Here is part two of my interview with Steve Harms from the Warehouse in LaCrosse, WI.
You can read part one, right here.
In this section, he discusses the challenges of just getting the space set up, and the continuing struggle to adapt to new music styles, and the local music scene that fuels what he does at the Warehouse.
He also touches on what the next steps maybe for the building and the Warehouse to have building blocks to the next generation of musicians and music fans.
It might end up being another 2-3 parts, and we’ll post the next one next Wednesday. Please give $10 or more to the Warehouse if you can.
Rift: What were the biggest challenges starting out?
Steve: I guess that previous answer made it seem like it was all hunky dory, but when we opened up the 2nd time (as an all ages no alcohol teen dance place), the local inspectors were giving us hell about everything. That big venue down the street was starting to do teen dance nights (when they heard we were going to do that) and had a lot of influence with the inspectors. We had a plumbing inspector tell us three times to re-pipe bathroom plumbing that was plumbed by licensed plumbers (familiar with code) every time. They told us the inspector had some hard-on for us for an unknown reason, and that the repeated changes were ridiculous. So there were inspection problems.
I mentioned that bands from the Pacific Northwest came here a lot, but it did take a while to get them, and their agents to understand where La Crosse was. Most agents have a route of venues that they always use. They don’t want to deviate because that it’s predictable; there won’t be any issues that that come up. They won’t have to acquaint themselves with new venues/promoters/rooms, and they have their tours planned even before starting to book. With a Thursday in Chicago a Friday in Milwaukee and a Saturday in Mpls. Why should they change from the norm because some rinky-dink venue in La Crosse (where?!?!) Wisconsin wants their band? For La Crosse Wisconsin, agents would quite literally have to get out a map. (No internet).
Rift: Has there been a change in the last 24 years in how music has progressed and what the audience of The Warehouse will come out and see.
Steve: The last 24 (almost 25) years of music progression has seen The Warehouse go through phases like any venue does.
What a venue books (if the promotion is done in-house, not by an outside promoter) in a small town is based on several key things:
1) What bands are agents even offering to bring to the market.
2) What locals are available to support those shows, and do those locals play every weekend in town and have they already rendered themselves useless.
3) What has worked in the past.
That last one, what has worked in the past, becomes irrelevant quickly because kids favorite band this year could be completely ignored next year.
That 25 years saw the Warehouse go from teen dances to alternative dances to alternative shows to a period of industrial and goth shows to pop punk period to nu metal period etc. As each genre takes the forefront nationwide, baby bands appear by the 100s. All of them mimicking what is popular. There will be a local band doing the same thing. So a show gets put together.
The need for locals is critical, because promoters count on the popularity of locals to bring out their crowd, and they hope the local will draw additional attention to the big show the promoter put them on with the touring band.
We have always worked with locals (as well as Minneapolis, Eau Claire, Madison, Rochester, Central Wisco, and Milwaukee bands) to get them to bigger shows with the hope of “developing” them into bands that can one day start headlining their shows at the Warehouse. To help them build a fanbase from the ground up. Bands who build their fanbase from the ground up have fans who are so much more passionate about the band’s music. Those ground-level fans become superfans, which are important to any band.
The problem with young local bands is that they are kids, and they grow, and they break up. So you can count on local bands breaking up and reforming into different units all the time. The times when ALL the locals break up at once are very painful for show attendance.
Most major markets, Minneapolis is a good example, have promoters that make bands buy tickets to get on to shows. Young bands are a dime a dozen in a major market, so taking advantage of them is apparently easy, and the abundance of them makes it seem less heartless. “This is what you have to do.” The promoters who do that just care about emptying the bands pockets, not about developing those bands into strong draws.
So many young bands think that the only way to get ahead is to buy on to big shows. Many of these bands who buy on (or are forced to sell tickets) are not ready for a big show, or a big stage. They either get on stage at that big show and face a big crowd who has no interest in them, or the band ends up playing in a separate attached smaller performance room while the entire crowd watches the headliners in the big room. They don’t start out playing smaller shows regularly, and they don’t build a ground level fanbase. They try to start building the band from the middle. I liken it to building a skyscraper from the 3rd floor, without ever caring about the foundation.
