Going to grassroots gigs is often like pulling a slot machine. You know from the get-go you’re gonna get something. Maybe a ska band throwing inflatables in the crowd, or a bunch of noisy kids in some leaking basement hitting their heads with mics for no apparent reason. You could even stumble into a ragtag freejazz ensemble improvising over a football match. Point being, you might see the greatest live act ever with a lucky few in a place less than optimized to host live music; it could be at an abandoned warehouse, a bike shed, a seafood restaurant, or a carpet store. 

"And I think that was what was beautiful about it," Baltimore-based electronic artist and composer Dan Deacon tells me. "People would be like, I don’t know who’s playing at the Copycat tonight, or, I don’t know who’s playing at Floristree, but there’s a show. And that was cool. It was cool to be like, I’ve never heard of these bands, but I know this place is cool. I tend to have a good time with the people who are there — yeah, I’m just gonna go. And the amount of music I discovered in situations like that was incredible."

These places invoke daredevil experimentation for frisky fringe-dwellers and household names alike. Jeff Parker – one of the most revered musicians from the Chicago grassroots scene – thought it was a great idea to record and mix two live albums at ETA – a cocktail bar in Los Angeles founded in 2016. Parker initially wanted a residency as a DJ, but Matt Mayhall introduced him to Ryan Julio, after noticing Julio rocking a Tortoise shirt behind the bar. So imagine being a fan of a band, and having a key member of that very band not only show up on your doorstep, but asking them to do a residency on the spot. 

"ETA was a tavern that served oysters and wine," Parker recalls. “And I started to play there on Mondays with the band. Eventually, the audience for our gig grew. You know, it wasn’t like — it wasn’t a venue. And eventually it turned into a venue, a place where they had music, like, probably at least four nights a week. And it became a central part of the creative music community in Los Angeles.” Jeff Parker and ETA IVtet performed every Monday at the Academy until it closed down. In that window of time, Parker and his band did some outrageous stuff – like, for example, mixing the music with headphones live through a monitoring system. "It’s just really cool, man," he says.

Witnessing that at an intimate eye-level, one could imagine this was a case of "you had to have been there," a shared experience. And generally, that’s where culture starts: in places called the Fat Black Pussy Café in Greenwich Village, at a block party at the heart of The Bronx, or at a windmill in the outskirts of Brixton. Deacon beams at the notion of avant-garde composers like Philip Glass and Terry Riley raging out on each other’s atonal inquiries in a bunch of lofts, making truly experimental work. "And by experimental, I mean it might fail. It might not work. It might fall apart. The amount of shows I remember where someone’s equipment just didn’t work — because they were using it in an improper way, or it was so broken and destroyed from either age or misuse or whatever — and it being like, fuck. Pushing things to the brink, I think, is a big part of it."

To make such happenings happen, it takes several people to tango. For one, a giddy promoter willing to put up the damn show – and suffer all the financial risks and logistical stress for their rickety establishment. All for the love of the game. Acclaimed UK jazz artist Shabaka recalls the very first gig he did with his ensemble Sons of Kemet, at a Thai food place called Charlie Wright’s. "Most of the week, it was just a restaurant, and then they had gigs happening in the adjacent part of the room," Shabaka remembers. "A guy called Jimbo would book music, I guess every Thursday, and he just said, ‘Shabaka, do you want to put together a band?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll put something together.'"

No great concept or elaborate industry campaign; just a group of fledgling jazz cats wanting to explore and experiment together – and needing a space to do just that. "That was the start of the band,” he states. "The room was packed — and people came every Thursday. They just knew there would be great musicians from the scene. A lot of musicians were there, and it cost something like seven pounds to get in. So it wasn’t excluding anyone — if you wanted to see the music, you could."

Shabaka credits much of the flourishing of the South London jazz scene to independent promotors putting up music that was still operating outside of the established industry channels. "You’d get someone playing Afrobeat after someone doing more traditional jazz, after someone else doing a kind of jazz-hip hop fusion. The whole thing started to blur a lot more — much more than when you had the same, boring promoters booking bands they thought were a good fit for a particular venue. That’s also around the time that TRC — Total Refreshment Centre — really started to pop up in East London as a major force. And similarly, with that, people were living there, hanging out there all the time, and they’d put on nights."

