‘It’s a very bleak picture’
Milwaukee concert venues get creative to make money, but without federal aid, it may not be enough to survive
Unable to host events for four months, the Pabst Theater Group was prepared to take the tiniest of baby steps toward normal.
Four concerts with Milwaukee acts were announced for one of the group’s four venues, Turner Hall Ballroom. The venue would operate at 25% capacity, or just shy of 250 people. They installed touchless faucets and plexiglass at the box office and all the bars. Everyone would have to wear masks, and they had plenty to issue to anyone without one. The Pabst acquired hydrostatic cleaners and touchless thermometers for guest entry, spaced out tables for social distancing, and did a private show with employees to sort out all the kinks.
And then they watched as coronavirus cases surged across the country, and in Wisconsin.
The rate of coronavirus tests that came back positive in the state leaped to nearly 11% on July 4. On July 9, the night before the first sold-out show with Chicken Wire Empire, Wisconsin reported 754 coronavirus cases, a new daily record at the time. (It’s been broken since, several times.) Throughout the crisis, most of the cases and deaths in the state have been in Milwaukee County.
So, just 10 hours before Chicken Wire Empire was set to take the Turner Hall stage, the Pabst Theater Group canceled all the shows. They aren’t planning any others for the immediate future.
“In our situation, as safe as it can be, it still opens up our employees to areas that might not be safe,” said Pabst Theater Group CEO Gary Witt. “There could be times where people take off their masks and are drinking. There could be times where they’re walking in our venue and their masks aren’t on correctly.
“There are all kinds of different opportunities, and our first priority is to our own staff. We have a responsibility to them, and some live with sick
parents at home, some have diabetes, some are recently pregnant.”
The Turner Hall cancellations highlight how precarious the situation is for Milwaukee’s reeling live music industry.
With most touring artists off the road indefinitely — every arena-level show in Milwaukee is off the calendar for 2020 — local concert venues are cutting costs and doing creative things to make any money they can, including auctions, backstage tours, small wedding packages, virtual events and stage rentals. A few are doing shows with local acts, for minuscule audiences and little, if any, money to be made.
Most venues across the country are hoping for more federal aid for their survival, with the music industry putting its support behind the Restart Act and the Save Our Stages Act, bipartisan bills up for debate on Capitol Hill. Without it, up to 90% of venues report they won’t survive, according to a survey issued by the National Independent Venue Association. NIVA was co-founded by the Pabst Theater’s Witt in April to lobby Congress for support.
“I am hoping, I am praying, that something comes through with Congress or I won’t be the only independent venue to close,” said Aaron Ohlsson, who runs the Miramar Theatre and Site 1A.
Two other venues in Milwaukee — Fire on Water and the Underground Collaborative — already have shut down.
Not ‘exactly hot for investors’
Ohlsson’s business has already lost $750,000. After laying off his staff, cutting off his utilities and negotiating with his landlords for reduced rates, his operating expenses are about $15,000 a month. He was able to get about $40,000 from the Paycheck Protection Program, but with about 65% reserved for payrolls, he didn’t have much left to tackle overhead costs.
“I have been in talks with some investors and potential business partners, and let me tell you, the live music industry isn’t exactly hot for investors,” Ohlsson said. “Our operating expenses are as small as they can be, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it through the end of the year.”
By late June, when the coronavirus outlook was more promising, Ohlsson thought he could begin getting back to business. His EDM promotion company Brew City Bass hosted two open-air boat parties on July 3 and 4. Each party had 100 people, below the boat’s 50% capacity, and masks were required. After-parties for 125 people were held at the Miramar and Site 1A.
But like the Pabst’s Witt, he became increasingly worried about rising coronavirus cases. A July 10 boat party was scrapped, and Ohlsson called off plans to for a July 21 reopening of Site 1A.
“All events are suspended indefinitely, and I have no idea when we’ll reopen,” he said. “I’m definitely afraid of spreading COVID. … At this point, I’d rather lose my business than get people sick. That’s the crazy, horrifying truth.”
