A Tale of Two Venues: Great Scott, ONCE Somerville, and Dealing with a Pandemic

By Sam Stapinski | December 9, 2020 |

All across the city, various shops, venues, and spaces remain closed, as if waiting for people to come back to them. They are desolate, empty, devoid of life. Across the Charles River on the once busy Highland Avenue in Somerville, ONCE Somerville is eerily quiet on this particular November evening. The overhead cover blows slightly in the chilly breeze as very few people shuffle by without much notice. There is a distinct lack of energy here, a tangible absence of any activity present, yet behind computer screens across the area, the ONCE staff is getting ready for their busy evening. Despite their lack of in-person events, patrons, and performances, they are busy at work providing an online space for them to put on. Eight o’clock hits in the evening, and the notification that ONCE Virtual Venue has gone live reaches the phones and computers of the excited patrons all across the Greater Boston Area, and the talented artists begin their set for the evening, playing into a camera for their audience at home.

Across the city on Commonwealth Avenue on a quiet fall day, the iconic green overhang gently ruffles in the fall breeze as the dwindling daylight shines on the brightly colored electrical box on the corner. The former Great Scott’s location is vacant and there is an air of solemnity surrounding it. The venue will never be returned to by artists, patrons, and newcomers alike, and those familiar with the place will reminisce on it with sadness tinging their speech. Online, people from across music genres, geographical locations, and generations share their memories of the place as few are working in the background to push for a reopening of their beloved venue.

This ethnographic work aims to establish the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine on smaller music venues in the Boston area, as well as to document the venues’ responses. How have they adapted to the new COVID-19 lifestyle? How has this impacted the owners, workers, and patrons of these places? What steps have these communities taken to preserve their music?

ONCE Somerville: Creation, Creativity, and Continuity

(Interview with J.J. Gonson)

(ONCE’s virtual venue is primarily run out of its YouTube channel where they host livestreams of various artists and interviews with musicians.)

ONCE’s Virtual Venue has been operative since May of 2020. The landing page of their venue is primarily a YouTube channel. It highlights the upcoming events that are right around the corner, as well as gives a space to revisit other performances that have already happened in case you happened to miss one. The first time I ever checked out the venue, I was surprised to see so many events scheduled. In about a two week span, they had about 6 or 7 different events planned out with consistency to their schedule it seemed. When it hit 8 pm and the live stream began, it seemed very friendly. There were about 15 other individuals along with myself who were there for the performance, and then one of the Virtual Venue employees came onto the screen and introduced the act, Gaelynn Lea. He wrapped up his description and faded away as Gaelynn came into focus on screen. I was captivated by her sound and music. It was simply incredible in all forms of the word. The whole time the performance was going on, there were people in the chatbox talking about how impressed they were, and Gaelynn was there too. She was responding to the peoples’ comments and chatting with them about her music as well as just how they were doing that day. It was a very cozy feeling to see that people were genuinely interested in her performance as well as the fact that she was able to accommodate their questions and mingle with the patrons. I began talking in the chat for a bit, and the reception was really welcoming. People seemed really happy to share this part of their lives with someone else because they were excited to share this thing that made them happy. They welcomed me in and were happy that someone new was interested. After the performance set was over, the man who introduced the performance came back with Gaelynn on a Zoom call, where they chatted for a while about her music, as well as the current state of the world.

ONCE Somerville is one of the few places I consider to be a complete success in pandemic era music. The goal of ONCE has always been to create an environment where people are able to experience such unique events and come away with good times and good memories. While the virtual setting isn’t able to fully encapsulate the venue in all of its glory, it gives people a place to reconnect. J.J. Gonson feared that the community that ONCE has fostered would wither away with the distancing that we have been forced into, yet the cozy nature of the streams, chat, and performances have fended off any sort of feeling of solitude. If anything, it lets people feel like they are continuously part of something, and still expanding their social circles. The performances let us keep enjoying what we all share and love: music. The interactions with the performers are the closest thing we have to chatting with them in the green rooms afterward or mingling around afterward, and it gives a sense of wholeness at the very least. And most of all, the virtual venue gives us a space to be together. It allows people with shared interests to reconnect with each other, and it lets us feel less alone despite the distance between us all. Simply put, “The goal of most of these performances, which are shared on social media or YouTube, is not to make money but simply to express creativity, provide connection, solace, or levity” (Urkevich, 2020: 1).

ONCE Somerville

(The shows of ONCE Somerville, though virtual, let the community come together each time to reconnect with one another, and share an evening of music together.)

Great Scott: Shadows on the Sidewalk

The Great Scott is one of Boston’s most established music venues with a name that carries with it a reputation. A reputation of quality music each night, a comfortable environment for all that go, and a surefire place to have a good evening. The Great Scott holds a special place in many of Boston’s residents’ hearts. On May 1st, the general manager of the venue announced that the Great Scott would not reopen, even after they were permitted to open by government standards. This sent a shock throughout Boston and beyond, as loyal patrons realized that their favorite venue would not be returning. Ben Stas, a freelance photographer and longtime friend of Great Scott, remembered, “Yeah, that announcement of Great Scott closing was really just, felt like a huge blow to everybody I know in the scene because the Great Scott was kind of everybody’s, you know, place…” (Personal Interview, November 3, 2020).

