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How ‘Bring Music Home’ Chronicles The Struggle & Wonder Of America’s Independent Venues
(photo by Matt Lief-Anderson/Courtesy Bring Music Home) –
Comfort Dog: Three weeks after Tamara Deike interviewed Jason McNeely (above), owner of Austin’s Barracuda, the venue permanently closed.
If ever there was a vital document capturing the essence of what this year made America’s clubs so universally beloved, it’s “Bring Music Home,” a glorious new coffee table book chronicling more than 200 independent clubs in 30 U.S. markets. Co-authored by Tamara Deike and Amber Mundinger, with sumptuous art direction by Kevin W. Condon, this 500-page tome, weighing some 9 pounds, quickly makes clear what powers these treasured music temples: People. Human beings. Mere mortals. That is, the 375 owners, GMs, bookers, door- and sound-people, bartenders, security, musicians and so many others photographed in their resplendent, multihued, natural venue habitats along with their first-person observations.
(Kai Tsehay/Courtesy Bring Music Home) –
Anthony Adhibe, co-owner of Oak Atlanta
“The club scene is major for Atlanta…it’s no secret,” says Anthony Adhibe, co-owner of Oak Atlanta (left). “Most of the songs that are cut and broken are at the clubs. We actually break a lot of those records and music. I’ve had DaBaby, Lil Baby, T.I. Teyana Taylor, Cardi B…so many.” His words are especially resonate adjacent to a stark portrait of him sitting at his empty bar (left). Adhibe and others express a deep passion for their livelihood, community and colleagues (i.e. “second families”) amidst this once-in-a-century crisis pushing far too many to the limit.
“We interviewed one of the co-owners of the Barracuda in Austin pretty early on,” says co-author Deike. “He was super optimistic like, ‘We got a lot of people buying our merchandise, and they’re helping us. And we’re going to make it through, and things are going to be okay.’ Three weeks later, they closed that location permanently. Then maybe three months later, he’s also a co-owner of Hotel Vegas in Austin. We got with him to talk about Hotel Vegas and it was a palpable shift. It was very difficult. It was a hard interview. It was him and his other co-founders of the space. And he said to me that he felt like he was suffering from PTSD-because of what he’d gone through losing such an iconic space in Austin and not knowing when this thing was going to end. No end in sight, so….”
(Deike by Misha Vladimirskiy) –
Amber Mundinger and Tamara Deike, co-authors of “Bring Music Home.”
But “Bring Music Home” is not in any way all doom and gloom. Examples of resilience, innovation and community support are rife throughout. “Some of the stories I gravitated towards were in New Orleans,” says co-author Mundinger. “The Howlin’ Wolf, listening to them talk about how much they care about the community, how they were partners on a food bank initiative and helped feed the city, keeping their doors open to give people whatever they need.
“And Michael Swier who owns New York’s Bowery Ballroom and multiple venues. He was like, ‘These are our children, these spaces. I just re-signed my leases. That’s how much I believe that this will be okay.’”
When asked what they see as the book’s through-lines with hundreds of venue personnel interviewed, Mundinger says it’s the passion and limitless capacities. “Everybody is a jack of all trades,” she says. “It’s like everybody can learn something new or pick up slack in another area. It just reinforced that this isn’t a job. This is a lifestyle for people and this is something they love so much. You’re not working at a venue to become a millionaire. You’re working 18-hour days, so you have to love it and be passionate about it and you felt it every conversation and the camaraderie for each other. These are people’s families or their extended families and that was really beautiful to see, how much everybody really cared about each other.”
This massive collaborative book project, completed in just 10 months, in many ways, came to mirror its subject matter. The concept began with the onset of COVID in March 2020 when Mundinger, who is a producer for public television’s “Live From The Artists Den,” met with her friend Condon, a music photographer. “I was just trying to cheer him up because his whole business as a photographer was done in the span of a day or two,” Mundinger says. “We started talking about this idea as South by Southwest was canceling. We were talking to Tamara (whom Mundinger had met a few years previously though Condon) and it was very much like, ‘Let’s document this.’ We wrote the treatment and went for it. The name, “Bring Music Home,” my husband created and was just supposed to be a place holder.”
