‘The Bitter End’ for livemusic venues?
Owners fear for the future of their clubs, way of life
The venerableNew Orleans funk band Galactic purchased the historic music club Tipitina’s in lateNovember 2018 and, according to bassistRobert Mercurio, wasmaking a go of it.
“It’s a tight-margin business, butwewere making our notes and fulfilling our bills and whatnot. So, it wasmoving along in a good direction,” he said.
Thatwas before the coronavirus pandemic forced shutdowns of public gatherings.
Audiences last packed into Tipitina’s for aMarch 12 performance by the StoogesBrassBand. Now, Mercurio isworried that COVID-19 could prove fatal to Tipitina’s, aNewOrleans cultural touchstone founded in the 1970s as the performance homefor the lateHenryRoelandByrd, better known as rhythm and blues keyboard genius Professor Longhair.
ForMercurio, the problem is twofold. Galactic is a band with nowhere to tour and a business whose operating model— packing hordes of people in front of a stage for hours— doesn’t work in a pandemic.
“It’s terrifying,” he said. “It’s extremely difficult to be a now-nonworkingmusician owning an unopened nightclub.”
Such fears aren’t limited toNewOrleans. Independent music clubs all over the nation— pop culture icons like theTroubadour inWestHollywood; the BluebirdCafe inNashville, Tennessee; The BitterEnd inNewYork’sGreenwich Village— are shuttered. And owners fear for the future of their businesses
andofamusicalwayof life.
“There’s no amount of history or legendary status thatwill protect you,” Audrey Fix Schaefer said. She is a spokesperson for theNational Independent Venue Association, which was formed in thewake of the pandemic to raise awareness and money for
the newly struggling clubs. She points to the iconic jazz club Birdland inNew York City. “Can you imagine having the type of rents that you have inmidtown Manhattan and no revenue?”
NIVA, which has 2,800 members representing venues, promoters
and festivals, lobbied for congressional passage of what the organization calls the Save Our Stages Act. The aid package, Schaefer said, has bipartisan backing andwas included in a $2.2 trillion relief plan passed earlier this year in theDemocrat-controlledHouse, and in a smaller relief package in theRepublican-controlled Senate. But withno imminent resolution of differences on the overall package between the chambers, there is no clear end in sight to the pandemic closures.
“The rent is the rent, and that’s the problem,” says Chris Cobb, owner ofNashville’sExit/In. He said fixed costs haven’t comedown much at the nearly 50-yearold venue, while revenue is down94%. Fundraising efforts, such as those by Nashville’sMusicVenue Alliance, and the possibility of more federal help are keeping him hopeful that they can buy themselves a few moremonths.
Some venues are turning to livestreaming to help themselves and create work for musicians left jobless by the pandemic. TheMaple LeafBar, a fixture inNewOrleans’ Carrollton neighborhood since the 1970s, recently kicked offa series of streaming concerts dubbed “TheViral Sessions,” with JonCleary and his band.
“It keeps musicians employed,” ownerHank Staples said. “It keeps our brand out there, andwe’ve made somemuch needed income offof it aswell.”
But evenwith that income— minus the expenses ofmounting the productions— Staples isn’t sure howlong he can keep TheMaple Leaf going.
“Wecancertainlygo for another month and a half or twomonths,” Staples said recently as he sat on the Leaf’s narrowstage, decoratedwith strings of tiny blue lights, vinyl records repurposed aswall hangings and a cardboard cutout of a nearly naked James Booker, the flamboyant piano prodigywho performed there regularly until his death in 1983. “Butwe need someway to generate income because the money I’ve squirreled away— it’s depleted severely.”
It’s already too late for some clubs. UStreetMusic Hall inWashington closed for good Oct. 5, Schaefer noted.
Club owners said in an online post that they’d hoped they could save the decade-old venue. “But due to the pandemic, mounting operational costs that never paused even whilewewere closed, and no clear timeline forwhen clubs like ours can safely reopen, we had no choice recently but tomake this heartbreaking decision.”
Cobb fears toomany such closureswould mean the loss of something irretrievable in his beloved Nashville and elsewhere.
“This is an organic ecosystem that supports American music,” he said. “Without this independent network, American music aswe knowitwould not exist. These are the venues where the superstars got their start. It’s where they honed their craft. It’s where they built fan bases. It’s where they get better. Nobody plays the arena that didn’t spend time touring the clubs.”
InNewYork, The Bitter End owner Paul Rizzo agrees. “Stephanie Germanotta, when she played atThe Bitter End, wasn’t LadyGaga yet,” says Rizzo. “She had to play for a while. You have to get experiences to become something that you are able to become.”