would like.”
The chorus is easy to sing along to, including many people’s favorite lyric, “I’m coming home to Madison, just off Highway 51.”
“I know nobody really calls it Highway 51, but it rhymes with Madison, sort of,” he said, laughing.
Attendees sit on blankets and chairs while they enjoy food, wine and music at Concerts on the Square on Wednesday, July 19, 2023, at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Angela Major/WPR)
Silverman knows it’s not the most serious song in the world, but that’s the beauty of it, he said.
“If I lived in Madison as an adult, I might have had a much more nuanced view of the politics and the economics and all various things that could be problematic, and that people discuss as adults,” he said. “I didn’t have any of that to burden me, you know, all I had was going swimming and Lake Mendota and stuff like that. Grilling brats.”
Of all the music he’s ever recorded, Silverman thinks “Home to Madison” is probably the song that the most people have heard, thanks to Concerts on the Square. And he feels good about that legacy.
“I couldn’t be more honored to have to have the tune in people’s minds as they’re leaving that great venue and feeling like this is their home,” he said.
The last show of the 2023 Concerts on the Square season in Madison is scheduled for Wednesday, August 2.
Musicians play during Concerts on the Square on Wednesday, July 19, 2023, at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Angela Major/WPR)
