Live music venues come and go in Edmonton.
Just as another one seems to put down roots, BAM! it gets axed — usually because (a) it’s getting kicked out of its space or (b) it’s no longer financially viable.
For years, we seemed OK with these losses. We’d cry at the news of another closure — “Oh no! I saw ______ there! My past is being obliterated!” — but ultimately, we’d just end up shrugging our shoulders as the Sidetrack Cafe, Seedy’s, kHz, Elevation Room, New City, and yes, even Red’s/Edmonton Event Centre disappeared from our lives.
In 2015, however, our vanishing venues finally got top billing. We lost five more rooms — the Roxy, The ARTery, The Pawn Shop, Wunderbar, and SPACE. Two filmmakers unveiled their documentary, Dead Venues, about some of Edmonton’s former hallowed halls. And one ambitious musician, Thom Bennett, decided to put an end to the phenomenon, or at the very least, slow it down.
He’s the chief gardener behind ELM, or the Edmonton Live Music Initiative, a partnership between the City of Edmonton, Edmonton Arts Council and Alberta Music.
Bennett wants to grow a vibrant and stable music scene by making it easier for venues to operate, and therefore, nurture the city’s performers. He proposes to do so with a series of financial incentives and zoning/licensing changes — perhaps even creating a live music district on par with the world-famous Sixth Street in Austin, Texas.
“Frankly, it took me a long time to realize that, in the arts industry, you need to be your own boss,” he says. “You have to have the chutzpah or the fire to make something happen instead of waiting around for it to happen. I think I spent a large part of my career waiting and complaining instead of doing something about it. So I just decided to do something about it.”
Bennett, 37, was also a bit of a late bloomer as a musician. He was 17 when he got his first drum kit, then enrolled in MacEwan’s music program after a two-year stint in the University of Alberta’s environmental sciences program.
Nowadays, he plays with one of Edmonton’s most successful jazz acts, AB/Trio, and performs/records with dozens of musicians — from soul-pop vocalist Ann Vriend to Kubasonics, an Ukrainian folk band.
Bennett pitched the ELM Initiative to Coun. Scott McKeen in January — weeks before the City of Edmonton bought The ARTery’s dilapidated building and forced the venue to leave due to structural issues. (The city plans to tear down the building and use the site as storage during construction of the Valley Line LRT.)
“Thom’s an astute guy with a comprehensive view of live music and the issues around it,” says McKeen. “So he didn’t just shill for musicians, or venues, but talked about the state of affairs and how government could be a force for good. Instantly, we started brainstorming ideas and he ran with them.”
In October, ELM held its first brainstorming session with more than 40 venue owners, gig promoters, musicians, journalists, publicists, festival directors, politicians and city bureaucrats. They talked about a range of issues — from permits to marketing to audience behaviour. (Do people even care about live music anymore?)
Bennett also introduced two of his main ideas — extending alcohol sales and offering grants for venues. As part of a pilot project, three venues will receive grants to cover half of their musicians’ fees for six months. (For every $1 invested in the arts, there’s a return of $12, according to some economic impact studies.)
“If musicians are getting paid less, they don’t have as much time to work on their craft, and then the quality goes down and people don’t want to come out and then musicians get paid even less,” says Bennett. “It’s a downward spiral. You need to invest more money to get more quality.”
As fruitful as the session was, Bennett still has to iron out some of the adversarial relationships within Edmonton’s music scene. Artists don’t always think venues have their best interests at heart. Some venue owners don’t think it’s fair for their competitors to get grants. And some owners, present and potential, think the city itself is hindering progress. The Aviary, most recently, was denied a development permit because it didn’t have any parking stalls.
Bennett is now planning to work with the city to devise a business licence for live music venues, which might also end up solving some of the current zoning issues. (At the moment, there is no category exclusively for live music venues. The Mercury Room, for example, is classified as a restaurant. Other available licences include spectator entertainment establishment, after-hours dance club, and premises offering alcohol sales.)
ELM is also making headway on changing Alberta liquor regulations to benefit venues. Earlier this month, the legislature passed a motion to allow MLA David Shepherd to explore some possibilities, including extending alcohol sales by an hour to 3 a.m., or giving venues a price reduction on their booze.
Licensing, grants and zoning are definitely not part of the glamorous side of music, but Bennett knows those subjects are essential — to musicians and Edmonton as a whole.
“I didn’t get into music for the money. I love what I do and I want to keep doing what I love every day. But at the same time, there’s a huge economic benefit to having a healthy music scene — it attracts people here, it keeps people here, both artists and people who want to live in a vibrant community. That’s why Austin has such a big tech community — it’s a young population that works in tech and they want to go out and they want to do stuff. I think (Edmonton) is starting to wake up in that respect.”
ssperounes@postmedia.com