Venue Stories - Introducing a new Indyish series

Over the past year and a half of Indyish, and 10 months of Monthly Messes, (which are archived by Elran on the Monthly Mess round up page), we’ve had the opportunity to work with a lot of different venues in Montreal. We started the Mess thinking we might keep it at Katacombes (venue #1) but after the first show Josh Hinck and I talked with the team and decided we were interested in trying a traveling show, at least until we found the perfect place to settle down. We wanted to learn about different parts of the city and the different cultures of different venues, and as the Mess’s following grew we realized we were also able to bring new attention and different crowds to venues. Potentially win win. We’ve definitely learned a lot, enough to start a series even maybe, so here goes!

I’ll be posting a blog post about my experience with a different Montreal venue regularly - I’ll try to do one every Sunday - using the same title header and tag each time (Venue Stories). I also encourage any Indyish artist with a venue experience to join in and post their own Venue Story following the formula.

These will describe our subjective experience of these spaces and the people that make them live, so heads up, there’s bound to be bias, and everyone’s experience will be a little different. I’m just thinking that even these bits could be useful for artists trying to get a knowledge of the scenes and opportunities that are out there, primarily in Montreal but also in the wilds beyond our lovely local bubble.

First let me give you a little context about our Monthly Mess shows. The guidelines for the show were developed in dialogs I had with the awesome Indyish volunteers, especially Josh Hinck who, as you may well know from the Gazette article and much blogging, was the primary force behind the birth of the idea of a monthly Indyish showcase, and the main person I worked with to produce the first 7 shows before he left. We knew he was leaving as of Mess 6, at which point Marilis, who had little of Josh’s event management experience, but some experience managing bands, bravely stepped up from her initial role as event photographer and has helped Indyish ever since with bookings, promotion and even stage management for the Mess shows. Though she’s not the only person working on the Mess (Alanah and Lise have been great as well, and the whole team helps hugely during the actual night) she’s been a major help, which Josh and I are very thankful for as it’s kept the local show alive while he gets settled and starts to think about maybe starting the first non-Montreal-based Indyish Mess. I’m also glad to say that even more experienced event managers are joining the team now, as the show grows, allowing Marilis and myself to focus on the aspects we’re best at.

But the Mess’s MO developed early. Josh was great at building our confidence and vision, finding amazing artists by teaching us to reach way beyond our immediate circle, negotiating with some of the venues, and importantly, helping us keep a clear view on how high we should be aiming in terms of quality, diversity, curatorial innovations and community support, as well as reminding us how much we bring to a venue that’s willing to work with our madness (like 200 people on a Wednesday).

Thanks to him, we only do shows at venues that will work with our extensive list of demands. Kidding. Sort of. =) Though each time it’s different, we definitely have met some cool spaces, very fascinating people (mostly night owls), and incredible manifestations of what seems to me like an Event Ethic: a belief that helping performances happen and artists to develop in a supportive way is some kind of fundamental good. It’s a belief that fuels me warmly on cold, snow heaped days like today, and grows each time I meet one of these unexpected fellows of the faith, whether we agree on the How of it or not.

We operate the traveling show under the assumption that we can work with just about anything, but that the perfect venue for us is out there. So in each Venue Story post I’ll try and outline what was perfect and imperfect for our needs, and to extrapolate on what kinds of shows could work best in the space. And I’ll try to cover all our Mess venues in chronological order, from first to last. So watch for a Katacombes story coming soon!