Last Updated on September 21, 2024 by YGK News Staff
With Kingston’s Blu Martini officially closing as of September 10 and set to welcome a Chuck’s Roadhouse Bar and Grill in its place, Kingston finds itself with a gaping hole in the venue ladder.
While the city’s music strategy that was approved last year already identified a mid-sized venue (capacity of 400-700 standing) in Kingston as a key need to help fill an existing gap in venue choices, musicians and industry professionals have so far seen that gap only grow larger with the closure of Blu Martini, which was really the only venue that Kingston had that somewhat fit the bill.
For musicians like Braden Elliott of the Codas, who weeks ago were met with the sudden news that their December show at Blu Martini with other local bands was now in desperate need of a new home, there doesn’t really seem to be an alternative that offers what Blu Martini did.
He says it would have been nice for artists with confirmed bookings to get some advanced notice of the closure, and now working to find a replacement it’s clear that Blu Martini played a big role for both local and touring musicians.
“It’s just like scrambling, things book up so quickly,” Elliott said.
“So just finding a place that’s available a couple of months out now is tough.”
Elliott says he’s confident that this show can be saved, but they’ll be forced to pivot to a smaller venue out of necessity due to a stark lack of mid-sized options.
If that’s not addressed, not only will it be a loss for local bands, but he says touring bands who are too small for a space like Slush Puppie Place or The Grand Theatre will also lose arguably their top option.
“There are other venues you can play, but you just have to then make sacrifices for what you are getting from this venue,” Elliott said.
“You have groups even that come through town where it’s like, Broom Factory is where they end up playing, but they’re a band that could sell four or five hundred tickets, you know, as opposed to 250 to 300. It’s just that one step up as far as size that we need here, like desperately.”
The sudden sale took not only musicians and community members by surprise, but people who worked to put on shows at Blu Martini like Anita and Trevor Johnson.
Even though they worked closely with the venue and its owners running sound and lights for shows, they said they only got two days notice before it was publicly announced, although they knew Chris Fountas had been ready to move on for some time.
Anita Johnson said she thinks this change even further emphasizes the city’s already identified need for a mid-sized venue
“It’s a huge hole, I mean, there’s literally nothing of that size in the city,” Anita Johnson said.
“It was probably the midsize venue, other than the Ale House, which is too big, bigger rather, and expensive to rent.”
Rob Howard, who is a part of the Music Advisory Council with Anita Johnson, says that the closure of Blu Martini absolutely should elevate the need for a mid-sized venue to the top of the list for Music Strategy priorities.
He says it’s a loss that nobody is ready to replace at this time, but will be felt by the local community of musicians.
“Certainly I think Blu Martini represented an important position in the city’s landscape of live music venues,” Howard said.
“It was a venue that local bands could play when and if they were ready… and it was it was also home to long-standing open jams and things like that, you know, that were largely focused on local artists.”
The reasons leading to Blu Martini’s closure may be outside of the scope what Kingston’s Music Office can impact, and the sale caught them by surprise too.
Howard says he hopes going forward though that they can be a little more proactive, and hopefully find a way to preserve those venues.
“I feel like this is something that the music office wasn’t aware of, and in future should be aware of,” Howard said.
“If we are at risk of losing a venue I think the Music Office should have some kind of line of sight to that… is there an intervention to be made? Is there something the city can do to maybe help keep that important venue alive?”
Howard added that the Music Office is still getting its feet underneath it in many ways, but going forward improved stakeholder engagement should be a goal.
The leader of that Music Office, Music Officer Moira Demorest, says while Blu Martini certainly does open up a big hole, she’s hopeful it won’t last for too long.
She, like Howard, would like to see the Music Office be able to help ensure that a venue remains a venue even after a change of ownership.
“One of our goals is really to be that bridge between the municipality and the business sector and the live music sector,” Demorest said.
“Next time maybe we make sure that there is a buyer that wants to come in or a franchise that comes in and continues as a venue.”
Their reach and influence will only go so far however, and at the end of the day, Demorest says this change really just represents a business owner deciding to retire.
“Maybe it felt very sudden for us, but maybe it wasn’t for them,” Demorest said.
“We can’t necessarily come in and save the day. It’s a for-profit business, that’s on the business owner’s discretion, but are there ways that we could connect them hopefully in the future.”
Demorest said this gap being opened up doesn’t necessarily mean there will be a new space available any sooner, but that there could be other creative solutions to help address it in some way.
“There’s been options, I guess, that have been presented themselves, but this is still very much in a development stage,” Demorest said.
“I also think that this is an opportunity for some of the other spaces perhaps that did potentially have larger capacities… perhaps this will give a little bit more push and support for some of our other music venues that are doing great things.”
The music strategy was greenlit nearly a year ago, but Demorest says it will likely take two to three years for many of the bigger items -a mid-sized venue included- to begin taking shape.