Before becoming an artist and performer herself, Annika Henderson – who records and performs under the moniker Anika – started in her early 20s as a concert promoter in Cardiff. She quickly found out that such a vocation isn’t all flowers and sunshine within a capitalist system, especially when your work comes from a place of altruism. "I remember at the time, my employers were a bit confused," she explains. "They were like, Yeah, but what’s your motivation? Because they thought I was trying to swindle money or something. And I was like, No — it’s just because live music has always been important for me. As a kid, it was the one place where I felt comfortable to be myself."

From noise complaints from the neighborhood to structural sexism within the venue organization, Henderson had to navigate a lot beyond just putting up music. "The venues I worked with were all quite DIY," she says. "They were set up by a group of friends from art school, and they all came together and set up a venue. And then they got another space and set that up. I used to book for the upstairs, and also sometimes for Buffalo Bar — which is the other venue — and bring bands there." Henderson managed to find loopholes in the venues where there were frequent complaints of noise: for instance, she put a more acoustic, softer band on before or after the main act, or the other way around.

Phoebe Lunny and Lilly Macieira, aka Lambrini Girls, also had their beginnings at a grassroots venue – this one in Brighton, called The Hope and Ruin. Macieira was working there behind the bar at the time. "The thing about working at music venues," Macieira says, "is that you notice the community is so tight. It doesn’t matter what job or role you have. Everyone who worked there, including the owners Sally and Richard, were like family. Everyone who worked in the kitchen. It’s where I first started doing sound as well. They trained me on sound. I saw Annie of CLT DRP play with her old band Witchshark. And that absolutely blew my mind."

Macieira and Lunny agree that inclusivity, community, and intersectionality within a grassroots scene takes collective nurturing. Lunny notes that some scenes can be a little "too clique-y."

"That’s essentially why I moved to Brighton: I wanted to feel included," Macieira adds. "I want to feel like there’s a space for me on that stage. I did take some conditioning; I think the gender thing came into it. I felt like I could only be seen on the arm of another musician, rather than myself being on stage. Once I started working in Brighton with a cool variety of people, I realized I do belong on stage. There is a space for me here. [It comes down] to gradually breaking down your imposter syndrome. And that happens through community: close-knit friend groups and professional groups. I always wanted to break into a scene; it just took me a while to figure out how."

Places like The Hope and Ruin and Prince Albert –  Lunny worked shifts behind the bar at the latter venue – allowed Lambrini Girls to develop their own ethos and value system as artists. Macieira, for example, went from working at the bar to learning the ropes as a sound engineer, and then on to becoming part of a beloved band herself. The proper fundamentals were in place for Lambrini Girls to hone their now reputable prowess as a dynamite live act. And though they refuse to call themselves a "DIY act" flat out – now as a breakout band with a label, management, and booking agents – Lambrini Girls do credit their grassroots beginnings for their current upward trajectory.

"I think they all go hand in hand with each other," Lunny says. "It’s all symbiotic. We wouldn’t be here if we were an industry band. At the same time, we wouldn’t be here either without the people who came to our shows, harboring that community, which allows us to do what we do. Artists rely on fans just as much as fans rely on artists. We rely on our team and our team relies on us. We’re all working together as one thing."

Henderson, meanwhile, has come to appreciate all the pieces of the puzzle that need to come together for a healthy grassroots ecosystem – and how fragile it indeed is.

She recalls fond memories of working the bar at The Croft in Bristol, which serves as a similar hub for her own trajectory as a performing artist. "It was run by Fat Paul, who was one half of Invada Records. I remember talking to Geoff [Barrow, of Portishead] about this, because in Bristol he was a sound engineer. That’s how Portishead started. He often laughs when people write books about the trip-hop scene – because he’s like, Well, there wasn’t really a scene. We just happened to all exist at the same time." If a band is fortunate enough to break from a grassroots scene, she states, it’s like a rising tide that floats all boats in proximity. "When Portishead went on tour, they would kind of employ half of Bristol – the sound engineer, the drum tech, the whatever. And I like that approach."

As resourceful as people have been in facilitating grassroots scenes, it’s still very much an act of racing against a capitalist system that encourages growth of the individual over the collective. Furthermore, it requires holding up a ton of spinning plates – both in terms of the financial and human resources – a balancing act that could shatter at the first gust.

Recently there were many voices of concern about sustaining grassroots venues, notably by artist Myles Smith at the BRIT Awards and Daniel Blumberg giving a shout out to Café Oto at the Oscars.

