San Diego music venues featured in ‘Bring Music Home’ book, video project
Twentyone years. That’s how long Chris Goldsmith has been working at the Belly Up Tavern. But there was nothing that happened in those 21 years that could have prepared him for 2020, the year that the coronavirus pandemic shut down the country’s music venues in one sudden, shattering swoop.
“It has been surreal. That is the best way to describe it,” said Goldsmith, president of Belly Up Entertainment. “The club is usually such a vibrant, crazy place that is so full of life, and for the last year, I have spent far too many hours in the club as an empty shell of its usual self.”
From the Troubadour in Los Angeles to New York’s Bowery Ballroom, the storied music clubs and concert halls that have made careers and launched music scenes have been closed to audiences. The silence has been deafening, but thanks to a new book and multimedia project, the dark clubs are getting their time in the spotlight.
It is called “Bring Music Home,” and its goal is to pay tribute to the nation’s independent music venues and their struggles to keep their businesses alive, even
when their doors are closed.
The project’s first offering is a coffee-table book highlighting more than 200 music venues in more than 30 U.S. cities. Each of the featured clubs is captured through photographs and conversations with owners, bartenders and other “unsung heroes” of the club
world. A portion of the proceeds goes to the National Independent Venue Association.
San Diego is represented by the Belly Up in Solana Beach, Soda Bar in Normal Heights and the Casbah in Midtown. And in the photos and interviews done by San Diego’s Jason
Juez Steck, the spirit of the project is captured by people like Goldsmith, Casbah co-owner Tim Mays and Soda Bar co-owners Cory Stier and Angie Ollman. Also Belly Up production manager Damien DeRobbio, Casbah bar manager Ben Johnson, and Soda Bar bartender Ivan Herrera.
“For me, it was all about the individuals behind the spaces. Fans don’t always understand the level of dedication and thankless hours people put in because they love that they are giving people such an amazing show,” said Bring Music Home co-founder Amber Mundinger. “They love doing that because they love the power of music.”
As the CEO and head of strategic partnerships for Artists Den Entertainment in New York, Mundinger is one of those live-music loving people. So is Bring Music Home co-founder Tamara Deike, who cofounded the Austin-based Aces High branding and media-production company. And if 2020 had been a normal year, Mundinger and Deike would have been following their love of music to South by Southwest, Austin’s celebrated music conference.
But the conference was canceled, and Mundinger and Deike were both stuck in their respective homes, worrying about what was going to happen to the live-music industry and the people who depended on it for their livelihoods. They weren’t sure what to do, but they knew they had to do something.
By the end of March, that something became Bring Music Home. In addition to the book and custom posters that were created for each city — both available at bringmusichome.com — a Bring Music Home docuseries and podcast are also in the works.
“This was so devastating to to the community, and we needed something to focus on,” Deike said. “When you start losing some of these venues, you are losing a sense of history and community. Some of the venues in our book have had to close permanently, so we were able to document that with some of the last photographs that were taken of these places.”
The San Diego venues were chosen by Steck, a local photographer and music producer who took the photos and conducted the interviews featured in the book. The photos include eerie shots of the clubs’ empty stages, but Steck says that everyone he interviewed — from owners to musicians to bartenders
— was sure that live music would be back, and they were all going to be around for the homecoming.
“They were absolutely certain that by some means of faith, they and their establishments were going to survive this somehow or another,” Steck said. “They were all certain live music would be all the way back at some point, and maybe there would even be a boom time after all this is over.”
While they wait for concerts to be safe again, venues like the Belly Up and the Casbah have been offering alternatives, like livestreamed concerts and the Belly Up’s collection of live-concert downloads. No one really knows what the future will look like, but Goldsmith hopes that photos and conversations featured in “Bring Music Home” will remind people that live music isn’t just entertainment.
It’s life.
“I think that there are people who go to clubs and understand on a daily basis how awesome they are and how much a cool part of American culture the independent music club is. But there is a whole other group that hasn’t had the chance to experience that,” said Goldsmith, who was photographed on the Belly Up’s empty stage. “I hope a book like this intrigues a lot of people who don’t know or who have forgotten how special these places are.”