Other Milwaukee music venues have had setbacks attempting to put on shows again.
The Jazz Estate hosted four concerts in June with 25% capacity — just 15 people, including musicians and staff — to complement its to-go and patio service. The venue announced June 25 on Facebook it was going “back to the drawing board” regarding live concerts, and hasn’t hosted any since.
Linneman’s Riverwest Inn also started hosting in-person shows to 25% capacity last month. But some events are still closed to the public, streaming exclusively online for tips, and the club, which used to have a live event practically every night, is doing just a couple a week.
‘We can’t dwell on the now’
Shank Hall was supposed to host its first show since March on Aug. 7 at 50% capacity, or 150 people. That’s been bumped to Aug. 28, and owner Peter Jest wrote on Facebook that most concerts at the club through October will be canceled or postponed.
“Most of the national stuff is moving. They can’t come to Milwaukee if Chicago or Detroit is not open,” Jest said. “Breaking even is all I can expect right now. Hopefully in 2021 the whole world will be on tour.”
The Bend in West Bend can’t wait that long. About $4.4 million was spent renovating the 91-year-old theater, a former movie house that was closed for 14 years. It had the misfortune of opening on March 14, just as the coronavirus crisis was forcing venues across the country to go dark.
The Bend closed as well, and reopened a second time for a concert July 10 with the Andrew David Weber Band. Capacity was kept at 48 — or about 14% of the 330-seat venue — with guests spaced out between empty rows and leaving aisle seats open.
“When we crunch the numbers, I probably made $100, but when you back out and include daily overhead, I probably lost money,” said Jeff Potts, The Bend’s executive director. “We were prepared to open the doors at a loss. … We’ve got to reinvigorate this machine and get up and running. … I needed to get our sound guy back to work and our bar manager, and musicians need to make some money.”
Run by a local nonprofit group, Historic West Bend Theatre Inc., the Bend’s sponsorship support dried up overnight, Potts said. The board has approved expanding capacity to 100 people for movies and about two or three live events a month, with the expectation that the latter for now could be a loss leader.
“For us, it’s about building new audiences,” Potts said. “We’re looking for corporate donation sponsors for individual series and focusing on individual memberships, but what makes it more challenging is we are an unknown product.”
“We can’t dwell on the now. Now is bad,” Potts continued. “We’ve got to get through the now to be successful when things turn in the other direction.”
Trying new directions
The South Milwaukee Performing Arts Center is another venue that announced plans to reopen with mask requirements and reduced capacities, with events to be announced.
But most local music venues, big and small, are going in a new direction for now.
Concerned about the risk, X-Ray Arcade is only making its stage available for private rentals. Instead, the Cudahy club has been doing business on its patio, accommodating about 40 people at a time at spaced-out tables. Customers of a new vegan restaurant down the block, Twisted Plants, are encouraged to eat on the X-Ray patio, and buy beer there, Friday through Sunday. There have been other brunch and beer events, and XRay recently added some laid-back live music on the patio.
X-Ray also raised a little over $13,000 for its employees through a GoFundMe campaign and sold some new merchandise items, including tank tops and hot sauce. But without a full calendar of punk and metal shows, revenue has been just 20% to 30% of what the venue made by this point last year, said coowner Andy Slania.
“We took on a lot of loans to try and make this business happen,” said coowner Andy Parmann, making their dream a reality when they opened the venue in February 2019. “We want to see it succeed.”
“This pandemic forces you to try and fight for whatever you can to try and stay afloat,” Slania added. “It is hard, it doesn’t look great, but if you don’t fight, then what are you going to do?”
Slania and Parmann stress that without support from X-Ray’s fans, they wouldn’t have made it this long.
The same applies for the Cactus Club, a cornerstone of the Milwaukee music scene since 1996. Cactus bartender-turned-manager Kelsey Kaufmann bought the Bay View venue one month before she had to close it down because of the pandemic.
