615 Indie Live, happening this Saturday at various venues from The End, The East Room, The 5 Spot, Rudy’s Jazz Room, and more, is a celebration of Nashville’s independent music venues showcasing the local, diverse music ecosystem by raising awareness on these venues’ importance while supporting local artists and Music Venue Alliance Nashville.
“There’s never been a more difficult time for independent venues to exist and thrive than this point in history where we’re at,” Jamie Kent, founder of Backstage Strategies and The BAM Group said. “We’ve seen post-pandemic behavior shifts meets rising costs, inflation, Nashville’s meteoric growth you see with property taxes and all these things are working against them at once. Yet at the same time, they are the heartbeat of this city. They are what the city is known for. They are the farm system where artists first hone their craft, get discovered, and where you see that artist for the first time. Where you can still see an affordable show, their neighborhood hubs, those third spaces that are vital to our community.”
“The only way we fix that is through a series of solutions, some of which require policy at the state level and some require policy at the local level. But some are community solutions, which is what 615 Indie Live is. It’s a community solution where we say, ‘Hey, let’s come together to support these venues on a traditionally slow weekend of the year, fill them up, support them and our local artists that are part of this ecosystem, and start this conversation so in the press, on the radio, everywhere we can say this is a problem, and we need to address it, whether through policy or the community coming together. The End had a GoFundMe to pay their back rent because the costs got out of control for them over the last year. But that’s a band-aid solution. The community stepped up in 24 hours and that’s huge and those community solutions will keep stepping up like that and 615 Indie Live. But we also need to come together as a community to say, how do we address this long-term so that we don’t lose these places?”
WNXP curates the stage at DRKMTTR on Saturday featuring Hussy Fit, Ol Blue, Total Wife, and WNXP Nashville Artist of the Month Venus & the Flytraps.
“We have an amazing 615 Indie Live app where you can build your own custom schedule,” Kent said. “We have a playlist where you check out the artist, research who you want to see. We got a schedule where everyone is at all the venues and you can just add them, create your own custom schedule. You get a wristband for the whole day and you can go show up anywhere, as long as they’re not at capacity, if they are you just have to wait in line because its first come first serve. It’s an ecosystem that all depends on itself. The local artists depend on these venues, the venues depend on the local artists, and we’re all a big family here, so we’re really proud to feature all local talent here.”
Tonight (Feb 4) Woofstock at the Winery with Emmylou Harris at City Winery. Thursday night (Feb 5) Dean Johnson with former WNXP Nashville Artist of the Month Emily Hines is at the Blue Room and at the same venue Friday night (Feb 6) Night Moves takes the stage. Also on Friday Nashville artist Jack Vinoy performs at The End. Back at the Blue Room with Hana Eid performing on Saturday (Feb 7) and wrapping up the weekend with Super Bowl Sunday (Feb 8).
