Arts as production: The rock music ecosystem in West Seattle
I've written a bunch of articles on music as an element of the local arts ecosystem:
-- "Ground up (guerrilla) art #2: community halls and music (among other things)," 2011
-- "Under threat: Austin's music industry as an element of the city's cultural ecosystem and economy," 2016
-- "Leveraging music for cultural and economic development: part one, opera," 2017
-- "Leveraging music as cultural heritage for economic development: part two, popular music," 2017
-- "NBC4 asks if DC can become a concert capital like Nashville, Austin, and New Orleans?," 2019
-- ""Arts district planning" in Arlington County | Many communities don't know the difference between arts as production and arts as consumption," 2021
-- "Another example of why local culture plans need to include an element on retail/dealing with for profit elements of the cultural ecosystem: Nashville's Tubb Record Shop," 2022
and I think that you could apply the principles listed in John Montgomery's 2003 article, "Cultural Quarters as Mechanisms for Urban Regeneration. Part 1: Conceptualising Cultural Quarters" (Planning, Practice & Research, 18:4)," to music as a performing art in terms of developing "music as production" as opposed to "music as consumption."
This Seattle Times article, "Is West Seattle the rock ’n’ roll capital of Seattle?," illustrates those ideas--record stores, clubs, artists living there, record labels, the KEXP-FM rock radio station, practice spaces, recording studios, music education programs in Seattle Public Schools, etc., alongside affordable housing and commercial space, and adaptable buildings--in how it discusses the primacy of West Seattle as the anchor of the rock music ecosystem in Seattle.
From the article:
On the surface, a budget-proposing government suit doesn’t exactly scream “rock ’n’ roll.” But during his decade-plus as King County executive, lifelong West Seattleite Dow Constantine has been the local music and arts community’s biggest champion in local government. The county authorized what was believed to be among the first local-level COVID-19 relief grants earmarked for arts venues and turned an old Harbor Island flour warehouse into a film studio last year. More recently, King County and Visit Seattle teamed up for what they’re billing as Cloudbreak, “Seattle’s ReviveLive Music Fest.” The program gives guests at roughly 70 Seattle hotels a free pass to 60-plus shows throughout the month of November.
What has developed in West Seattle for rock music is like the Penn Avenue Arts Initiative in Pittsburgh, in how two adjoining neighborhood organizations recognized that artists were locating to their communities, and they could leverage their presence by repositioning Penn Avenue as an arts-focused commercial district, by developing and recruiting anchors, developing programming and special events, creating public art, etc. ("Artists bring flourish to Penn Avenue," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "A Transformed Penn Avenue," Pittsburgh Magazine, Vacancy to Vitality in Pittsburgh’s East End: Penn Avenue Arts Initiative, case study, Metris Arts Consulting).
We would call these "naturally occurring arts districts" in the vein of "naturally occurring retirement communities" and what I call "naturally occurring innovation districts" ("Naturally occurring innovation districts | Technology districts and the tech sector," 2014).
Although the Penn Avenue district is being further "developed" through the Penn Avenue Arts Initiative while West Seattle's "music ecosystem" is still self-developing.
Labels: arts-based revitalization, arts-culture; concerts-music;, cultural planning, music-entertainment
posted by Richard Layman @ 8:00 AM&Permanent Link
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https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/five-ways-toronto-s-hard-hit-live-music-venues-could-be-saved/article_9da58dd8-ab13-578e-8143-0697f32bcb40.html
https://archive.is/1LFCN
Five ways Toronto’s hard-hit live music venues could be saved
9/24/2023, Shawn Micaleff
Back in 2015 Toronto declared itself Music City, a place that welcomed and nurtured a local music scene. Think New Orleans, music pouring out of doors onto sidewalks.
I think of that self-proud, aspirational announcement every time I’m near the corner of College Street and Dovercourt Road and see The Matador’s old marquee. Perhaps Toronto’s most famous after hours booze can — where Leonard Cohen shot his “Closing Time” video — it shuttered two decades ago. Efforts in recent years to revive it as a legitimate music and event venue stalled, were mired in city bureaucracy, local NIMBYism and a municipality that seems anything but a music city.
... “It does seem miraculous that many music venues did survive the pandemic, it is almost universally thanks to government support and subsidies that there was not a more devastating tide of bankruptcies,” says Jonathan Bunce, the executive director of Wavelength Music, a non-profit arts organization that champions local music making and performance. “Now that pandemic recovery funds are drying up and grants are starting to get cut back to pre-pandemic levels, with post-pandemic inflation of costs, I’m worried you are going to see more closures in the coming years.”
To get ahead of all that, Bunce and Wavelength partnered with the University of Toronto’s School of Cities to produce a report, to be released on Thursday, titled, “Reimagining Music Venues: Towards New Models of Conservation and Innovation for Ontario’s Live Music Spaces.”
https://www.wavelengthmusic.ca/rmvlaunch/
--- continued ----
... Bunce points out that big venues are doing just fine. It’s the smaller ones where artists have traditionally been able to start out that have been squeezed. The report notes that challenges include financial constraints and market dysfunction, where fans think they pay too much, the artists feel they’re paid too little, and the venue itself is burdened with high costs.
Other findings include a downtown concentration of venues across most of Ontario and that while there’s a real appreciation of the value these sorts of venues bring to communities, there’s a desire for higher standards of washroom and water accessibility, sound quality, cleanliness and reasonable prices.
