[2] Nero, a Midwesterner with strong family ties to Chicago, Illinois, has made the Windy City his home since 2002.
[4] Prior to officially forming Birds of Chicago in March 2012, Nero and Russell were in other musical projects.
Nero (as Jeremy Lindsay) fronted The Rivermen, a popular band based in his hometown of Toledo, Ohio.
They played guerilla-style showcases at Folk Alliance in Memphis, Tennessee in February 2012, just before the album's release.
In 2015, Joe Henry (Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell, Elvis Costello, Allen Toussaint, Ani DiFranco) agreed to produce their next record.
They recorded their forthcoming album, Blue Midnight throughout 2015 at Joe Henry's Garfield House, which had been his main studio for a decade.
In 2017, Birds of Chicago signed with Signature Sounds Recordings in Massachusetts, releasing their label debut on November 17, American Flowers, a digital-only EP.
[7] In 2019, Russell collaborated with three other established musicians in recording Songs of Our Native Daughters, an album addressing a range of American socio-historical issues, including slavery, racism and misogyny.
[8] The album, on the Smithsonian Folkways label, also features MacArthur Fellows "genius grant" recipient Rhiannon Giddens; Leyla McCalla, who with Giddens was a member of the group Carolina Chocolate Drops; and Amythyst Kiah, a Tennessee alt-country blues singer and banjo player.
Paste Magazine premiered their first single "Real Midnight," the title track of their 2016 release, calling the band an "Americana gospel dream team.