Will Springfield pay for more and better music?

Illinois Times invited a small group of area music promoters, booking agents and festival organizers to dinner at Obed and Isaac’s on Dec. 2 to discuss the presentation of live, original music in Springfield. The music scene here has long been both fertile and problematic, with dozens of active artists playing original material in various styles and genres but facing a shrinking number of venues in which to perform and audiences which have sometimes been difficult to cultivate. These same problems often hold true for shows by national and international touring acts when they play in town. The discussion was an attempt to pinpoint both the challenges and advantages specific to presenting music in Springfield, along with finding ways promoters might work together to improve the music scene as a whole.

The panelists included Sean Burns, booker and promoter with the Bedrock 66 concert series and radio host of “Sangamon Valley Roots Revival” on NPR Illinois; Josh Catalano, co-creator of Downhome Music Festival, talent buyer, photographer and musician-songwriter with Western Empire; Bernie Flesch, booking manager at Bar None, freelance graphic designer and musician with Jukebox Casanova; Brian Galecki, co-owner of Black Sheep Café and Dumb Records as well as a musician with various projects; Robbie Kording, independent concert promoter and musician with The Timmys; Aaron “Uncanny” Phillips, booking and social media specialist and host of weekly hip-hop showcase Torch Tuesday; Howard “Torch” Tomas, founder of Torch Tuesday; Bob Vaughn, director of Sangamon Auditorium; and Eric Welch, founder and director of Springfield SOHO Music Festival. Scott Faingold, IT staff writer, co-host of “The Scene” on NPR Illinois and musician with Epsom, moderated the discussion.

Invitations to participate in this panel were extended to representatives of other area venues – including Boondocks, which hosts a significant number of concerts in town – but several were unable to attend.

The participating panelists all have a vital stake in the presentation of original music in Springfield, putting together concerts and other showcases for local and international talent. They work in forums ranging from small, intimate shows to largescale outdoor music festivals, to the plush Sangamon Auditorium, and each bring unique perspective and experience to the table. The conversation was boisterous and occasionally contentious but everyone was clearly passionate about making and keeping Springfield a place where original music matters.

IT: Why do music in Springfield? Josh Catalano (Downhome Music Festival): I think there’s a huge quantity of talent here, as well as a lot of quality.

Aaron Phillips (Torch Tuesday): I just grew up in the scene. I did some work scouting new artists and selling CDs starting when I was like 10 years old or so. I was born to do it.

Robbie Kording (The Timmys): I still remember the first show I went to in town, my jaw was on the floor. I think I was 15 years old – it was magical. There’s still some of that magic left.

Brian Galecki (Black Sheep Café): Springfield is just oozing with culture. Because it’s not huge you can really notice what goes on. I think this town is perfect and what we have built over in Southtown doesn’t exist anywhere else, even in bigger cities.

Bob Vaughn (Sangamon Auditorium): It’s home to me. I retired after 35 years working in Nebraska and came back to Springfield to take the job as director of the auditorium.

Bernie Flesch (Bar None): Springfield has a rich history in music. In the ’30s when the Orpheum Theater was downtown, musicians like Ella Fitzgerald would play here. Now there’s over a million square feet of empty real estate downtown – it used to be a thriving area with department stores and casinos. In Miles Davis’s memoir he says that his first paying gig was in Springfield, Illinois. There’s a lot of original music here, but cover bands still dominate live music in this town. Like Josh said, there’s a lot of talent, but are a lot of people going out to see that talent all the time? Maybe not.

IT: What goes into putting on concerts in Springfield – of local acts as well as touring bands? What are the audiences like? Flesch: I think the all-ages scene is probably the best in town for original music. Younger kids seem to go out there more for it – and the Downhome and SOHO festivals both have local, original music and people do go out for that. I’ve been running Bar None for about three years now and we’ve had some rough times but I feel like it’s coming back. Some of the shows we’ve had recently have had good turnouts.

Burns: I think sometimes the music scene hasn’t been as collaborative as it could be. Springfield is such a small music market and could be made better if we realize there needs to be a balance between what’s going on locally and what’s coming through from the road. If the same couple of local acts are playing every Friday night in town, at some point it’s hard to tell people to come out for that. On the other hand, if you’re bringing people through – and we all know there are thousands of talented punk bands and roots bands and blues bands and hip-hop acts out there – that’s a good thing. But keep in mind, booking these shows, local or national, is a labor of love only because nobody’s getting rich. It just seems like the more we can figure out to help each other the better off we are.