The club has been able to raise north of $26,000 through its GoFundMe campaign, and is counting on fan support through its new Patreon account. Beginning at $5 a month, subscribers can get access to Cactus’ new virtual events, including performances, film screenings, lectures and workshops.
Cactus is also selling new merchandise, and offering to-go drink service with different food truck partners Thursdays through Sundays, with rotating artists hosting a pop-up booth on Sundays.
Help from PPP loans
Since Kaufmann established a new LLC to take over the Cactus Club in February, it wasn’t eligible for PPP loans. The Rave and Pabst Theater Group were.
The former received between $350,000 and $1 million, according to data released by the Small Business Administration and Treasury Department. There haven’t been concerts there since March, and it’s unlikely big acts like superstar DJ Marshmello and rapper Youngboy Never Broke Again are going to play the Rave this fall as planned.
For now, the venue has been selling “concert comeback kits” complete with branded face masks and hand sanitizer — and an upscale version for $250 that includes private behind-the-scenes tours. It also auctioned off dozens of autographed show posters with WLUM-FM (102.1).
The Pabst Theater Group received a million-dollar loan, Witt said, but has been losing hundreds of thousands a month and has returned over $1 million in ticket refunds.
To make some money, the group has been selling tickets for streaming concerts, although Witt admits that attendance and revenue has been waning. It’s also been offering small wedding “elopement” packages at Turner, the Pabst Theater and the Riverside Theater, and Witt said they’re exploring other revenue possibilities for the buildings.
Just don’t expect to see a packed concert at the Pabst or Riverside, or probably anywhere, in 2020. In March, concert trade publication Pollstar estimated that the live music industry would lose nearly $9 billion if touring didn’t resume this year. At this point, that’s likely to be the case.
But as we wait for a vaccine, a key development for live music’s robust return, venues could continue to be closed into next year. Live Nation’s CEO Michael Rapino told investors in May he didn’t expect business to return to normal until next summer. Lollapalooza co-founder Marc Geiger, until last month the head of William Morris Endeavor’s music division, recently predicted in an interview touring wasn’t likely to resume until 2022.
Music stars support venues
Given the uncertainty, the National Independent Venue Association has been rallying superstar artists, powerful music companies and organizations, Congressmen and everyday music fans to push for federal aid.
The campaign has resulted in more than 1 million emails sent to every member of Congress; a letter sent to Congress signed by more than 600 major entertainers (including Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish, Willie Nelson and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon); and letters sent to Congressional leaders signed by 150 fellow members (including U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and U.S. Rep. Ron Kind of Wisconsin, both Democrats).
NIVA’s latest big push has been rallying support around the Restart Act, a bipartisan bill co-sponsored by Senators Tim Young (R-Indiana) and Michael Bennet (D-Colorado). Major music companies and organizations like Spotify, Universal Music Group and the Recording Industry Association of America have signed a letter supporting the bill, which would finance six months’ worth of expenses for venues, allow up to 90% loan forgiveness for eligible businesses, and permit a sevenyear payback schedule.
On Wednesday, Senators John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) also introduced the Save Our Stages Act. Endorsed by NIVA, the bill’s proposals include a $10 billion grant program to support venue operators, promoters, producers and talent representatives.
For Ohlsson, some sort of loan forgiveness is going to be crucial.
“I’m not going to take out a loan and pay that back when I have an empty shell of a building that does nothing,” he said. “Taking out loans is one thing, but having them be forgivable is everything.”
But Witt warns that if Congress doesn’t pass crucial legislation before its August recess, “our entire industry is going to collapse.”
“It’s a very bleak picture,” echoed XRay Arcade’s Slania. “Live music as we know it will be forever impacted.”
Contact Piet at (414) 223-5162 or plevy@journalsentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter at @pietlevy or Facebook at facebook.com/PietLevyMJS.
Piet also talks concerts, local music and more on “TAP’d In” with Jordan Lee. Hear it at 8 a.m. Thursdays on WYMS-FM (88.9), or wherever you get your podcasts.