Tower update
We talk to the new operators of the Tower Theatre about their vision for the venue.
The false start of Tower Theatre hasn’t come as much of a shock.
To me, at least. People treated the heralded concert hall’s marquee like a bat signal, as if a savior for Oklahoma City’s live music scene would be summoned when it flashed to life. My experiences in booking and covering music here in the past decade have seen too many half-empty venues and balking at paying for a concert experience to not be apprehensive of any one thing jumpstarting OKC into a new live music mecca.
Pangs of optimism came for me all the same when Tower Theatre’s sign finally lit back up in January. Its reds, blues and greens beaming in the midst of a booming Uptown bar and restaurant scene. Those neon lights have shown brighter than the venue’s headlining music offerings to date: Oklahoma hip-hop stalwart and Jabee and local indie-folk standouts Horse Thief. Oklahoma’s homegrown talent should continue to play a part in whatever the Tower Theatre offers, but all of us want more than that, too.
The capacity of the venue — capped at about 1,000 — fills a gaping void, a place primed for the likes of Angel Olsen, Drive-By Truckers, Sylvan Esso, Vince Staples or Kehlani to play. Nothing like that sits on an empty calendar, so it’s not a surprise that Tower Theatre’s owners the Pivot Project and its former operators Levelland Productions dissolved their long-term agreement less than two years into the lease. The truth is Levelland was as capable of bringing those sorts of names as anyone, which makes it worth wondering why they didn’t or felt like they couldn’t. Though seemingly stretched too thin by taking on Tower Theatre at the same time as The Criterion, there are other factors at play. Ones fixed not by buildings but by music fans.
Booking shows at venues the size of Tower Theatre requires faith that they’ll fill up, and Levelland must not have felt that was the case with what was passing through its desk, and it’s not hard to see why with a passing glance at the slate of shows coming through in the coming months.
Take The Orwells,
a Chicago-based rock act that plays a string of 500 to 1,000 capacity rooms on either side of its upcoming Sunday show at Opolis in Norman. The band will play for roughly 200 people, if sold out.
Those sorts of gaps in ticket sales are hard for touring bands to rectify when gigs are their lifeblood in this modern music economy.
Most won’t, not when Dallas, Austin, Kansas City and Tulsa beckon with typically larger turnouts just hours away.
Oklahoma City music fans want to see their city’s standing change, but it needs to be Boise or Omaha before it can be Austin.
They want to steal back the momentum Tulsa has steamrolled away with, but good luck with that when Cain’s Ballroom is finishing 21st in the world among clubs venues with 119,203 tickets sold in 2016. A history of solidly supported shows speaks louder to booking agents than architectural intrigue and sepia-hued remembrances of the past, and Tower Theatre — and The Criterion — has years of work to do before it catches up on that first part. Local spots like Diamond Ballroom and OKC Farmers Public Market have earned the strangleholds on modern rock and rap/ EDM they enjoy, respectively, through their continued work.
Concert booking is an unforgiving business, and it can be years of taking lumps before getting to a stable, successful place. There’s a niche Tower Theatre can carve out among indie rock groundswellers, an emergent folk scene, underserved hip-hop/ soul and comedy, even. In the right hands and with music fans’ patience, I have faith Tower Theatre’s offerings will do its majestic marquee justice, but only with our collective patience and willingness to fill the room once the music does come.