... At the start of the pandemic Bunce’s book, “Any Night of the Week: A D.I.Y. History of Toronto Music (1957-2001)” was published. “One of its main theses was that it was Toronto’s network of small music venues that most helped nurture the local scene,” says Bunce of how he and the School of Cities began their collaboration. Toronto and other Ontario cities were once known for the “vibrant club circuit, with hundreds of dedicated spaces booking live music.” Yorkville and Yonge Street are filled with historic plaques to long gone places, and my hometown of Windsor has the same kind of loss, though on a smaller scale.
The report identifies five potential new, innovative venue models. One is a self-sufficient stage truck that can be set up outdoors, especially outside of downtown cores. Another is conceptual: “everywhere’s a venue.” Parks, churches, parking lots, construction sites, beaches and so on, rejecting the idea that music can only be heard in a bar or club setting.
The third and fourth potential models involve music presenters partnering with existing multidisciplinary arts centres, as well as clustering music-specific uses into new, stand-alone music centres. Both models could be nimble and host a variety of performances and exhibitions.
The fifth proposal is similar to something affordable housing advocates have been working on for some time: land trusts. Here communities would raise money to create a non-profit cultural trust that will purchase properties and sell or lease them at affordable rates.
It’s important to note that live music doesn’t just mean traditional rock bands. “For me, ‘live music’ includes both DJs and bands — basically anywhere where music is the focus, not just piped into the background as in a restaurant, pub or café,” says Bunce.
https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/what-toronto-has-learned-from-sxsw-and-austin-its-sonic-sister-city/article_98b0a1b0-a3c2-5496-a8e0-4d5c5dffd89c.html
What Toronto has learned from SXSW and Austin, its sonic sister city
3/16/2016
Here are some things have come to fruition since Tory et al got a look at SXSW:
Relaxed enforcement of Toronto’s anti-postering laws
Easier access to permits for music in our parks; revisions to our noise bylaws
The free “Live at City Hall” concert series
Music by Toronto artists to entertain 311 callers on hold
The next step in Toronto’s “music city” development will be passing the city’s official music strategy. The extensive document, drafted with input from Tanner’s office and the 36-member Toronto Music Advisory Council, and innumerable industry and public consultations, has made it past the economic development committee and goes before council at the end of the month. Tory says it’s now time to “give it life.”
https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2016/ed/bgrd/backgroundfile-90615.pdf
Toronto Music Strategy Supporting and Growing the City’s Music Sector Created by the Toronto Music Advisory Council for the City of Toronto February 2016
We should celebrate Taylor Swift. But her success shouldn’t crowd out others
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/30/taylor-swift-reaps-country-sized-riches-other-artists-squeezed-out
The fame economy – in music and the arts – is steeper than that of the most oppressive autocracy. There are a tiny number of winners, on whom unspendable riches are lavished, then legions of losers. On Spotify, artists need 6m streams to achieve the equivalent of a year on the UK’s minimum wage. One per cent of musicians hog 90% of the takings. Gaming looks similar, as do the visual arts. As these industries are increasingly globalised, things are getting worse. There is no striving middle class.
This is a problem because things tend to be better when wealth isn’t concentrated just at the top. Economies are harder to destabilise when they don’t rely on just a handful of people. They are also more innovative.
Swift, like the Rolling Stones, will sell out concerts for the rest of her life, even if the quality nosedives. But how many revolutionary artists have been ground out of the music industry, worn out or out of money? Monocultures are bad for the environment; as we forced golden, waving wheat to take over the planet, other species faltered and failed, rather than rising on their merits.
Ballard, 3//25/24
Tractor Tavern preserves old-school spirit, 30 years later
https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/tractor-tavern-preserves-old-school-spirit-30-years-later
For much of its lifetime, the Tractor has been the aspirational anchor of what Bellingham singer-songwriter Devin Champlin calls “the Ballard trifecta,” a close-knit trio of Ballard Avenue clubs — the Tractor, Conor Byrne and the Sunset Tavern — that organically built its own mini ecosystem within Seattle’s music scene.
“[Artists] move through playing shows at Conor Byrne and then to the Sunset and then to the Tractor,” said Brady Harvey, who started booking Conor Byrne when it reopened from the pandemic in May 2021. “All these folks are meeting each other, going to open mics, going to each other’s shows, forming new bands and making something truly special. … We have this really special spot in Ballard that doesn’t really exist anywhere else in the city. … We’ve really made a home for musicians there.”
With its capacity of around 400 people, the Tractor can accommodate more fans swilling Rainier bottles than Conor Byrne and the Sunset combined, and the smaller two venues have served as a steppingstone for both hometown and touring artists who would later play the Tractor. That was the case for Champlin, who leads folky standouts Sons of Rainier. When Champlin first cracked into the Seattle scene years ago with previous bands, they played Conor Byrne until they built enough of a following and made enough connections to take the larger stage across the street.
Murphy, too, praises the Tractor’s dedication to the local music community and willingness to give “young bucks” a shot opening for bigger acts, as well as the “family vibe” coursing from Cowan, Bezezekoff and booker Jeff Rogness on through the rest of the staff. It’s quiet and critical work that helps ensure the next wave of Seattle artists is supported like the generation that came before it. That level of care and commitment, Murphy said, isn’t always a given.
“Sometimes people are just booking shows randomly, but [Rogness] is someone who I’ll bump into at Conor Byrne and he’s like, ‘Oh, I’m checking this person out,’” said Murphy, who opens for the Jayhawks on Saturday. “There might be like four people there, but he’s watching somebody to put them in front of even more people. That’s how these scenes survive, is that kind of passion for it.”
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