Ben is a photographer experienced in capturing musical scenes. He started back in college at Northeastern, and in an interview with him, he described how he had always loved music, and wanted to be a part of it, so he combined that with his other passion, photography, and took off from there. He has worked for the Boston Globe doing photography for them and does freelance work as well. In his years with his work, he has spent a lot of time in the Great Scott. He is a regular who has documented hundreds of performances through his blog titled Noise Floor.  He recently completed his first-everzine, documenting the somber, desolate energy that the empty city he loves gives off. Ben has been a friend of the Great Scott for years now, and he knows the venue extremely well. “It was a really important nexus between the hyper-local basement/DIY scene and a broader audience of local music fans. It was the rare space where a nationally-known up-and-comer could make their first Boston stop one night and a whole bill of bands from the neighborhood could play the next” (Adam, 2020). Wendy Schiller remembers the people more than that too “I mean it’s just the most fabulous group of the most amazing people you’ve ever met…” (Personal Interview, November 3, 2020). Not only is this the place for people to enjoy a wide range of musicians and acts, but it’s a place where people came to see their friends, make new ones, and leave their lives behind for just a few hours and exist in the soundscape, “simultaneously a physical environment and a way of perceiving that environment; it is both a world and a culture constructed to make sense of that world” (Heath, 2015: 34).

Great Scott’s community had all seen the announcement regarding the closing of the venue, but that didn’t mean they were ready to give up the venue quite yet. Wendy Schiller is an artist and has been a patron of Great Scott for years. She’s grown to love the place, the people, and everything about it. “The news broke that Great Scott was closing and it was so shocking. I sort of refused to accept that as a reality and I went down and started taking signatures for a petition as a member of the group Boston Artists Impact, and we ended up getting 25,000 signatures…”(Personal Interview, November 3, 2020). Not only did they amass an insane amount of support via signatures, they were financially active. Through Mainvest, an online funding website, the community came together to pool $300,000 to support the relocation of the iconic venue. Ben Stas reflected a bit about the support Great Scott received:

It was a really tough place to lose, and I think, you see that reflected in since then, the amount of support the petition generated first, and the amount of money they were able to raise, especially at a time when a lot of people, and especially a lot of people in the arts community are really really hurting financially. The fact that they managed to scrape together upwards of $300,000 to support that relocation and renovation is pretty astonishing and it speaks to how important of a space it was. (Personal Interview, November 3, 2020).

(Wendy Schiller is an artist, activist, and avid fan of the Great Scott who helped spearhead the petition to relocate it as well as raise awareness of the closing of the venue)

Great Scott is an example of a community that exists without a physical geographic location. The closure of the venue may have dealt a severe blow to the people who so loved the place, but it made them stronger to a point. They banded together to save what they loved the most. In a time of dire need and personal preservation, people struggling on their own put aside their own desires and needs to support a place that would be lost without them. This was such an amazing community so study. The people, united by their unanimous love for the experiences that Great Scott brought to them, came together as a community to express their frustration with the way it turned out for their favorite place. Seeing all this changed what I really thought about communities. Communities exist beyond simply the connections you have via location and interaction, it can come from shared interests, experiences, and memories. Community is the people, not the place or the thing that they share, and this community will continue thriving as long as the people are still there to push for their new place.

Acknowledgments:

Special thanks to Wendy Schiller, Ben Stas, and J.J. Gonson. Without their contributions to the project, none of this would have been possible. Ben’s insight into the importance of Great Scott was much appreciated as it made it so much more clear what the place meant to people. Wendy gave a great narrative about the community coming together to save the place they so dearly loved. J.J. was such a pleasure to work with. She had a great chat with me about more than simply her venue, and gave me so much to think about too. It was so nice to meet each one of these individuals and my thanks again.

Works Cited

Urkevich, Lisa A. "Our Rebirth: Reshaping the Music Discipline after the Covid-19 Pandemic." College Music Symposium 60, no. 1 (2020): 1-8. Accessed December 1, 2020. doi:10.2307/26919801.

12, Adam. “City Scenes: Remembering Boston's Great Scott.” NPR. NPR, October 7, 2020. https://www.npr.org/2020/10/07/920446571/city-scenes-remembering-bostons-great-scott.

Sokol, Joshua. “In the Wake of COVID-19, Independent Music Venues Adapt Their Model to Survive.” The Berkeley Beacon. 2020.

Gross, Sally Anne, and George Musgrave. "Introduction: Special Objects, Special Subjects." In Can Music Make You Sick?: Measuring the Price of Musical Ambition, 1-24. London: University of Westminster Press, 2020. Accessed December 1, 2020. doi:10.2307/j.ctv199tddg.5.

HEATH, CHARLES V. "Inception, Institutionalization, and Venue." In The Inevitable Bandstand: The State Band of Oaxaca and the Politics of Sound, 34-55. Lincoln; London: University of Nebraska Press, 2015. Accessed December 1, 2020. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1d9nj4v.8.

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