Vaughn: At Sangamon Auditorium we try to take a diverse kind of approach to it. It’s mostly to try to expose audiences here to other cultures. We’ll do some jazz, some blues, we’ll do some rock and roll and some roots music. But we do a lot of world music and dance as well – it’s because we’re in the interior of the country and we have a lot of people who don’t get to travel. I mean who’s ever seen anyone play the ngoni?

Howard “Torch” Tomas: Like Bob, Torch Tuesday is into bringing talent and exposing Springfield to different cultures, things they’re not exposed to unless you’re in a big metropolitan city like Chicago or Memphis. We bring diverse hip-hop to the people.

Phillips: On the practical side, there are a lot of acts traveling from Indianapolis to Kansas City or Chicago to St. Louis or passing through on their way to or from Memphis, and sometimes they need a tour date on a Monday or a Tuesday or a Wednesday and thankfully we have venues to provide that. On the hip-hop side we’ve had Raekown, Ras Kass, Copywrite – guys that have sold millions of records, playing downtown Springfield on a Tuesday night. The Palmer Squares (from Los Angeles) are playing Dec. 29. It’s kind of easy to book here because we help them cut down on that travel time.

Galecki: Recently, we get between one and five bands every day emailing us about trying to book shows. If we said yes to every single one, we would have a full show of four touring bands every night of the week.

Flesch: Yeah, I get five or maybe even 10 emails a day from out-of-town original bands, which is an increase over the past six months or so. I think a big reason is that for live, original music, Bar None is the only over-21 place downtown that is consistently doing that. Donnie’s is gone, Tin Can is gone. There’s a reason we’re the last one in town – it’s not easy.

Kording: But it’s not like show attendance is only down in Springfield. It’s the same everywhere, and a lot of bands are trying to get the hell out of their towns and on the road. There’s a lot of traveling, working bands in the country right now. I could talk about this all night but I’d rather not. It can get very negative even though I don’t mean it to be.

Burns: That’s why I think we need to work doubly hard to make things special.

Kording: People used to find out about shows organically. Now it’s like you’re overwhelmed by show invites on social media, to the point where it’s watered down. It’s not so special anymore. If I could afford billboards I’d do that for every show. The yard signs [political-style signs used to promote the Hobgoblin Spookadelic Halloween concert in 2014] were just scrap – it cost me no money. Even with the Internet, bands and promoters still need to hang up posters, you have to promote it every way you can, you can’t skimp. Social media is not enough. Also we don’t have very many venues and people get sick of the same old place all the time.

IT: What’s involved in putting together outdoor music festivals of original music here? Catalano: When we started Downhome Festival, we thought original bands in Springfield didn’t get a lot of opportunity to play at outdoor festivals. The bands split up the admission money from the gate, completely. As organizers, we take out as little as possible. Sponsorships cover sound and staging, and all we take is beer sales. And that keeps us afloat year to year. In the five years that we’ve done it we’ve paid out over $50,000 to Springfield-area original bands, which I think is fantastic. A band might get $300 for a half-hour set – that’s not a huge amount but it can pay for a day in a recording studio or get 100 CDs printed up at DiscMakers. It beats making $40 at the door at a small club and splitting it between four guys at $10 apiece.

Galecki: The focus of both Downhome and SOHO – as well as our own Black Sheep Fest – is all on local bands. But with Dumb Fest we thought we’d try to make Springfield into a meet-up spot for out-of-town bands. At first it seemed too hard to pull off, but we’ve done it for three years now and it’s been very successful. It’s also helped get bands to come here in the off-season. One of our biggest shows this year was [acclaimed New Jersey-based band] Screaming Females, and that was a direct result of Dumb Fest. We had talked to them about playing the festival, which didn’t happen, but later they heard good things from other bands so they decided to come to Black Sheep afterwards for their own show – and it was great. And of course we’ve been doing Black Sheep Fest for eight years, which is focused on local music and more of a younger crowd.

Welch: SOHO Festival has 350 volunteers, the bands volunteer to play and it gives them exposure. Then we get to throw all the money at the charities. The charities bring in their volunteers too, it gets them involved. It’s a great community event. Going forward, though, I really like the idea of collaborating, bringing all of the groups on this panel together. What I picture is a multiple-stage event downtown, along the lines of South by Southwest [the huge annual music and arts festival held in Austin, Texas] where we bring in some conferences and have some off-site things.

Burns: The engine that would make all of this go – in terms of an event like you’re talking about – would be to get community support and support from the mayor and the city and also getting local businesses to be sponsors, to put money in and make it happen.

Welch: I’m picturing something that’s not just a music festival, it’s a larger entity than just this one specific thing that we’ve kind of been roped into. I’ve tried to expand SOHO recently by bringing on a 10K or having a disc golf tournament. I would hope we all at this table believe in that same ideal, that by working together we could create something much more inclusive.

