Breaking Down Barriers and Creating New Experiences

How alternative concert spaces stimulate the relationship between performer and audience.

By Brendan Kennedy

My favourite part of going to see a show at the Artel is the washroom. Having to wind your way through the hallway and pass the dude cooking spaghetti in the kitchen in order to use the toilet is the most obvious sign that you are not in a typical concert venue and you aren’t likely to have a typical night.

My second favourite thing about the Artel is watching how performers interact with the audience—whether they squirm in the silence or make comfortable conversation.

The Artel’s stageless space and homey atmosphere distorts the traditional dichotomy of performer and audience; it doesn’t erase the lines between the two sides, but it certainly blurs them. And it’s this disruption of expectations that creates new possibilities for the concert experience and generates excitement by suggesting the unpredictable: that the night won’t be just another night.

Alternative concert spaces have kept Kingston’s music scene vibrant over the last few years.  As local bars shut down, switched to generic cover bands or stopped booking live music altogether, imaginative and determined individuals found other places to perform and listen to live music.

In addition to The Artel, the Modern Fuel Art Gallery, the Queen Street United Church and countless living rooms and backyards have—with the exception of The Grad Club—largely replaced traditional music venues in Kingston.

The punk community has known the power of the alternative music venue for as long punk music has been played.  Bands and promoters seek alternative, and in some cases illegal, venues to combat age restrictions and the establishment, but they also know it’s consistent with their musical and performance goals: The kids are more likely to riot if the performance space is wild and untamed, like the music itself.

It’s why a show on Wolfe Island, even when it’s at a fairly regular bar, tends to be more exciting—you throw people on a ferry on a nice night, they feel like they’re going on a trip and the experience becomes less predictable and more exciting.

Nich Worby, who lived and played music in Kingston for five years before moving to Toronto in September has performed in pretty much every venue imaginable: kitchens, basements, art supply stores and a double-wide trailer in Sackville, N.B.  In his hometown of Brantford alone he’s performed in a soft-seat theatre opening for Ron Sexsmith and while standing in a river with his pant legs rolled up at the Murdered City Music Festival.

But Worby relishes the opportunity to play his songs in alternative spaces, because he says bars often sap the spontaneity out of a live show.

“My ideal performance space is anywhere that causes a slight disequilibrium amongst the audience,” he said. “I like playing houses because it’s so intimate you can’t ignore what’s happening.  You can’t be passive or hide; you’re part of the show whether you like it or not.”

Ann Sloan Devlin is a professor of psychology at Connecticut College who specializes in spatial cognition. She says the spaces we inhabit influence our behaviour, and that, for example, a concert venue with immovable chairs will naturally limit the kind of interaction that can occur between performer and audience more than a venue with movable chairs.

But her theory of “architectural possibilism” suggests that spaces can be transformed by the people acting in them. In terms of live music, this means that people can transcend the traditional concert experience by changing the performance space and creating a new experience.

“Changing the way one does something can actually be kind of stimulating,” she says, but adds that alternative concert spaces are more likely to appeal to people who aren’t rigid and generally more comfortable taking risks. “Not everyone will find the unfamiliar enjoyable.”

But for the flexible among us, who enjoy the odd risk from time to time, experiencing live music in unusual places can provide that spontaneous spice in life.

I’m sure our enjoyment of these spaces also has to do with stuff like social capital and community-building; but just as the late urban guru Jane Jacobs celebrated spontaneity and chaos as representing diversity in cities, we can celebrate the beautiful disorder of watching live music in alternative spaces—always unsure of what will happen next.

Brendan Kennedy lives in Ottawa, where he works as a newspaper reporter. He lived mostly in Kingston from 2003 to 2008, and continues to live there in his dreams.