east coast small music venues

[space6oy]

anyone have recommendations? trying to help a band here in columbus fill some dates for a tour. and it'd just be nice to have a list for future suggestions.


what we've collected thus far:

Hamden, CT
- The Outer Space - theouterspace.net

Washington, DC
- Black Cat

Boston, MA
- O’Briens
- Great Scott
- Middle East
- P.A.’s Lounge
- ONCE Somerville
- Cambridge Elks Lodge

Easthampton, MA
- The Flywheel

Greenfield, MA
- Hawks and Reed

Northampton / Florence, MA
- 13th Floor Music Lounge
- Sierra Grille

Montclair, NJ
- Meatlocker

Brooklyn, NY
- Silent Barn
- Trans Pecos
- Shea Stadium (moving)
- Market Hotel
- St. Vitus

Ithaca, NY
- Ithaca Underground (event organization)

Rochester, NY
- The Bug Jar

Chapel Hill / Carrboro, NC
- Local 506 - local506.com
- Cat’s Cradle - catscradle.com

Durham, NC
- Pinhook - thepinhook.com
- Motoco - motorcomusic.com (larger venue)

Raleigh, NC
- Kings - kingsraleigh.com
- Slims - slimsraleigh.com
- The Pour House - thepourhousemusichall.com

Philadelphia, PA
- Johnny Brenda’s
- Kung Fu Neck Tie
- Underground Arts
- The Battling Cages (changing names…)
- The Pharmacy

[DRodriguez]

What kind of band. Plenty of small venues in NYC, but they vary a lot by genre.

Here's a pretty comprehensive list for the greater NYC area: https://www.ohmyrockness.com/venues/all

[space6oy]

they're kind of hard to describe... heavy but not really metal. you can check them out here - https://prizethedoubt.bandcamp.com/

i'm curious regardless of genre though, just to have a list for future reference.

[DRodriguez]

Check out that list I posted, contains everything from madison square garden to the venues of questionable legality.

[$harkToootth]

Johnny Brenda's and Kung Fu Neck Tie in Philly will book almost anyone.

Silent Barn in Brooklyn is great for smaller shows too. Trans Pecos in Brooklyn is an option. They city just closed down (not just it was maybe a year ago) one of my favorite venues because of legality.

The Meatlocker in Montclair, NJ maybe an option but that place is of questionable legality and I think they only book people based on what is popular in 'the scene' i.e. lots of hardcore bands play there.

[$harkToootth]

Also, Shea Stadium in Brooklyn.

[DRodriguez]

Also, Shea Stadium in Brooklyn.

Shea Stadium is dead right now until they can become more legal. Looking for a new venue.

[$harkToootth]

I had no idea. Palisades was my favorite for a while; I know they're closed now too 'for reasons'

[oldangelmidnight]

Any band coming up through New England should play at the Flywheel in Easthampton, Mass.
We've also got the 13th Floor Music Lounge in Northampton/Florence and the Sierra Grille in Northampton.
It looks like Hawks and Reed in Greenfield is doing interesting stuff, too.

[popvulture]

Black Cat in DC?

[DRodriguez]

I had no idea. Palisades was my favorite for a while; I know they're closed now too 'for reasons'

Yeah, after the Ghost Ship tragedy, NYC started cracking down on the edge of legality music venues. One of the main ways the crackdown seemed to work was via liquor licenses. Basically a lot of these places wouldn't know if they got a license to sell liquor or not until the day of the shows, so they'd have to buy and store the liquor on the premises before they got that shows license. And if they didn't get a license and still had the liquor stored somewhere on site, they would be in violation for "warehousing liquor"

Speaking of, it looks like Market Hotel is reopening to shows. Easily my favorite venue vibe-wise. Looks awesome to see the subway whiz by your head to the left as the band rocks out in front. This is the 3rd time they come back from the dead.
<3 PsychicVampire

[$harkToootth]

I have three more -
St. Vitus - Brooklyn, NY
Underground Arts - Philadelphia (bands on the level of TOBACCO and CAT POWER play there though so, that venue probably needs a guaranteed crowd)
A venue known formally or informally as 'The Batting Cages' in Philly on 5th and Girard

There are healthy house show scenes in Manhattan's Lower East Side and East Village, Brooklyn (Williamsburg, Bushwick, Bed Stuy, and Greenpoint), the Jersey Shore (kind of...maybe...), New Brunswick, NJ and to a lesser degree Jersey City, NJ. I am so far removed from this sort of thing at this point though that all of this is coming from memory. Good luck!

[$harkToootth]

Thanks DRod! Good info! I'm a few years removed from this stuff now. My old colleague opened a Yoga Studio on top of Trans Pecos. Nobody had heard of it when she referred to it as 'some venue' and once she described the place I was like 'you share a space with Trans Pecos! I used to go to shows there all the time...'

[aedes]

In my area of NC I can think of

Raleigh:
Kings (http://www.kingsraleigh.com/)
Slims (http://www.slimsraleigh.com/)
The Pour House (http://thepourhousemusichall.com/)

Durham
Pinhook (http://www.thepinhook.com/)
Motoco (bigger) (http://www.motorcomusic.com/)

Chapel Hill / Carrboro
Local 506 (http://www.local506.com/)
Cat's Cradle (http://catscradle.com/)

[Hyphen Nation]

Spaceland: Hamden/New Haven.