Street fair city: how Chicago's smaller festivals are hurting venues and promoters

So much has been made about the Lollapalooza radius clause that it’s practically a foregone conclusion that it’s just crippling the Chicago music scene. The clause itself is pretty harsh, prohibiting most bands playing Lolla from playing within 300 miles of the city six months before the fest and three months after. So harsh, in fact, that the Illinois Attorney General’s investigating the contracts on behalf of independent promoters.

Independent promoters, however, are saying that the Lolla clause isn’t all that bad. In fact, most bands find a way around it, or get an exemption from Austin’s C3 Presents, the company that puts on Lolla. If they're even planning a tour at all, that is.

"A lot of bands aren't touring in the summer," says Windish's Sam Hunt, who books Matt And Kim, who kicked out the jams on the Adidas Mega stage Friday and will be back to play Metro Sept. 19. "College isn't in session, and that makes a huge difference. Festivals are usually a gig that wouldn't be taking place otherwise and bands will fly in just to play."

For local clubs and venues, though, what really cripples their business when it gets hot isn’t the big fests, but rather one of the things that makes Chicago summers so great: street fairs.

For Hunt and for the bands he works with, it's simple economics. More shows played equals more money for hard-working musicians. "There are a million things bands can do in Chicago over the summer that aren't playing clubs," Hunt says. In fact, the Mayor’s office alone helps produce more than 400 neighborhood festivals. Add to that events like North Coast Music Festival, Pitchfork, Taste Of Chicago, and Sonar, and it’s a packed market.

If each neighborhood festival is booking a few national acts, they’re left to fill up the rest of their schedule with local bands. Sure, bands like Elevation, Hairbangers Ball and Too White Crew do great, because cover bands are street fairs, but it affects local bands, too. As more local bands get booked for street fairs, small clubs feel the heat. Matt Rucins, who books Schubas and Lincoln Hall, says summer’s a bleak time for him. “In the summer, I’m relying far more on strong local bills to prevent us from going dark all together,” he says. “I’ll look at an open weekend date, pick a band, find out they’re playing some street fair, then keep going down the ladder. Whereas once you had a band in mind that could draw 200 people on a Friday, you end up booking a headliner pulling only 50 to 75 people a night. At the end of the month, all those lost covers make a big difference.”

In the summer, when patio drinking and porch parties rule, it’s tough enough to get people to spend a night inside at a hot concert. Even street fairs are feeling the crush, with the glut of neighborhood events diametrically opposed to the lack of major sponsorships to go around in this economic climate.

Yes, Lady Gaga won’t be back for three months, but that just affects the United Center. If Mucca Pazza plays five street fairs in three months for a $5 donation a pop, who’s going to fork out $15 to go see the group at Lincoln Hall? If that happens night after night, who’s going to fill that 500-capacity room all summer? It’s this struggle for middling business and not the Lollapalooza radius clause that really cramps the styles of small promoters and venues. Summer in Chicago’s beautiful, but not when there are concert tickets to sell.