As Hot Summer Nights descends, Austin’s live music epicenter campaigns for city support
Outdoors at Mohawk, hardcore kids mosh on the ground floor while elder emos look on from the multilayered top deck. A UT-launched indie band plays on the smaller indoor stage, and a couple of sly students use their tickets to the local show to sneak over to the other. Next door, Cheer Up Charlies hostslistening parties, and Dolly Parton drag shows.
Now, key players in Austin’s music scene are ringing the alarm again. For the last six months, the Red River Cultural District has urged the local government to provide the organization with an immediate aid package, citing rising costs across the industry as a threat to the creative community. Efforts culminated in the MayYet with those funds not available until the new fiscal year starts in October, RRCD interim Executive Director Nicole Klepadlo says, “We’re not ready to celebrate yet.”.
“Our business is growing, but it’s growing from a total crater,” Moody says, referencing the entertainment industry’s months-long 2020 shutdown. “We are actively recovering, while also being nowhere near where we need to be.” Three years after venues began reopening post-COVID, the owner still names 2018 or 2019 as Mohawk’s most lucrative year.Moody also outlines a slew of additional responsibilities that come with running a live music venue as opposed to a plain old bar.
“The more data that we have paints a true story of the tremendous impact that our district is providing to the city as a whole,” Klepadlo says. “I’m talking jobs and mixed-beverage sales and sales tax. How our district, also being a tourism destination, is also supporting the hospitality industry and the hotel occupancy tax. There are so many impacts that our district provides to this community.
Moody confirms his venue sought help from the spruced-up initiative. “If you could watch the speed at which venues apply for these things, you would laugh,” he says. “They’re applying that day, the day the news comes out.everybody in the business is working because they love it, not working because they’re making money. If it was for economic benefit, all these people would quit.”, who received money from the Austin Live Music Fund last year to host her annual Kinky Curly Coily Festival.
Moody continues, “It’s really a collective sacrifice to keep things going for everyone. I think it’s a great community gesture, frankly, because everyone gives up a little bit to conduct these events. And they work. They do a pretty solid job of running dollars through the market and basically giving staff shifts when they normally wouldn’t have them.”
Hot Summer Nights crams more than 125 local artists into 14 venues – Cheer Up Charlies, Chess Club, the Creek and the Cave, Elysium, Empire Control Room and Garage, Flamingo Cantina, Liberty Lunch, Mohawk, Stubb’s, Swan Dive, the 13th Floor, Valhalla, Vaquero Taquero, and Waterloo Park – in three days.
Red River Cultural District Texas Arts Commission Texas Music Commission
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