Particularly in the UK, DIY venues are dropping like flies: the aforementioned The Croft and The Monarch are just two examples of an evaporating grassroots ecosystem. According to Shabaka, what he calls "Tory austerity policies" undercut those same grassroots venues. "They brought in legislation requiring venues to pay for a license to host live music," he explains. "In one swoop over a short period of time, this cut off venues, and made spaces feel like they couldn’t just put music on. Suddenly, they had to apply and pay for a license. DJs started popping up in corners of rooms where there would have once been a three- or four-piece jazz band. The Musicians’ Union campaigned valiantly to have that legislation repealed, and it eventually was. But for me, the damage had already been done. The culture had already shifted."

Similarly in the US, DIY spaces are becoming more scarce within the so-called prosperity of urban development plans, something Deacon has also noticed has accelerated in recent years. "There are so many factors that go into what a DIY space is — just like any part of an ecosystem, it’s influenced by the other parts of the ecosystem. So when I think about touring in 2004 to 2009 — that five-year period — the United States was radically different. Just in terms of the availability of space: warehouse space in Baltimore wasn’t being turned into lofts or made desirable for realtors."

Deacon gained his following from Wham City, a rich Baltimore grassroots scene that also spawned successful indie acts like Beach House, Wye Oak, and Future Islands. He admits his early naivety in working against the system. Many places, like The Crown, didn’t survive the drought of the COVID pandemic.

"I do think the Ghost Ship incident was huge — a horrible tragedy — and extremely capitalized on by developers to pounce on it and seize spaces. There was a task force in Baltimore set up by the mayor’s office with this sham name called the Safe Artist Safe Space Task Force. It started under the guise of ‘people present their need for improvements to their space’ — to bring them up to code. But it ended up just being run by a group of nonprofits connected to developers, and people were getting displaced."

Even without a system of public funding largely prevalent in Europe and Canada, there are paradigms that can help sustain scenes fundamental for the growth of music. To save the dwindling grassroots infrastructure in the UK, a voluntary ticket levy system was suggested in a report that would funnel money from big arena shows back into the local scene –  something Mark Davyd, CEO of Music Venue Trust, has voiced support for. 

"I think that’s a responsibility for the music industry," says Frank Kimenai, consultant and researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam, who has specialized in the sustainability of musical ecosystems  – plus he has over 25 years of experience with grassroots venues. "What you see now is that this industry is very extractive. They remove a commodity out of an ecosystem, which then gets processed into the pockets of the biggest stakeholders. What I like about the levy system is that what was once a linear system, suddenly becomes a more circular mechanism, where the top helps finance what happens at the bottom. Because it’s at the bottom where the development happens."

Deacon believes it’s possible for grassroots venues to become legitimate in a healthy way – with a lot of collective clasping of buttcheeks, smart investments, and a little bit of luck. "A lot of legitimate venues are basically DIY venues with licenses," he says. "Current Space in Baltimore is one of my favorite venues in the world. It was a DIY space that, over the process of 20 years, became legitimate. It’s still run by the same core group of people with a huge amount of volunteers. They’re constantly working off grants and fundraisers and member donorship. And it’s a really special place. And I think that's what makes it special, because it’s extremely rare. And what makes it rare is how absolutely expensive it is, and how absolutely difficult it is to find space that is: one, comfortable and safe to be in; two, doesn’t piss off your neighbors; or three, doesn’t attract the police. That combination is like winning the lottery."

"But it’s also supply and demand," Henderson says. "And if people just aren’t going to shows — or they’re more likely to go and save up all year to go see Taylor Swift and spend like two grand on that, as opposed to going maybe once a week to a local band — then yeah, there’s still money being spent on music, but it’s just not really being distributed very evenly."

Another modern variable – as Macieira points out – is the advent of the internet, streaming services, and social media: an environment where algorithms dictate more and more what people see and hear. It forces artists to take up much of the promotion of their shows themselves just to cut through the noise. 

"There’s something to be said about how the landscape has changed in the last 40 years or so," Macieira says "This combination of grassroots fanbase and the support of a label... you wouldn’t get away with just a DIY fanbase these days and get to the same level. Fugazi is always a band that I mention because they’re obviously, like, a cult band. They never did any of the shit we did. They didn’t print loads of merch or do radio IDs or do industry showcase festivals. Yet they still managed to get cult status. But I think the industry has changed so much."

