Disturbed From South Side to Billboard's No. 1 - Draiman

Disturbed From South Side to Billboard's No. 1

"There's a lot of great talent out here on the South Side and a lot of great musicians who've come up from this way," Donegan said. "We're just very fortunate we've been able to stick it out and keep the friendship strong, the respect for each other and that desire to keep going."

Donegan, drummer Mike Wengren, of Chicago's Archer Heights neighborhood, Steve "Fuzz" Kmak, from Oak Lawn, and vocalist David Draiman, of Chicago's North Side, formed Disturbed in 1996 and once lived together in Evergreen Park.

"Back then, we didn't have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. We'd work our day jobs, come home and make fliers and cassette tapes and spread out and go to every concert that came to town to promote," said Donegan, a graduate of Marist High School in Chicago's Mount Greenwood community. "All the bands who came up like we did at the time — Soil, No One, Crash Poet and Ballistic — this is what we and our buddies from the South Side had to do to promote. You had to be your own street team or recruit friends to get the word out. I'm not knocking today's technology, but for us that work ethic made us continue to always know that nothing is going to come easy."

That determination didn't falter in a time when there was more of a scene for North Side bands.

"The South Side bands were more of the outcasts. That gave us more of a reason to not just push open doors, but knock them down to be heard and taken seriously," Donegan said. "We weren't really welcomed into clubs like the Metro and Double Door. So we made a name for ourselves in clubs like Sidetracked (Lemont), Champs (Burbank), O'Malley's (Alsip) and JJ Kelley's (Lansing)."

Disturbed's major label debut "The Sickness" in 2000 went quadruple platinum. Between 2002's "Believe" and 2005's "Ten Thousand Fists," Fuzz was replaced by John Moyer, an already signed artist when he auditioned with hundreds of others at Oasis One-Sixty nightclub in Chicago Heights. In 2009, "Inside the Fire" was nominated for a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance. In 2011, the band took a break.

"The hiatus was a smart thing for us to do to step back for a minute, digest everything that's happened since the late '90s and spend more time with the families," Donegan said, adding he coached his son's football team, attended his daughter's basketball games and spent time with his mom, who also lives in Homer Glen. "Those things are big priorities in our lives. Everybody is married with kids now."

During the hiatus, Donegan and Wengren formed Fight or Flight with Evans Blue singer Dan Chandler while Draiman's band Device made a Top 15 album and Moyer was in Adrenaline Mob and Art of Anarchy.

The band — with Moyer and Draiman residing in Austin, Texas, and Wengren now in Waukesha, Wis. — traveled to each other to collectively write "Immortalized," their sixth studio album released in August and marked with a concert at Chicago's House of Blues after a four-year hiatus. The single "The Vengeful One" hit the Top 5 at Rock Radio.

Since the release of "Immortalized," Disturbed has returned to stages across the United States and at European festivals that draw 100,000 fans. Such fests, with Chicago Open Air being the newbie, he said, unite fans and bands.

"Fans get more bang for their buck with some of the best bands out there," he said, "and fests give the bands an opportunity to bond more."

Vickie Jurkowski is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.

Disturbed

When: 9:50 p.m. July 16, as part of Chicago Open Air

Where: Toyota Park, 7000 Harlem Ave., Bridgeview.

Information: Full schedule, tickets at www.chicagoopenair.com