The 2020 edition of Independent Venue Week is October 26-30 and while most venues in NYC are not open due to COVID (and none are hosting live music music), a few in Brooklyn and Queens have banded together for five nights of streaming shows, each one curated by a different venue, including Baby's All Right, The Broadway, Our Wicked Lady, The Sultan Room and Purgatory. The performances will be filmed at the different venues with no audience. You can watch online, and they'll also be projected at Ridgewood venue Trans-Pecos' spacious backyard, with a different, related, food pop-up each night, plus merch.
"We're blessed to have an outdoor space large enough that even operating at 25% capacity allows us to serve 50 patrons at a time in a safe, socially-distant seated set up," writes Trans-Pecos' Lindsey Gardner. "Knowing most venues in our community don't have this luxury, I decided to partner with other venues in an attempt to raise some funds for artists and their currently out of work staff.
"Navigating a production like this in a way that ultimately keeps our staff and community safe and also meets all state and local regulations has been an exercise in how we can safely come together and support each other as a creative community during the time of covid," Lindsey continues. "I've been in this music community for the past decade and have worked with every one of these venues. They've supported me and I wanted to find a way to give back in this time of need. We're all in this together and we are nothing without each other at the end of the day."
Here are the lineups with streaming ticket links:
- Oct 26 (Our Wicked Lady): Thick, Haybaby, Brian Don, Niteowl, Adrian is Hungry, food by Traze Pizza Lab (tickets)
- Oct 27 (The Broadway): Native Sun, Pure Adult, food by Jerk (tickets)
- Oct 28 (Sultan Room): Wiki, Mint & Friends, food by Turks Inn (tickets)
- Oct 29 (Baby's All Right): Shamir, Tony and Tony, Stella Donnelly and more, DJ Billy Jones, food by Wah Gwaan (tickets)
- Oct 30 (Purgatory): Gustaf, P.E., food by Happy Bull Pizza (tickets)
For the Trans-Pecos events, entry is entirely donation-based. It's a 7 PM start for all of the events, and 100% of ticket sales and donations will go to the artists and venue staffs. Head below for flyers for each show.