No matter how certain online spaces and platforms aim to change the music industry, there’s never a replacement for an organic community. Everyone needs to start somewhere and there is no way of coming up as a performing artist without supporters around them. Musicians will tell you that they started playing to some friends and some family, vital spectators at the start of a career that a band can rely on for that $10 entry fee. There is another much needed aspect of an artist’s network of support that they will rely on when starting out: Their local music venue.
The local venue that is willing and able to take a chance on a new band that is just starting out is invaluable to a music scene. Those early shows are the best learning experience artists can get when it comes to performing their work. The recorded music that is put out into the world is only a part of the story. How musicians display that work in the form of their live performance is the other part, and every single one of them needs the experience so they can learn how they want to tell it.
These places will not be high-end. In fact, show goers and artists alike may be somewhat concerned the bathroom is going to give them a staph infection and feel like they’ll go deaf from the sound that is just loud for the sake of being loud.
It will, however, become home to a specific few. That’s where the community goes to gather, to escape the pressures of the outside world, to feel accepted, and to support the art and music their friends are willing to put on display.
That’s why so many are willing to overlook, accept or downright love the grittiness of these places. It’s not purely an aesthetic that someone is after, but a willingness to let them be who they are on full display. That’s what music and performance is, after all. A form of self expression that can never be replaced.
So, this piece will end with a quick plea: Support your local independent venues. This is not an easy business in the slightest. No one works at a venue to get rich, but to get by and to provide a service to their local community, one that can go unnoticed but can be vital to many.
Signed,
Someone who has spent a decade working at music venues and wouldn’t have it any other way
Daniel Romandia is the talent buyer/marketing director/assistant general manager at Harlow’s and The Starlet Room, as well as co-owner of Cafe Colonial — some of the few independent music venues located in Sacramento. Romandia is also an advisory council member of the Berkeley Music Group, a nonprofit organization that operates the UC Theater and Taube Family Music Hall in Berkeley.