Back when Dan Deacon was putting on house shows, social media actually was a handy primer for booking cool underground music. "When I look back at booking tours, I booked almost all of them through MySpace," he explains. "And it was an incredible platform to be a musician. The algorithm didn’t exist, so you only saw what people wanted to post. It hadn’t really been taken over by ads yet, but the Top 8 was this crazy resource. I could find a band I liked, then be like, Where did they play in these towns? Who are the bands in their Top 8? I’d find bands I’d never heard of before. I'd hit them up." For Deacon, the way Instagram, Spotify, TikTok, or Facebook changed the structure of the internet makes it harder to discover cool unknown music.

"The way we perceive things has also changed as well: not just with us as artists, but everyone," Lunny adds. "You look at things like Snap or it didn’t happen. If something isn’t filmed through your phone – it doesn’t have to do with just bands, but on a daily basis. If you want people to perceive you a certain way, it has to come through the internet. No one can be Crass or Fugazi these days." Macieira solemnly nods: "There has to be metrics about it, or measured in some way. It doesn’t exist through word-of-mouth anymore. You need to be able to see how many Instagram followers you have."

"When it gets forced below the level of being able to publish it on the internet – by the very nature of doing that – it becomes a shrinking group of people," Deacon says. "It’s harder for new people to get into the ecosystem of what that DIY scene entails. And I think a lot of that is intentional — to push ideas that are more left-leaning off the internet. The algorithm is certainly aware of what’s being posted and how it’s being posted. I’m getting kind of conspiratorial here, but I don’t think anyone’s naive about the authoritarian right’s control of social media. And since social media is the main — if not only — conduit for really reaching out to large groups of people, I think they have a desire to see these spaces starve out." 

Kimenai finds that a lot of the time, digital metrics are used by institutions as means to measure an artist's overall profile, including which professional venues or festivals they have played. This data paints a very particular picture on what stage of development artists find themselves in. Grassroots venues – Kimenai mentions Amsterdam’s OCCII here as an example – are often not counted within these metrics, which curtails both the grassroots venues and the artist playing there. "Grassroots value is often excluded in that formulation into policy," he concludes. 

Meanwhile, Henderson has noticed that in recent years, many DJs and bedroom producers were quickly catapulted into major gigs, bypassing their local scenes entirely, which weakened those grassroots communities. This sudden leap meant emerging DJs skipped crucial developmental stages, leading to a loss of local culture and support networks. "I think these sort of grassroots places are important, to grow artists in a bit more of a real organic way. Because I don’t think it does you any good if you jump straight up and you miss that stage."

If artists gain notoriety through exclusively online means – or outgrow their grassroots infrastructure prematurely – there is a growing concern that digital spaces become a definitive proxy for physical spaces. And that would hit DIY venues – the training ground for exciting live music – the hardest.

Deacon however, is cautiously optimistic that human performance will forever draw people to some grubby local joint. But also that communities can exist just as holistically within digital spaces all the same. "I recorded my first albums on a borrowed computer, with a borrowed microphone, with hacked software, in a warehouse space," he says. "And I love that chart-topping records now are made in the same way, with more knowledge, by kids who can go to YouTube and be like, What’s the proper mic placement for a snare drum? The level of education and shared knowledge is massive. What I worry about is [that it's] being throttled by corporate identities that don’t only have the exclusive desire to make money, but more and more, political ambitions of control."

"A scene isn’t defined by how many artists are touring all year or how many are playing in massive venues," Shabaka underscores. "When a scene becomes successful, there’s a kind of paradox in the music industry: something that’s nurtured in small, independent grassroots venues grows popular, and then those artists get pulled into a system that removes them from the very environment that made them popular in the first place. And yet, it’s that original environment that creates the story — the narrative of the grassroots, independent energy. By that point, the artists are no longer playing those kinds of venues, because they can’t afford to survive."

Many artists who spring from grassroots scenes into the industry circuit have a tough time giving back to the scenes that first embraced them. Shabaka says that as their profile rises, musicians need agents to secure non-local gigs and help their careers grow beyond their home turf. But those same agents often apply generic, large-scale booking strategies that don’t fit the nuances of an artist’s local scene. 

