Editor’s Word: This publish was initially printed in September 2020 and has been up to date for comprehensiveness.
Early into 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns, the Nationwide Impartial Venue Affiliation (NIVA) performed a survey with over 2,000 of its members, which incorporates venue homeowners, bookers, and promoters all through the US. The outcomes had been alarming. The survey reported that “90% of unbiased venues… will shut completely in a couple of months with out federal funding.”
The COVID-19 pandemic affected numerous industries in the US. And the pressure it has placed on the dwell music trade — and the music trade at giant — has been evident because it’s earliest onset. Reside music has been affected on each stage: native, regional, and nationwide. Artists have needed to strive out-of-the-box strategies in response, from Erykah Badu’s revolutionary quarantine collection to DJs exploring the Livestream capabilities of various social media platforms. However unbiased venues have struggled to seek out revolutionary methods to maintain their enterprise working.
NIVA, which was shaped as a response to the pandemic, pushed Congress for 3 acts in an try to assist unbiased venues survive throughout this time: the RESTART Act, the ENCORES Act, and the Save Our Phases or SOS Act. Though the primary two would drastically assist unbiased venues, it is the third one, notably, that the affiliation fought hardest for. Save Our Phases was a $15 billion grant program for dwell venue operators, promoters, producers, and expertise representatives. The SOS Act provided recipients a grant “no better than 45% of gross income from 2019 or $12 million,” with help utilized to bills “incurred between March 1, 2020 and ending on December 31, 2020,” in keeping with a NIVA press launch.
“It acknowledges that our trade has been hit more durable than nearly all different industries,” NIVA Communications Director Audrey Schaefer stated of Save Our Phases, which was particularly tailor-made to supply federal funding to unbiased venues. “We have at all times been capable of determine it out on our personal, whether or not it was a recession or the fuel disaster, mortgage disaster, the horrible tragedies when individuals went into live performance venues throughout the nation and had mass murders happen — we have all been capable of determine it out. Properly, that is one occasion the place we completely couldn’t do it on our personal with no income.”
Schaefer stated that greater than 2.1 million emails had been despatched to Congress by supporters of the Act. It has additionally acquired bipartisan help, with senators John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) main the laws. Senate Minority Chief Charles Schumer (D-NY) additionally co-sponsored the Act. Regardless of this, Save Our Phases has but to be authorized, and lots of unbiased venues throughout the nation have nonetheless needed to shut, together with Cleveland’s Stella’s Music Membership, Austin, Texas’s Barracuda, and Portland, Maine’s Port Metropolis Music Corridor. In New York Metropolis, the Wick, the Properly and the Pyramid Membership all shut down in 2020.
Even within the post-lockdown years, New York’s unbiased venues have continued to battle. In January of this yr, the homeowners of Brooklyn’s Our Depraved Woman posted a plea for assist from the neighborhood in an effort to keep open whereas they looked for a associate or new proprietor. In 2024, Rockwood Music Corridor within the Decrease East Facet abruptly closed its doorways, and its web site stays down right this moment.
Again in 2020, when this story was initially reported, Schaefer spotlight simply how direly in want of speedy motion the state of affairs had gotten. Saying, “We had been hoping that we’d have laws to be thought of and handed by the fourth of July and so they weren’t contemplating what we had been engaged on… So we simply must preserve going. This actually is a race to have the ability to get assist earlier than the companies go underneath.”
Greater than 800 unbiased music venues make up (NIVA). A lot of these venues cater to artists from various genres, together with rap, and each veterans and up-and-comers depend on unbiased music venues to maintain themselves. In 2019, rap teams and solo acts alike launched into U.S. excursions that encompassed unbiased music venues: Wu-Tang Clan’s Twenty fifth-anniversary tour for Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) included stops at The Armory in Minneapolis, the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tenn. and WAVE in Wichita, Kan.; Metropolis Women and Lil Child’s co-headlining “The New Era Tour” included a cease on the historic Fox Theatre in Oakland, Calif. in addition to 5 different stops at unbiased music venues; and DaBaby’s “Child on Child Tour” started and ended at unbiased music venues Voltage Lounge in Philadelphia and Lincoln Theatre in Raleigh, N.C. respectively.
Heading into 2020, not too many tour dates from rap artists had been introduced. Nonetheless, most — if not all — of them included unbiased music venues. Half of Roddy Wealthy’s first-ever headlining “Anti-Social Tour” was at unbiased music venues. YBN Cordae’s first-ever headlining “Misplaced Boy Tour” included 18 stops at unbiased music venues. In lots of of those 2020 rap excursions, there’s overlap: Roddy Wealthy and Griselda having a tour date at The Masquerade; YBN Cordae and DMX — who was purported to tour for the twentieth anniversary of It is Darkish and Hell Is Sizzling — having a tour date on the Granada Theatre in Lawrence, Kansas; Roddy Wealthy, YBN Cordae and Kash Doll every having a tour date at Warehouse Reside in Houston. When analyzing these excursions alongside one another, it is evident how integral unbiased music venues are, and what number of rising rappers use those self same venues.
“We do about 700 exhibits a yr however that is with all genres,” Elena de Soto, a expertise purchaser at The Masquerade, stated. “For rap, it is most likely between 150 and 200.”