Flesch: Sounds nice and all, but it’s not gonna happen, at least not overnight.

Welch: Well, you have to build a culture that supports it and if everybody’s fightin’ for the same nickel.. . .

Burns: I pitched the idea to DSI a long time ago where rather than doing the usual festival in the summer, we’d have an indoor festival in the colder months when things aren’t going on – kind of like a pub crawl with bands spread out over various venues but all under the same name, the same umbrella. So there might be a hip-hop showcase happening in one place, punk or whatever in the next and so on, and people can pick and choose what they want to see. But it would all be one thing.

Catalano: I love that idea. Vaughn: I like this idea you guys are starting to lean toward here, to have multiple venues for a multi-day festival.

Burns: Look, the downside of Springfield is that there’s not a lot going on here – but that’s also the upside. If you were trying to have this conversation in Chicago, you’d be competing with a million different players. On the other hand, here in town you can actually just walk into the mayor’s office or meet with somebody at the university. It’s doable here.

Kording: Without a strong music and art scene, young people will not stay in Springfield. And they don’t. It’s a quality of life issue.

IT: What are some of the general challenges in trying to put shows together here? Catalano: Mostly a lack of support from audiences. I think more people scoff at having to pay $5 dollars at the door here in Springfield than I’ve seen anywhere in the country.

Flesch: It doesn’t make any sense. Kording: That’s the same price it was at the door when I was 15.

Flesch: It’s not like the pay has gone up – the pay has been the same since the middle ’80s.

Kording: Everything has gone up in price except for shows.

IT: Is this part of an overall cultural shift or is it a particular attitude unique to here? Kording: Springfield has its problems. In order to have a good club scene you need to have clubs. There’s not a club in Springfield where you can have a rock show on a Saturday night.

Flesch: Well, now there is. Kording: Bar None is supposedly getting back into Saturday nights but it’s rare.

Flesch: A few years ago when Josh [Catalano] was running Bar None, on a Friday or a Saturday people would come up to the door, and while they were paying the cover charge they might ask what band’s playing. They didn’t care, they just wanted to go out and see live, original music. Now people are like, “Five bucks? Come on, guys.”

Burns: With Bedrock shows I just tell people, I don’t care, the price is $20. I know the music is good and if someone doesn’t wanna pay it, oh well.

Catalano: Personally, I’d much rather pay $20 and see a show with 150 people than pay $5 and see it with 500 people.

Phillips: One thing that’s fun is that all of our venues here are very intimate, you can pretty much shake hands with the touring artists, get an autograph, all of that. There’s not a lot of backstage areas for them to hide from you, so you can do shots with them. A lot of the guys we bring in like to sit at the bar and fraternize.

Kording: We only really have two venues in this town where local original bands can get onstage – Black Sheep and Bar None. That’s it. We have bars, but a bar is just a bar, it’s not a venue. I really liked Donnie’s – well, I hated the people that ran the place, they were idiots – but I liked the way they were able to have an all-ages show but also have alcohol for people who are over 21 [using different colored wristbands for patrons over and under 21]. So instead of having two shows, you have one big show. And you could draw more bands that way and the show would be over [at a decent time].

What we really need is a rock club on the west side of town. The building where Buffet City used to be would be perfect. But you’d have to put $1,000,000 into that place.

Flesch: Lucky for all of us, I’ve got $1,000,000 right here![laughter]

IT: I’ve noticed when bands that have some kind of reputation play Black Sheep, that place is wall-to-wall with people, younger and older, who are there to hear music. Galecki: Our biggest show ever was this year’s Hobgob [Halloween show] with NIL8 and Leftover Crack [from New York City]. But the biggest issue we always struggle with is getting people out to shows and making ends meet. And our staff is all volunteers.

Kording: Look, I don’t even care if I get paid, I just want to be able to pay the bands I’m bringing in from out of town.

Flesch: I don’t get paid for any of the shows, I don’t get a dime. But like Eric was saying, it is important to work together. Every year Black Sheep does a special “all cover versions” show to benefit their venue – and every year Bar None does one the next weekend for people who are over 21 and we donate 100 percent of the door for that show back to the Black Sheep because I think it’s a very important thing that they do. There’s an ulterior motive there for sure – I want to support what they’re doing, but at the same time when those kids turn 21 and they want to go somewhere and have a drink, they’ll think of Bar None… Look, I’m trying to keep the doors open to my place – but at the same time I’m also trying to help keep the music scene going.

Contact Scott Faingold at sfaingold@illinoistimes.com.