The New York venue Silent Barn has announced they will be shutting their doors come April 30th. The community space in Bushwick held national and local acts, as well as artist residencies and community programs. This will be another name on an ever growing list of New York DIY spaces to shut down over the years, including Palisades, Shea Stadium, Death by Audio, and 285 Kent. Punknews writer Okra Windfree has put together an article looking at the venue's hardships and its history. Check it out below.
The Silent Barn Shuts Its Doors
Silent Barn began in Ridgewood, Queens in 2006 as an all-ages venue where bands played in the kitchen. However, this space was shut down by the city in 2011, paving the way for the Bushwick relocation in 2012 - acquired with the help of a $40,000 kickstarter. The new 3-story Brooklyn building was a step forward for the collective where they sought to create a more sustainable model, while staying true to their grassroots ethos. Creating a business model upon the community, the space held artist studios, apartments, the venue and bar, as well a community space.
While the Bushwick location was a legal stepping stone for Silent Barn, the hardships of DIY were not far away. In 2015, a fire damaged the apartments and performance space. Once again, however, the collective looked towards its community, recovering and rebuilding with the help of crowdfunding.
Attempting to be a legal venue isn’t easy either. “Opening an aboveground, up-to-code space in NYC (or anywhere) comes with limitless challenges—financial, structural, emotional,” reads the collectives decision to close. Such an issue that they faced was a proper bar to legally serve mixed drinks, a cost that equalled $10,000 upfront. Working in true DIY fashion, however, the collective chipped at this one piece at a time; purchasing parts as they could, then raising money to pay for the labor to properly install the necessary bar accessories, such as an ice sink.
But bar maintenance and revenue wasn’t the only struggle for the collective. While they were able to raise $30,000 in December during their end-of-year fundraising campaign, the large sum “was only enough to cover one month of rent, payroll, utilities, emergency repairs, bar stock, and other overdue expenses,” the announcement stated.
“It’s like we’re on a boat going down a river, and my job as the financial manager is to tell people, ‘Hey, there’s a waterfall coming up, we need to all get together and paddle,’” Silent Barn financial manager Jordan Michael Iannucci said last December.
The troubles of the modern DIY space begs the question of where underground music is heading. When iconic spaces such as Shea Stadium, Palisades, and the community driven Silent Barn go under how does underground stay afloat?
Previous to the announcement to close Iannucci spoke at length with local reporters about exactly this issue. “I think it is possible, with the right level of transparency, rhetoric, and public narrative, to teach people that Silent Barn is a community space,” he said. “I’m imagining a future where Silent Barn books shows [for] a broad range of people, and 25 percent of those people give $5 a month. And then there are maybe ten to fifteen artists or arts entrepreneurs that cut us a check of over $5,000 a year. I don’t think that’s a far-off future.” Before the closure announcement Silent Barn had, in fact, began to offer a membership to the collective. The highest price point of $300 a year offered unlimited access to shows, lesser membership options offered gifts and merch.
Silent Barn may be another warning towards the future of underground. In a world where music is mainlined from Spotify to your phone, movies are streamed instantly from Netflix, and anyone can watch their favorite YouTube star anywhere with a cellular connection, where does underground, live music thrive? Where do communities gather?
Iannuci wasn’t wrong when he said, “Just like how everyone learned that you pay $10 a month for all the music in the world, they need to learn that you also pay $10 a month to support the place you go to see bands you like.”
You can read the full statement here.