"There's rarely any subtlety or recognition that, 'This is the region that supported you from the start — maybe we should approach it differently,'" he clarifies. "Instead, it’s a one-size-fits-all strategy that doesn’t help local venues. And a lot of the time, these decisions are made without the knowledge of the artists. But meanwhile, agents are having cutthroat conversations behind the scenes, without artist input — even though that input could potentially benefit the whole ecosystem and not just their own career. If artists aren’t brought to the table, the results of those conversations are handed to us as if they were the only option."

Shabaka concludes that, structurally, something needs to change, otherwise the system might work for one generation of music, but it becomes a real struggle for the next. "And it doesn’t have to be that way."

For a healthy grassroots ecosystem, it appears there needs to be other parties involved to create a healthy synergy, whether via government funding, a larger venue as a facilitator, or another (commercial) source of income. But sometimes, these institutions grow within the grassroots scenes themselves.

Shabaka talks at length about Steam Down, and the still-flourishing Tomorrow’s Warriors education program in the UK, while Parker speaks with palpable reverence of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), of which he himself is still an active member. 

"I mean, a lot of those musicians who founded AACM mentored me," Parker says. "Fred Anderson was a tenor player that I played with quite a bit. Fred is a perfect example. He started a venue just so he would have a place to play his own music. The first place was called The Birdhouse. Eventually he moved to another place and called it The Velvet Lounge, which was a very important place for creative music in Chicago. A lot of musicians — Makaya McCraven, Ben LaMar Gay, and Junius Paul – they all came out playing at The Velvet Lounge. People have described it as a temple."

Though the world seems to become more and more convoluted, the thrill of a good grassroots gig hasn’t dulled – even if they seem to become more scarce in supply. These places are not just instrumental for developing interesting music; these are the places where identities and value systems are shaped, friendships are forged, (sub)cultures emerge, and marginalized people find a sense of community and safety.

Deacon believes the idea of grassroots culture is more dynamic than ever: "If people can get the same level of community and connectivity and inspiration and self-discovery — and witnessing beauty and witnessing things they couldn’t even imagine — be it in a former mill, or the basement of a crumbling house. Or somewhere within Minecraft – anywhere within any sort of physical or virtual space – then it’s beautiful."

"I also believe in grassroots venues as an antidote to all that digital hegemony," Kimenai states. "You have a much more positive impact when you watch a band with someone and discuss these issues, instead of shouting on Instagram all week. You see it now in political discussions that everyone – including myself – has lost all faith in political solutions. And looking at what happens on a smaller community level. Because it doesn't look like it's going to happen from the top. We forget that because capitalism has supposedly made our lives easier, we therefore don't have to think for ourselves. But I see it a lot around me lately: people are rethinking and reevaluating it. I think that's the way forward, and grassroots venues can play a vital part in that."

Shabaka has faith that in the end, grassroots music will always remain in a healthy flux: "If bands prematurely play venues that aren’t as intimate as they need to be to provide a nurturing environment for their music, you’ll just get some people who say, Actually, we don’t want to play there. We’re not trying to go to Wembley. We’re not trying to play these big venues. We actually want that intimacy with the audience. And then that intimacy will be the thing that has value — that has currency. If everything goes online, everything goes digital, everything ends up in the hands of agents and promoters, then the thing that ends up having worth is what exists outside of that."

He goes on:

"Because the music needs to be punk. And people want the punkness. People want anti-systemic-ness in music. But the structures that have an interest in commodifying music want to take music that comes from that value system, pull it out of its environment, package it, and replicate it in every region they’ve got a stake in. But at some point, someone goes, We’re not a part of that system — we don’t want to be. Then that becomes the music everyone wants to hear. There’s a sharp turn that leaves everyone who trusted the system high and dry, and the system turns its eye toward the people doing something fresh, because they didn’t care about the system to begin with."

Shabaka warns that it can’t happen the way capitalism pretends it can — via the illusion of infinite supply and demand. "Sometimes, when you squeeze on a scene, it dries up. But in that drying, you get something else — something able to grow outside of the forces that were doing the squeezing," he says. "And then the whole thing starts again. Those people get taken, they get offered gigs in different regions of the world, they go on tour, they leave the local environments that nurtured them, and then the same conversations start happening again. Someone else comes up from underneath. It’s just this kind of cycle. The main thing to remember, as that cycle continues, is that there’s always someone else who thinks, Fuck the system."

Illustration made by Dan Méth.

A previous version of this piece named Matt Mayhall as the percussionist for the ETA IVtet. This has been corrected, as the percussionist is Jay Bellerose.