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Don’t underestimate your neighbourhood bar when it’s got a stage. You never know what future “I was there” bragging rights await you. History has proven the importance of small clubs to hometown heroes: the Tragically Hip at the Horseshoe, Feist at Ted’s Wrecking Yard, Drake at the Rivoli (doing improv comedy, mind you). Grassroots music venues are the lifeblood of local scenes, the crucial incubators for emerging talent, that first step from the basement to the world stage.
As Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour stops at our local baseball stadium ushered in rapturous headlines about its economic impact and positive influence on future generations of fans and musicians, it also raised uncomfortable questions about monopolization and price-gouging in the concert and ticketing industries. Simultaneously in the U.K., a charity called the Music Venue Trust announced government support for an initiative to institute a levy on arena shows that would flow desperately-needed revenue to the country’s grassroot music venues. In 2023, 125 of the Trust’s 900+ UK member venues closed their doors permanently, mostly due to financial issues, eviction or redevelopment.
Toronto’s music community spaces are similarly endangered, though thankfully not to the same degree as hyper-gentrified Britain. In Reimagining Music Venues, a study I co-authored with U of T Professor Daniel Silver, we found that concert activity in Toronto began to decline in the years leading up to COVID, coinciding with the 2017 closures of beloved venues such as the Silver Dollar Room, Holy Oak, the Hoxton and Soybomb HQ. The pandemic pushed the sector off the cliff, and 13% of the city’s small venues — mostly small bars and clubs — closed down since 2020, while larger halls and arenas all survived. In fact, their ranks swelled post-COVID, with the opening of History (a much-needed mid-sized concert room) and the ribbon-cutting at the swankily renovated Massey Hall.
The last two years saw Toronto’s arts organizations – Artscape, Harbourfront, Hot Docs, Luminato, TIFF – experience multiple financial crises, resulting in layoffs, receiverships, and anxiety about sectoral collapse. At the same time, the city’s grassroots music venues – more traditionally entrepreneurial and less dependent on public funding — have stubbornly clung to life, while still scraping by on razor-thin profit margins. The indie rock scene is seeing a mini-renaissance of new and renewed spaces booking live bands, such as Ted’s Collision, Collective Arts, and Houndstooth, alongside stalwarts like the Baby G and the Monarch Tavern. But what’s notable about this venue wave is that the rooms are all small if not outright tiny: many under 100 capacity. When artist payment only comes through money collected at the door, that doesn’t result in much of a payday for working musicians.
The electronic scene, meanwhile, is also seeing a resurgence of newer DJ/dancefloor-forward spaces, such as the Little Jerry, Sounds Good, Standard Time, and the magnificently diverse BSMT 254, which gives equal stage time to bands and DJs. None of these are mega-clubs, though, and some serve up their boutique listening experience alongside high-end cocktails. All these venues are for-profit businesses that primarily earn their revenue through bar sales — a decades-old business model who fragility was exposed by COVID. The bare survival of these spaces in an increasingly unaffordable city can be chalked up to the tenacity of their operators as well as a few music-friendly initiatives of which the City can be proud, such as the property tax break on live venues. But most still live in fear of unexpected rent increases, residential noise conflicts, insurance rate hikes, and seemingly inevitable renovictions for condos.
Our research showed a hunger for innovative alternatives to the traditional bar model — in part related to the desire to experience music in a healthy environment, as younger generations embrace more sober-curious lifestyles. Creative concert promoters and event presenters, such as It’s Ok*, New Friends DIY, Not Dead Yet, Project Nowhere, Promise Cherry Beach, Uma Nota Culture, Venus Fest, and my own organization Wavelength, are repurposing church basements, vintage clothing warehouses, sci-fi theme bars, parks, street fests, and former sneaker shops as places where the art is the focus. These organizations — some non-profit, others collectives, many led by young BIPOC, LGBTQ+, women or non-binary folks — may receive some grant funding, but that’s small change compared the major contributions that flow to the generationally privileged, Eurocentric high-art institutions.
The economic challenges facing grassroots live music venues was one of the major takeaways of our Reimagining Music Venues research. An arena levy similar to the one advocated for by the Music Venue Trust could create a new revenue to support community-based venues and promoters, without whose often unrecognized artist development work there may be no future Taylor Swifts — or Arkells or the Beaches. Consider it a virtuous cycle, more than simply leveling the playing field. In the UK, high-profile supporters like Coldplay have committed to donating 10% of their 2025 tour proceeds to the Music Venue Trust and its newly announced Liveline fund, in recognition of the vital necessity of the small rooms that once nurtured them.
Establishing a similar organization in Canada could give the grassroots a unified voice with which to self-advocate, while creating a new basis for economic stability on which they can not just survive but thrive. Over the decades, Toronto’s grassroots music venues and presenters have proven they add vibrancy to our neighbourhoods while cultivating generations of world-renowned cultural exports — all on a shoestring budget. Imagine what they could accomplish with real support.
Jonathan Bunce (aka Jonny Dovercourt) is the Artistic / Executive Director and co-founder of non-profit Wavelength Music, which celebrates its 25th anniversary with the Wavelength Winter Festival, Feb. 27 to March 1 at St. Anne’s Parish Hall in west-end Toronto. He is also author of the book Any Night of the Week: A D.I.Y. History of Toronto Music 1957-2001.
