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When it comes to poking some fun at the Chicago Bears, is there ever a situation where it’s too soon?
Not when you’re in Green Bay, home of Lambeau Field.
Just hours after the Bears announced plans to move forward with a new stadium in Hammond, Indiana, WIXX-FM on-air personality Andrew Haze saw his chance and ran with it – right across state lines.
He was in his cubicle at the Green Bay contemporary hit radio station before his afternoon shift when the news dropped, and by the time he went on the air at 2 p.m., the world had “a new Chicago Bears fight song.” He used the tune “Gary, Indiana” from the musical “The Music Man” for inspiration, and the parody practically wrote itself.
Just sub in “Hammond, Indiana” for “Gary, Indiana” for the irresistibly cheery chorus, recruit WIXX colleague Mara from the midday shift for some strategic chiming in here and there then work your magic with the lyrics:
“If you’d like to have a logical explanation/How the Bears became an Indiana installation/I will say without a moment of hesitation/Springfield fumbled, so we fled the state.”
It was almost too easy.
“Wrote it in 5 minutes and then just went on the air and did it live,” said Haze, who has worked at the station since 2022 and can be heard 2 to 6 p.m. weekdays. “And yep, posted the video, and now I have a bunch of Bears fans that hate me.”
The video of him singing “Hammond, Indiana” on the air June 5, a big grin the whole time, has racked up thousands of likes across WIXX’s social media and even caught the attention of NBC affiliate WMAQ-TV in Chicago. The comments, as you might guess, are a tale of two football rivals.
“A lot of Green Bay Packers fans obviously love it, which is awesome. I’m hoping when the Bears come to town that I hear somebody shouting it over a megaphone,” Haze said. “Some Bears fans are not so happy with it. I think I got told to shove a Cheeshead where the sun don’t shine.”
So it goes with the oldest rivalry in the NFL. Gotta love it, even when it takes an unexpected detour through Indiana.
It’s not Haze’s first foray into Bears-inspired mischief. Two years ago, he went around with a microphone outside Lambeau Field on a game day and asked Bears fans to say a certain sentence that included the words to “The Bears Still Suck Polka.” He then took their responses out of context and spliced them together so it sounds like they’re singing the famed Packers anthem. The video went viral.
“You have to do that,” he said of having fun at the expense of Bears fans.
His new parody is a full-circle “Music Man” moment for the 2021 University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh graduate who grew up performing in musicals, playing everyone from Pugsley in “The Addams Family” to Prince Topher in “Cinderella.” His first role was as a kindergarten student in the marching band in “The Music Man.” He was too small to play the cymbals so they handed him a piccolo instead.
He’s glad Packers fans are getting a kick out of it. It’s a testament to the fun the crew at WIXX has, he said.
“What we can do with just being live and local and having live personalities on the air is that we can quickly do fun things like this, where news drops at 10 a.m. and we can talk about it and make a joke about it live on the air at 2 o’clock that day.”
Kendra Meinert is an entertainment and feature writer at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at 920-431-8347 or [email protected]. Follow her on X @KendraMeinert.
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