Also missing is the credit for the truly excellent photographer, Kristen Mullen, who has much better things to do on her day off than deal with me. Check out her work here.
For the past 13 years, my friends and I have been running our own "venue" - the Cafe Metropolis in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. We started out about as DIY as you can get, with a hacked-together sound system in a former paint store. It has been nerve racking, exhilarating and not very lucrative, but it's also been a heck of a lot of fun.
Opening an all-ages club is more complicated than booking bands at the American Legion hall. You need to take care of a million little details. You have to decipher health and safety regulations that were apparently written by Martians. You negotiate with landlords, cops and surly neighbors. And you have to pay Fall Out Boy at least $60 or they won't have enough gas to make it to their next gig.
Your Hoodie Can Not Be Used as a Flotation Device
All Time Low, Bayside, Cursive, Fall Out Boy, Gym Class Heroes, Hawthorne Heights, Mastodon and a million other cool bands from every state and more than twenty different countries have played Cafe Metropolis. Even better, great local bands like the Menzingers, Title Fight and Motionless in White have launched their careers on our grimy little stage.
The most important lesson I learned over the years? Running your own show is not quite the same thing as seeing a show as an audience member. It's fun - but it's a different flavor of fun. When I Am The Avalanche is on stage and somebody stuffs a hoodie down the toilet bowl, it's not going to wait until the song is over. When Ted Leo is tuning his guitar, and he gets interrupted by a screaming, naked man (covered in red paint) you know this is not like working at Wal-Mart.
...Location, Location, LocationThe first thing you need is a suitable location. Ideally, you want a space that is at street level. Climbing stairs with Marshall amps is not going to endear your venue to musicians. Also, anything above the ground floor means dealing with stricter fire and safety codes. If you are going to attract touring bands, you need to find a place that can hold from 100 to 300 people. A good rule of thumb is you need three square feet of floor space for each person. Ideally, that means between 1000 and 2000 square feet (about the size of an average McDonalds.) Anything smaller and you are going to have a hard time booking bigger bands. Don't just scan the real estate ads in newspapers, get out and look for empty buildings. Knock on doors and ask around. Landlords are going to be skeptical and tricky to deal with. One way or another, they are going to know what is going on, so you won't get far trying to bluff them. And if someone asks you to sign a lease, please talk to a lawyer before you sign your life away.
Lawyers, Guns and Money
Being in it for the long haul means being legal, and that means wading through a maze of permits and red tape. Local zoning and fire department regulations are complicated and vary wildly from town to town, but they are usually well documented on line. Do your research. At minimum you will probably be required to have two exits and at least one bathroom. You will raise a lot of red-flags if you march down to city hall and ask them what permits you need to open a punk rock/all-ages club. It's not exactly something that makes the suits comfortable. Play nice and tell them you are opening a coffee shop or a cafe that features live entertainment. You don't have to lie, just make it easy for bureaucrats to put you in a category they already understand.
You also need a sound system. This is going to be your biggest expense. You can start by renting small P.A. (public address) systems from a local music store for between $100 to $300 per night. Eventually, we started buying sound equipment piece by piece until we had a fairly decent set-up.
It's (Not) About the Benjamins
Dealing with bands and booking agencies is not always a walk in the park. The first thing you need to calculate is what the promoters and agents call your "nut." This is the amount you have to earn from every show to pay your expenses. If rent and expenses add up to $2000 a month (not including what you pay the bands...or your workers) and you can do ten shows every month, then you need to clear at least $200 every time you open the doors. One typical method of compensating performers is something known as the "door deal." A door deal means you agree to split anything over your nut (e.g. the $200) with them. Touring bands usually want a minimum "guarantee" (an amount of cash agreed on beforehand) that they get paid regardless of whether anyone shows up or not. Sometimes the deal will include a minimum guarantee and a percentage of the take beyond a certain dollar amount.
We have paid guarantees as little as $50 and as high as $1000. Use your head when making deals. Be honest and upfront with booking agents and - this is critically important - don't be afraid to turn down a show if you don't think you will cover your costs. A hole in your schedule is better than screwing somebody over...or emptying your bank account every time a show does poorly. Do that enough and you can't last very long. Be sincere and flexible and most booking agents and bands will want to work with you. The idea is to create something that is sustainable in the long run. You have to worry about money constantly and sometimes that means tough decisions. Then again, if a band drives 300 miles in a snow storm and only ten people show up, don't be a jerk and give them half the door money. Give them the entire $60. Pete Wentz might remember that next time.
"Cafe Metropolis is the perfect example of a great punk rock, d.i.y venue. It is the kind of venue that can rarely survive in most places but in a music hungry community like Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, with nowhere else to see shows, they've kept their ticket prices low and kept the focus on music and community, not money. If it says anything, its the only venue that we played at on our first tour in 2000 that I still love to play at now." - Anthony Raneri (Bayside)
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