Promoters nationwide HATE this opinion, because they’re mostly kids who grew up getting ripped off by the promoters before them. They think stripping high school bands of all the money their parents will give them is moral, and standard operating procedure. I think that is bullshit. Young bands have to argue with Mom and Dad about buying gear for them (their first pieces of equipment), about rehearsing in the garage in the summer and the basement in the winter, about using Dads truck, etc.
Eventually, they have to find money for recording, for merchandise, for rehearsal spaces, a vehicle, a trailer. They don’t need to be wasting their money giving it to a Promoter. It is the Promoter’s job to set up a show that sells tickets. It is the job of the band to promote the show, however, possible. Not to be driving all over the Cities just to deliver one ticket to someone so the band can get a tiny little bit of its cash from the ticket. Many people say that’s why we’re having issues at the Warehouse because I don’t change bands to play on bigger shows. Bullshit. I reward local bands who have played lots of shows and worked hard to promote them, and I give Mpls/EauClaire/Rochester/Madison bands a chance to get on a big show because they have played before and proven they are talented enough to develop further.
Putting regional and local bands together with touring bands, and watching as friendships start is awesome.
Getting kids to come out to see bands has been a hassle for years, especially with the advent of music file-sharing. Kids think everything music related should be free. Except T-shirts, which is why we see tiny bands coming through with 10 Tshirt designs, two hoodies, can holders, pillowcase covers, etc. As for the event itself, it is harder and harder to get a kid to pay for an “experience”.
Hot Topic did a slam-bang job of screwing up shows for a while, by destroying a kids perception of what a show is. In my mind, a show is a presentation, and you want a paying customer to feel like you put some time and effort into preparing and performing at that presentation.
Hot Topic had a program where touring bands would play on the day of the show at the local venue, at Hot Topic, acoustically. Just set up some chairs and play. Bands were under the “play anywhere, anytime” mantra, and of course, they wouldn’t miss a chance to “get more people to the show.” Except that usually backfired and turned into “I heard them at Hot Topic, and it was kinda boring, and I got to meet them, so why should I go to the show”. Of course it was boring, it wasn’t a presentation. It wasn’t a show. But kids and bands started calling Hot Topic events “shows.” To top it off, some bands would go on “Hot Topic Tours”, because they were too lazy to try to get gigs at venues, and they’d just go from Hot Topic to Hot Topic.
Seems like almost any day there was some band from nowhere doing a SHOW, a SHOW! at Hot Topic. Talk about a scene eating itself.
We are in a phase of a lot of metal/metalcore/hardcore music touring. That’s tough, because, after couple years of primarily any type of genre, you find yourself labeled as that.
A local coffee/crepe shop opened a few years ago, and our acoustic shows took a huge hit. Acoustic artists are the worst for thinking through the big picture. If they want to have a career of it, playing all day every day at the coffee shop, every open mic, every sunny day outside the door, etc., doesn’t make people want to see you open for a big national player. So you become the performer everyone knows that no one will pay for. It used to be we’d develop acoustic players just like bands, put the best locals with touring nationals; they’d strike up a friendship, and the musician would be contacted before the next tour. They would end up opening here at the Warehouse, then also in Madison and maybe Minneapolis. Why? Because they had drawn some people themselves at the national acts, show the previous year.
They had drawn a crowd because their show was an EVENT because they didn’t play every open mic night and every day by the front door of the coffee shop. So they could draw, their enthusiastic crowd made their performance better, and even the national act saw potential.
We’ve lost that local acoustic niche, which has prevented me from being able to book acts like Ron Pope, Ari Herstand, etc. because there are no acoustic locals that can draw a paying crowd. That logic is hard to get a local musician to understand, especially when all his “friends” are at the coffee shop.
There has been a lack of local upstart pop bands as of late too, so even though we book pop bands and pop rock bands, it is a hard sell. As a teenager, if your friends aren’t in a band playing a style of music, you might not be listening to that style of music. Pop punk, although making a national comeback, has been a hard sell here because we only have two pop punk bands.
We are working on a program to provide space (and funding, hopefully) to have local guitar teachers provide free or super cheap guitar lessons to kids who want to try it out. If we can get the program funded, the teachers would be paid for their time. Working on getting a guitar manufacturer as well as an amplifier company to help provide the gear so that even underprivileged kids can have an instrument here when they come for lessons, or when they schedule in a practice session when the rehearsal/lesson rooms are available.
That’s one way to encourage new young bands, which are so crucial to maintaining a base of touring bands coming through the area.
http://www.warehouserocks.com/
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