The wake-up call came for Ian Tomele on March 13th 2020. The day started with a long haul to Knoxville, Tennessee where Ian and his band were set to play that night. Voice of Addiction was about three weeks into their southern tour. It had been a pretty good ride: lines that wrapped around venues, meet-ups with old friends, and sets stacked with heavy-hitting bands. But that day, a thick fog of feverish concern hung over the venue in Knoxville. The White House had just declared COVID-19 a national emergency, and nobody knew what would happen next. “It seemed so immediate at the time,” Ian recalls, “like someone flipping a light switch.” Voice of Addiction is Chicago’s neighborhood punk band, built up by Ian and a few friends from college in 2002. Ian had just moved to the city from C...
