“I haven’t been properly ‘gigging’ yet,” Gia Dagenhart said with a chuckle, but her background might say otherwise.
The singer-songwriter, a Lombard native and 2022 Glenbard East High School graduate, means she is just beginning her musical career, but her experience as a performer has earned her a coveted spot at the upcoming Saturday, Sept. 26 Maple Street Chapel Concerts Series, where she has actually performed before, in 2024.
Dagenhart related how she was “heavily involved” in choir at Glenbard East, and then went on to earn a B.A. in Music at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., where she performed in her music class and with her songwriting class.
“The first proper song I wrote, I was around 10 years old,” Dagenhart recalled, but “I took it more seriously” in high school.”
“I started really working on it as a craft,” she added.
Dagenhart said the roots of her interest in music were planted as “I grew up going to concerts at the Maple Street Chapel and Two Way Street Coffee House [Downers Grove] and other local venues,” which her mother Melissa helped organize.
Her father, the late Bryan Dagenhart, actually founded the Maple Street Chapel Concerts Series, and holds the record for the most performances at Two Way Street, at 45.
Seeing the performances, she remembers thinking, “I want to do that.”
“My favorite band from those days was Harpeth Rising,” Dagenhart shared, as well as Emily White, Sons of the Never Wrong, Heather Styka and Anaïs Mitchell.
Besides performing in Appleton, in 2025 she was chosen by Lilli Kuzma, host of "Folk Festival" on WDCB Public Radio, to be the Folk Alliance Region Midwest DJ Showcase Artist.
She said she is excited to be performing with Styka, as they have never performed together, although they did share performance rooms at a previous Folk Alliance Region Midwest event that was held in Lisle.
“I’d looked up to her a lot while I was in the scene,” Dagenhart commented.
Chicago musician Styka has performed coast to coast, and is a Kerrville New Folk Finalist and award-winning songwriter with a #3 album on the FOLK-DJ charts. She has also performed at the Old Town School of Folk Music and City Winery, among other venues.
Dagenhart has recorded a seven-song debut EP, “Artifact,” which has received airplay on national college and folk radio stations, and which will be released at the Sept. 26 concert.
When asked about her music and songwriting, Dagenhart said that writing poetry and songwriting “are very different mediums to me,” yet at the same time, “For me, lyrics fall under the umbrella of creative writing [her minor at Lawrence].”
Ask Dagenhart about her current playlist and she names Emma Harner, Jessie Mazin and Daisy the Great; as well as indie, alternative, videogame soundtracks and math rock (I had to look that one up) as being among the music she listens to.
When also asked what she wants audiences to take away from her music, Dagenhart responded, “The main thing is, catharsis.”
She describes her music as “storytelling,” adding that “I try to create a world within the song … I usually mean an emotional world, built from moments and imagery, held together by the 'physics' of melody so to speak.”
Meaning, Dagenhart continued, people have commented that they heard her messages “in ways they haven’t thought about before.”
“I like when that happens,” she said.
“Ever since I sang my first solo in choir, people would tell me that my voice gives them goose bumps. How could I not chase that? That's the closest I'll get to actual magic,” Dagenhart summed up.
The concert begins at 7 p.m., and the chapel is located at 200 S. Main St.
Tickets are $20 and online sales close at noon on Sept. 26. Tickets may be purchased online with a credit/debit card or PayPal, or at the door with cash or checks.
Visit maplestreetconcerts.org and follow the links.
For more information on Gia Dagenhart, visit giadagenhart.com.