Danny Clinch/Courtesy BMH –
Debbie DeLisa and Lance Larson of Asbury Park’s Wonder Bar.
“It grew on us,” says Deike, who runs ACES HIGH, a concert and content production company in Austin. When we speak, she is on set producing 12 music videos for Grace Gaustad, an upcoming artist signed to Red Light. “When they called with this concept, this kernel of an idea and what they wanted to do, it was kismet. I had three events I was producing for South By, one of which was my own party I was promoting and working on with The Black Lips, for example, at a venue called Scholz Garten that was immediately and deeply impacted by the pandemic.”
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Bring Music Home cover
The co-authors are donating 30% of all proceeds to the National Independent Venue Association. Additionally, each chapter, which is organized by city, opens with a poster created by artists in each community that were sold throughout the lead-up to the book’s release benefitting venues through NIVA’s emergency relief fund.
Despite the authors’ largesse, financing a self-published book of such heft and quality doesn’t come cheap and this is where the duo’s innovation and creativity, much like any venue, came into play. To pull together such an ambitious concept documenting scattered venues across the country with limited travel budgets and resources, the co-authors, Deike, (who documented Austin), Mundinger (who chronicled New York) and Condon, with their experiences in production, came up with a novel concept: “We had 60 people collaborate with us from 30 cities, including photographers and producers,” Mundinger says of the army of volunteers who helped. “And then also we had more than 20 volunteers in legal, publicity and everything else.” (Contributors were all paid honorariums for their efforts.)
But, according to the duo, there was also a novel financial structure not often seen in publishing. “It was blood, sweat, tears, and brand partners,” Deike says. The duo brought in two sponsors: Tito’s Handmade Vodka and YETI, which makes coolers and camping gear.
Pooneh Ghana/Courtesy BMH –
The Troubadour’s Alysia Behun-DuBrall, head bartender and Christine Karayan, GM/owner, who said, “Once we get to the other side, we plan to book the hell out of this place.”
“They both got involved because of their support for the clubs, music and music culture,” says Mundinger. “They recognized what we were trying to do and they just wanted to get behind it. They were like, ‘OK. What amount do you need?’ It wasn’t like we bootstrapped this thing, but they gave us the money we needed to at least cover the bare-bones printing and manufacturing.”
(Kevin Condon/Courtesy BMH) – St. Vitus
George Souleidis and David Castillo, Co-Owner of Brooklyn’s St. Vitus.
Since publication, the duo have been producing pre-recorded livestream showcases for YETI, which aired Fridays in April. The livestream performances were curated by the co-authors with musicians and venues brought in to have conversation together and then also perform. The first three will spotlight Austin, Denver and Chicaog with a performance by Shakey Graves, Buffalo Hunt, DRAMA and Kiltro which can be seen here.
Next up for the dynamic venue duo is a treatment for a docu-series with other collaborators further extending the reach of “Bring Music Home.” Additionally, every other week on Clubhouse, everybody’s favorite new audio meet-up app, the duo are bringing in different collaborators and subjects from “Bring Music Home” to get updates on the venues, many of which are still struggling, awareness of which has changed radically over the last year.
“I don’t think Americans really understood or appreciated how integral venues are to culture and to neighborhoods and to communities until this happened,” Mundinger says when asked about the outpouring of support and advocacy this year for clubland. “It was like, ‘Oh, these are major cultural institutions. This may be a hole-in-the-wall music venue, but this is where songs are created, genres of music fostered.’
“It has shined a light on a very broken system, which we knew intimately was a problem already but now we know even more so,” Deike adds. “We can’t fix it by ourselves. But we have some really good ideas for things we’re planning to do down the road. That’s what we want to continue to do, to find ways that we can make the music economy better and healthier.”
(Matt Lief Anderson/Courtesy Bring Music Home) –
Continental Club’s Mike Flanigin; Sue Foley Steve Wertheimer under the marquee
For more information on Bring Music Home click here.