Home-booked entertainment  

More of a scattering than a “scene,” live music in Madison leaves plenty of gaps in which to make your own fun. Even on the busiest night, there are always some fragments of the local audience that will feel left out and restless, thirsting for anything from alt-country to experimental jazz to under-hyped indie-rock gems. An assortment of fans and creatives fills in those spaces—at times sparsely, but always crucially—by hosting lesser-known touring and local artists in basements, the occasional historic site, and a new all-ages space. Decider asked a few of them to share advice and stories about befriending artists, losing money, and handling pain-in-the-ass logistics.

Be a pal
“If you bring [an artist] to town and say, ‘Okay, play the show, here’s $200, go home,’ they’re not gonna come [back],” Kyle Pfister tells Decider. If Pfister brings a band in, he’s probably already written an exuberant prose-poem interpretation of its music for his website, justsayinisall.com. Beyond a thoughtful rapport, it’s best to offer meals, beer, a place to sleep, and access to a washer and dryer.

The schedule at Kiki Schueler’s east-side basement, a.k.a. Kiki’s House of Righteous Music, started picking up after she hosted alt-country veterans The Silos last year, with some help from a friend at the band’s label, Bloodshot Records. These connections come easier, of course, for people who already go to tons of shows. (If Schueler goes to see Robbie Fulks or The Wrens, for example, they’ll spot her pretty quickly.) Without the resources of a full-time promoter, it helps to build a reputation on graciousness, not to mention that Schueler and Pfister both rely on local musician friends to work sound and lend equipment.

Look for (or create) strange places
In October 2007, Pfister got Madison singer-songwriter Vid Libert, experimental local act Wilhelmina Baker, and K Records artist Woelv to play an otherworldly “indie-folk showcase” at the Gates of Heaven, the historic synagogue in James Madison Park. Despite its hallowed air and acoustics, it costs just $72 to rent it from the city for a weeknight (well, plus a $300 deposit for the key; see ci.madison.wi.us/parks for info). Though the warehouse setting of Commonwealth Gallery (100 S. Baldwin St., cwd.org) can create a pesky echo effect, it rents for $85 per week. During the warmer months, reserving a shelter in a city park can cost anywhere from $77 to $190, depending on the park and how long you need the space, plus a $75 fee for a PA permit.

Before art-and-music space The Project Lodge opened, founders Kendra Larson and Chris Buckingham began holding potluck Sunday brunches there. Those and PL’s bright, all-ages space make it welcoming for those who usually wouldn’t come out to rock clubs. In addition to hosting bands and visual-art shows, they’ve opened the space up to craft workshops; provided an open shelf for distributing zines and CDs; and made it clear that keeping the space busy depends on the creativity of outside contributors, not just their own.

Jeremy Evans, of avant-jazz group Bastard Trio, helps Madison peek at obscure experimental acts, mostly hooking them up with shows in the living room of the Nottingham Co-op. In short, setting up an event at Nottingham requires sponsorship from three house members and approval at a house meeting. The bands are usually invited to share in the residents’ meals, and the co-op doesn’t charge anything for putting on an event, so the artists pocket whatever Evans collects at the door.

Warp the experience
When Seattle band Say Hi played the Project Lodge last month, a cavalcade of robots marched across the wall beside singer Eric Elbogen, dissolving into bleary images of the band itself. In addition to booking the music, Pfister steered the whole evening into a new dimension by recruiting Racine video artist Mike Winkelmann to improvise live projections during songs, layering bits of his own animation with just-captured footage of Say Hi and the opening act, Icarus Himself. That’s the alias of Madison songwriter Nick Whetro (also of the band National Beekeepers Society), who occasionally works with his girlfriend, Katie Robinson, on shows in a basement dubbed The Owl House on the north side. (Whetro’s advice: “Don’t live on the north side.”)

Simple word of mouth counts more than flyers or press, especially for shows at this level; tape an 8-by-11-inch flyer to a kiosk on State Street, and it’ll probably get covered up by the end of the day. Pfister found a sort of solution when promoting his Gates of Heaven show in October: A large, winged poster, almost as elaborate as a coat of arms, complete with a drawing of a “young hipster everyman St. Paul” (um, Pfister’s words); a pair of goblets with snakes in them; and the artists’ names on a shield.

Know the limits
Schueler sums it up like this: “Break even? Ha!” Money for bands’ food and booze comes out of her pockets, and the $10 donations she takes at the door go straight to the artists’ gas tanks. Put on the show for the sake of it, and buck up for a small but hopefully gracious crowd: “Sometimes [turnout is] just a fluke in terms of who’s busy and what’s going on,” Robinson says. Evans considers 40 a pretty large head count for one of his shows: “It’s hard to get people to think that they’re gonna get off their ass, get in a car, pay $5, drive in the cold, try and find a parking space downtown—that’s kind of an investment. You are kind of asking a lot of people. I didn’t used to think that, but I kinda realized, you know, it’s not like I always feel like leaving the house if it’s below zero out.”