Milwaukee's live-music club scene is growing, but there's cause for caution

The Pabst Theater Group is one of Milwaukee's premier live-music players. 

But beyond the marquee names it routinely brings to its own venues — the Pabst Theater, Riverside Theater and Turner Hall Ballroom — and bigger spaces like the BMO Harris Bradley Center, PTG has doubled down on a new business strategy: 

To get bigger, it's going smaller. 

Of the approximately 660 shows PTG booked for 2017, about 130 of them were scheduled for its newest venue: the 300-capacity Back Room at Colectivo Coffee, 2211 N. Prospect Ave. PTG started booking for there two years ago; it has 23 shows scheduled at the venue through March, from Punch Brothers' banjo player Noam Pikelny to feminist slam poet Andrea Gibson. 

"Our hope is that if we help launch more club activity in the city, we can launch more shows for our other venues," Pabst CEO Gary Witt said of Milwaukee. "We have a tremendous opportunity to continue to grow." 

Some wonder if there will be enough business to go around. 

“More places are offering live music now,” said Jim Linneman, owner of the 160-capacity Linneman's Riverwest Inn, 1001 E. Locust St. “There are more house shows, more art galleries, more brewpubs, more coffee shops, more restaurants. I think it's thinning out the music scene.” 

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Tuning in growth — for some 

The live music industry is growing, with $7.3 billion in North American ticket sales in 2016, according to concert trade magazine Pollstar. It was the fifth consecutive record year, as more artists are hitting the road more frequently to make up for minimal streaming revenue and record sales. 

Milwaukee is growing, too, in the midst of its largest period of development since the 1960s, according to development group Milwaukee Downtown.

Local clubs could benefit from all of that — and some have. 

Milwaukee clubs Shank Hall, the Cactus Club, Linneman's and Anodyne Roasting Coffee Company all had an uptick of shows in 2017.

Numerous spots featuring mostly local musicians have opened across town within the past two years — from rock-dominant High Dive in Riverwest to nearby restaurant-brewery Company Brewing to jazz club Gibraltar in Walker's Point. 

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But there's cause for caution. 

The four-county area, with 1.5 million people, has only grown about 0.3% a year since 2010, according to the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. The city's median household income remains about $53,000, roughly in line with the national average. 

And along with the club success stories, several local music venues, including the Metal Grill, G-Daddy BBC's, Yield and Hotel Foster have closed in the past 14 months. Mad Planet, the 27-year-old dance club whose impressive show history includes the lone Milwaukee dates for a pre-breakout Arcade Fire, hasn't booked a concert in six months. 

This isn't exactly new. Over the past three decades, places like the Globe and Zak's enjoyed some glory years before shutting down. 

But Witt argues that the instability has held back Milwaukee's club scene prospects compared to cities like Chicago, Detroit and Madison.

Among long-running Milwaukee clubs predominantly booking national acts, “Shank Hall is the only one that's been carrying that flag,” Witt said of the 29-year-old east side venue, owned by local concert promoter Peter Jest. “The rest of the club scene is inconsistent at best … and that causes us to lose opportunities for bands, because if they start in Madison, maybe they’ll stay in Madison.”

"The benefits of doing small shows is it expands our conversations with agents. Robert Plant's principal agent, more than five times, has reached out personally to talk about a new act he's signed that he's passionate about," Witt continued. "If agents and managers are used to having more conversations with us, in addition to Peter, there could be a ripple effect where Club Garibaldi and Cactus Club and Anodyne could get a few more phone calls."

'Not everyone rises to compete' 

Local live-music fans and touring musicians stand to benefit from Pabst's involvement on the small-show level, suggested Miles Nielsen, a Rockford, Ill.-based singer-songwriter who's played Milwaukee five times this year, and has a sixth show Oct. 26 at Shank Hall with his band the Rusted Hearts.

"The Pabst (Theater Group) is more than three people who are working at a club," Nielsen said. "They have more opportunity to get some promotion, get some more people behind it and some larger corporations to throw money at them."

But Nielsen acknowledges "when there's more competition, not everyone rises to compete."

Shank Hall owner Jest shares some of that concern.

"Sometimes more shows isn't the best. There's only a certain amount of money that people have," Jest said. 

If cannibalization is a potential consequence, Jest's 300-person-capacity club isn't likely to be a victim. Jest said Shank, 1434 N. Farwell Ave., had a 10% increase in shows this year, for a rough total of 160 to 180 this year.

"In the past 29 years, I've seen over 100 places close, but Shank is always pretty consistent," Jest said. "We have a permanent stage and PA. A lot of groups know we're a professional room, not a place that's in the back of a bar."

Linneman's, which features local artists for up to 95% of its shows each year, is also riding a bit of a boom.

"We're booked until the end of the year on weekends," Jim Linneman said. "I'm finding that hard to believe." 

"We're celebrating our 25th anniversary in 2018," he continued. "Musicians gravitate back here, because it's familiar, and we've always been consistent and made music the focus."

Adjusting strategies 

Some long-running local clubs are tweaking their business model to stay competitive.

For 21 years, the 200-person-capacity Cactus Club, 2496 S. Wentworth Ave., has been a cornerstone of the local music scene, with breakout bands like the White Stripes, Death Cab for Cutie and Queens of the Stone Age coming through in their early years. 

Kelsey Kaufmann took over as general manager in 2016, increasing bookings to about four or five a week, and working directly with local scene players, such as electronic artist Max Holiday and rapper Zed Kenzo, to help book and broaden the slate of shows with Milwaukee talent. 

"We've been really intentional about trying to make the space as welcoming as possible in terms of the aesthetic and types of shows," Kaufmann said. 

Riverwest Public House Cooperative, 815. E Locust St., has been more selective, opting for 10 to 15 concerts a month, said event coordinator Harrison Colby.

"Band bookings are more costly, and we want something interesting that wouldn't be anywhere else in the neighborhood," he said. 

In January, the bar's board of directors sent an email to patrons and members asking for more of their business. "The one-two punch of a sales slump and unforeseen expenses has put us in a precarious place," the letter read.

"I think there's a lot of competition between venues in our neighborhood, and our goal is to set ourselves apart as being a very multi-event venue," Colby said. "There are few places in Milwaukee that have burlesque and drag, and all genres of music, and book clubs, and meet-up groups, and different political organizations and fundraisers for non-profits."

Even with the increasing number of club shows and downtown's growth potentially boosting patronage, revenue remains "very marginal for shows at this level," Jest said.

Ironically, the Milwaukee clubs that stand the best chance to succeed are the ones that don't need to rely on the music business to stay afloat.

Jest makes about 80% of his revenue as the promoter for about 50 other theater shows around Wisconsin each year, and he has equity as owner of Shank Hall's building. 

Witt said the Pabst Group and Colectivo can afford to invest in club shows because of other revenue.  

Anodyne focuses primarily on its roasting business and coffee shop sales. It started booking concerts at its Walker's Point location about four years ago mainly as a hobby, said owner Matt McClutchy. That aspect of the business has grown enough to net Anodyne a small profit.

McClutchy also credits Anodyne's shows — 50 to 60 this year, with a quarter featuring out-of-town acts — for helping to "get our name out more and introduce Anodyne to a group of people that may not be paying attention to the specialty coffee scene." 

"I'm sure there's a tipping point for the number of venues," McClutchy said. "But I don't think that's been reached yet."