When Pressed, one of Centretown’s most buzzed-about establishments, announced its dining room would soon be hosting live theatre on weekends, it was a welcome, yet not unprecedented, addition to the local arts scene. Its eclectic calendar of trivia nights, arts events and live music aligns the Gladstone Avenue hangout with a swelling roster of businesses around town that double as small performance venues.
But while it’s hard to deny the benefits that pattern can have for artists, the growing number of dining room-cum-concert halls in the city also underscores something less positive: its lack of mid-size performance spaces.
Small venues – neighbourhood cafés, favourite watering holes – may offer a platform for fledgling musicians, but if their ambitions include graduating to the status of career performers, they’ll eventually look to expand the reach of their music and the scope of their stage show. For that, they might look to the city’s mid-sized venues, clubs like Babylon and Ritual – many of which currently seem more committed to booking DJs than live music.
With some effort, those venues could also be a draw for out-of-town acts. One need only plug the search term “Ottawa concerts” into Google to see the majority of live shows in town occupy one of two opposing poles: those that will sell out the behemoth Scotiabank Place and those that might draw a few extra patrons to the pub down the street.
For well-known bands with followings more modest than that of, say, Neil Young or Fleetwood Mac, the former venue is a daunting space to fill. The latter isn’t worth their time. So, many of them don’t come at all.
While that lack of imported talent, on its surface, might not seem like such a significant problem for local bands, it does have an impact. Competition for performance space, or simply having your name on the same bill as a well-known, forces emerging artists to up their game and grants them increased exposure. That publicity also makes it more likely that they, in turn, may be able to hit the road themselves.
For a blueprint of a successful music scene, consider Austin, Texas, the self-proclaimed live music capital of the world. With a population of just over 820,000, it’s smaller than Ottawa, and as the state capital it shares its status as a government town. Obviously, there are numerous differences between the two cities, but looking at Austin, it can’t be said that Ottawa lacks the population to support a vibrant music scene. No, what Ottawa lacks is infrastructure.
One key to that infrastructure involves the venues themselves, the nodes on the map to and from which musicians, promoters and fans flow. In cities such as Austin, where it is difficult to walk down a street on your way to a show without passing two or three other venues boasting equally appealing bills, that network is already in place – and musicians and businesses, both local and otherwise, thrive.
Ottawa has the raw materials to harbour and sustain a healthy independent music scene. It’s home to talented artists, a growing web of alternative media outlets, and indie record labels that are both hardworking and committed to promoting local music.
More importantly, each faction of that developing scene approaches its individual tasks with enough enthusiasm to almost overshadow the perennial criticism that the city’s musical listings are, generally, uninspiring.
Thus far, their efforts have proven that a bit of investment – of both time and resources – can go a long way. Matching that investment, in the city’s venues, existing and otherwise, is the next step in putting Ottawa and its emerging artists on the musical map.