Music and entertainment venues like First Avenue nightclub are on life support. They say if relief funding isn’t passed by congress, the financial impact from the pandemic could destroy the industry and make small, local venues obsolete for a long time to come.
April was supposed to be the 50th anniversary celebration for First Avenue.
If you’ve also caught yourself daydreaming about being in large groups and feeling the energy of a live performance, you can imagine the scale and impact of that kind of celebration. It would be a statewide party.
Instead of that celebration, it’s been silent for six months. The final show was March 12 and around 500 employees were furloughed.
“I’m getting choked up,” First Avenue owner Dayna Frank said Thursday. “Getting to 51 years feels impossible.”
That is unless legislation called the Save Our Stages Act passes providing long-term relief to the community-centered venues that were the first to shut down and will likely be the last to open.
Senator Amy Kobuchar says she’s optimistic it will be included in the next Heroes Act, or the next pandemic relief bill. She returns to Washington Monday. The legislation would allocate grants from the Small Business Administration to ensure the community venues can last until there is a vaccine and large, live performances continue again.
“We’re going to get to the point where only big guys rule,” co-author Sen. Amy Klobuchar said, “and the small guys don’t have a chance because the big ones are going to be able to weather this much better.”
That same fear is echoed by Neil Olstad. He’s a member of the band Koo Koo Kanga Roo, a duo that prides itself on interactivity with fans during their more than 100 nationwide shows a year. He’s played at 7th Street Entry and regularly hears in the industry that First Avenue is respected for its staff and its environment as much as it’s respected for its history and list of famous acts.
“Maybe in the long run things will be OK,” he said. “In the short- to medium term I worry about these places going under and not coming back in the same way. If some of these places go away, then you get Live Nation and AG (Events) and some of these bigger companies -- they will fill those spots and they will take over that room. Ant they’ll maybe call it something different -- or maybe they’ll have the same name on it -- but it won’t be the same because they won’t have those employees, they won’t have that connection to the past. They won’t have that same warmth that you get from these independent venues, so I do worry about it that way that this will cause harm.”
The high-energy hip hop and dance shows make up between 60 to 70 percent of their income, Olstad said. Though Koo Koo Kanga Roo has been able to diversify with a brand deal with Panera Bread, YouTube, streaming and merchandise, Olstad worries about the behind the scenes workers that keep the music industry functioning.
Frank said opening the doors for one or for 1,000 costs the same in an industry where margins were already thin. She knows they will be holding on for an extended period, once a vaccine is not only made, but distributed and administered widely.
“PPP (loans), because it goes through the SBA -- I can’t believe I know all this stuff, this is crazy -- but because it goes through the SBA 7A loans, it counts total headcount for employees,” Frank explained. “Which means that if you have an employee that works 10 hours a year or 5 hours a week it counts the same as a full-time equivalent employee. So First Avenue, which has 386 total headcount, even though our FTE number is 58, we have to go in as 356 which would exclude us from the next round of PPP.”
Frank is spearheading the National Independent Venue Association because they matter to communities.
“First Avenue and businesses like ours are the backbones of communities,” she said. “We’re the economic and cultural drivers, where local artists develop their sound and hone their voices with collaborators and get ready to launch into the arenas and on to the national stage. We bring art, entertainment and dollars into our cities. We support the nearby bars, restaurants, hotels and shops. It’s estimated that $1 spent at First Avenue results in $12 in economic activity.”
Anyone who wants to help should contact Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi’s offices to express support for the Save our Stages Act.