Soto, who began as an intern in 2012 however had been reserving for six years as of the interview, stated that this yr was purported to be The Masquerade’s thirtieth yr in enterprise. However the pandemic has derailed these plans; Soto rescheduled postponed exhibits that had been purported to happen all through the three totally different areas that make up the venue — the 1,500-cap Heaven, the 550-cap Hell, and the 300-cap Purgatory — with a few of these exhibits delayed to mid-late 2021.
“Excursions are deliberate a yr out, two years out. So it’s a must to have individuals working forward of time to e-book these excursions and these acts and put these exhibits collectively,” Soto stated. “Everybody’s both at a standstill or holding 10 totally different backup dates, attempting to determine once they can tour safely. So we do not know if exhibits are gonna occur subsequent yr.”
Roddy Ricch performs in Live performance Throughout – The Anti Social Tour – at The Masquerade.
Picture by Prince Williams/WireImage.
With Atlanta serving as an export for a majority of latest rap, The Masquerade has turn into an establishment for native rap acts which have since turn into mainstream stars. Soto stated that artists like Lil Yachty and 21 Savage began off taking part in exhibits in Purgatory, solely to graduate to their largest room — Heaven — as their reputation grew.
“We’ll get artists that begin within the 300 and work their manner up as they get larger and develop extra followers,” she stated. “It feels very surreal to see bands and artists simply blow up. To be like, ‘Oh wow, I noticed them once they had been small,’ after which all of those actually cool issues are taking place for them.”
Impartial venues are integral to that rise, permitting artists to refine themselves as dwell performers and put together for arenas, festivals, and stadiums — in the event that they select to take action.
“There are only a few artists that may go from their bed room to a stadium,” Schaefer stated. “The opposite factor is that not each artist needs to be in an enviornment. Lots of artists just like the intimacy of a membership and may make a rattling advantageous dwelling taking part in soldout golf equipment.”
With larger-scale dwell exhibits anticipated to not occur till fall 2021, or later, some unbiased venues spent the time having low-scale dwell exhibits, as was the case with Fort Smith, Arkansas’s Temple Reside. The venue placed on one of many nation’s first live shows through the pandemic with singer-songwriter Travis McCready again in Could 2020. Nonetheless, Soto would not assume the low-scale dwell present technique would work for The Masquerade.
“For those who take a look at our 1,500-cap room, you possibly can put in 200 to 300 individuals in there, and that does not cowl prices except it is a very, very excessive ticket, and you do not need to do a really excessive ticket proper now when persons are out of labor and so they’re dwelling by way of a pandemic,” she stated. “I perceive why venues are attempting it, it simply hasn’t made sense for us.”
Nonetheless, when exhibits do make their return, Soto thinks rap exhibits might be one of many first to return.
“They journey the simplest — they do not have a bunch of substances and a bunch of crew and a bunch of bills,” she stated. “Additionally, being in Atlanta, it might be simple to have any quantity of native and regional expertise come and play when issues are again up and working.”
Like The Masquerade, Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom, a venue primarily based in Denver, is going through related challenges. The 18-year-old venue — which additionally has a number of rooms, the 1,000-cap Cervantes’ and the 500-cap The Different Facet — hasn’t had a present since March 12, as of the unique date of this story’s publication in September 2020. That yr, Cervantes was anticipated to have 50 rap exhibits, amongst them up-and-comers like Teejayx6 and veterans like Digable Planets and Methodology Man and Redman. Though the venue caters to each modern and older rap artists, it usually hosts one-of-a-kind live shows for the latter. In November 2019, it hosted a live performance with Busta Rhymes and Q-Tip, in addition to a live performance with DJ Premier, Yasiin Bey, and Talib Kweli as Black Star Gang. (Cervantes can be the identical venue the place Bey revealed that he, Kweli and Madlib had been engaged on a brand new Black Star album.) They’ve even had a New Yr’s Eve present hosted by members of the Wu-Tang Clan, fittingly dubbed “Wu Yr’s Eve.”
Duncan Goodman, Cervantes’ proprietor and operations supervisor, credit the venue’s capability to get these kind of rap exhibits with older artists to the relationships they’ve constructed with them and their managers all through the years. However it’s additionally the need for dwell rap from followers within the metropolis, too.
“We attempt to set ourselves aside after we’re 100% unbiased, not like fairly a couple of different venues right here in Denver owned by Reside Nation or AEG. We’re rather less sterile right here… individuals have been attending exhibits right here for 18 years, and fairly a little bit of our employees has labored right here for over 10 years. So that claims one thing concerning the enterprise and the venue,” Goodman stated. “However each present we host, we need to make that have as high quality as doable. If the artist is having a top quality expertise… typically they will go above and past for you when it comes to that dwell present they’re placing on.”
Regardless of lockdown-era aid efforts, it is unclear if funding efforts have been adequate to maintain stave off the fast closures that COVID accelerated. NIVA continues to be attempting to lift consciousness.
Impartial venues simply want to carry on a bit of longer. However it’s a problem.
“Each day it is a threat — as if you happen to’re ready for an organ transplant and you’ll want to preserve the physique alive in anticipation of it,” Schaefer stated. “A kidney and a cadaver would not do it.”
