A Los Angeles company is opening a concert club in Buffalo. Not everyone is thrilled by the prospect.

Marc Geiger’s SaveLive has long-serving indie venue owner’s concerned about our live music ecosystem

Design by Kim Miers.

A local music scene is a fragile ecosystem. And in a tertiary market like Buffalo, this reality is underscored on a daily basis. 

On December 12, SaveLive, a Los Angeles-based conglomerate working to  create a chain of small-to-mid-sized music clubs and a network of touring bands to populate those clubs, announced that it would be opening a 750-capacity venue, dubbed Electric City, at 622 Main Street in the Theatre District, the former site of the Tralf Music Hall. 

SaveLive’s local representatives announced an initial roster of shows slated to go on sale on Friday, December 15, among them gigs by DJ James Kennedy, soul -jazz singer and bassist Meshell Ndegeocello, rock-funk icons Living Colour, EMD duo Hippie Sabotage, and alternative rock prime movers Echo & The Bunnymen - strong shows, all. 

The announcement was greeted enthusiastically by much of the local press. Early reaction from regional live music supporters, as observed on social media, generally welcomed the addition of these shows to what is already a well-stocked menu of concert offerings. 

There is another side to the story, however. And that’s where the fragility of a live music ecosystem in a region like ours comes into play. 

An already crowded playing field

At 681 Main Street, a short walk from the site that will house Electric City when it opens later this winter, sits the Town Ballroom, which has been presenting a rich diet of alternative and indie music, EDM, hip-hop and legacy rock to Buffalo live music supporters since 2005, when business partners Artie Kwitchoff and Donny Kutzbach of FunTime Presents reopened the former Town Casino and turned it into the city’s premier concert hall of its size. 

Within a few blocks of the Theatre District sit both the Rec Room, an indie-centric concert hall, and Babeville, the converted church that houses the 750 seated/1,200 standing-capacity Asbury Hall and the intimate 9th Ward stage. 

Around the corner you’ll find Mohawk Place, the roughly 250 capacity indie rock, punk and metal community hub that has booked in the area of 350 shows per year for the past several decades. 

A little bit further south, in the heart of the Cobblestone District, sits Buffalo Iron Works, a 400-Capacity venue that concentrates on touring jam bands, up-and-coming artists getting their first play in the Buffalo market, and regional acts in the jam, roots and indie scenes.  

All of these venues managed to survive the music industry-decimating pandemic and continue to present well-stocked rosters of live music events to loyal patron bases, despite taking major financial hits. 

The continued existence of this community of small-to-midsized venues in our market can’t help but beg the question - what vacant niche is SaveLive hoping to fill with its new venture? 

“What has made Buffalo special with live music is that every venue has a unique niche in the market,” says the Town Ballroom’s Kwitchoff, who has been presenting live music in Buffalo for 30 years, and prior to that, acted as band manager for the Goo Goo Dolls, during that band’s nascent days. 

“The Sportsman’s Tavern (in Black Rock) has their roots/country world. Buffalo 

Iron Works is the spot for the jam bands and up and coming artists to hone their craft in a welcoming environment of music lovers. The Rec Room has the bands and DJs with attitude - young and loud, with something to say. The Tralf was a blues and jazz room, the perfect space for those acts. And at the next size up are two of the finest rooms anywhere, with Asbury Hall and the Town Ballroom.”

The entrance of SaveLive into this musical ecology does indeed create more competition for all of these clubs and venues - and competition is always a good thing. Right? 

Well, sure. Until it isn’t. 

“I am all for healthy competition and always support independent venues and promoters,” says Jennifer Brazill, owner and co-founder of the Borderland Festival, held annually in East Aurora, NY, 20 miles southwest of Buffalo. “Without indie venues, we will lose all the personality and character that the city of Buffalo is built on and we will become gentrified and one-dimensional.

 “Buffalo is a unique market. We have a much smaller population than cities like Chicago, Boston, or even Toronto, and therefore, less people to attend shows and support all these venues. Fans have to choose where and when to spend their money.”

Who is Marc Geiger, and why is he interested in the Buffalo concert club scene?

Marc Geiger is one of the biggest names in the music industry. 

Part of the team that founded Lollapalooza in the 90s, Geiger went on to become the global music chief of the William Morris Endeavor, a position he held for 17 years. By the time he left WME, Geiger had become a major player. When he called, people in the music industry took that call. 

During the pandemic, Geiger began amassing financial backing to create SaveLive, which he said at the time was an effort aimed at aiding clubs shut down by the pandemic and providing solid ground for these venues to build upon once the music industry started its long walk back home, to full functionality. He planned to do so by purchasing at least 51 percent equity in concert clubs in smaller markets across the country. 

The New York Times published a lengthy piece on Geiger’s plans in the Fall of 2020. 

“For SaveLive to be successful, Geiger needs a critical mass of venue proprietors to sign on his dotted line,” the NYT’s Ben Sisario wrote. 

“Under normal circumstances, that would be a tough sell for lone-wolf club owners, who have spent decades resisting corporate consolidation. But even Geiger’s skeptics admit there may be few other options.”

As it turns out, Geiger’s skeptics were many. 

“Geiger’s solution on some level scares me,” Frank Riley of High Road Touring, an indie agency responsible for booking artists like Wilco, My Bloody Valentine and Robert Plant, told the NYT. 

“He is going to buy distressed properties for money on the dollar and end up owning 51 percent of their business. Is that independent? I don’t know. But it does save the platforms on which things grow and where artists are sustained.”

Geiger founded SaveLive with John Fogelman, who he knew from his tenure at the William Morris Endeavor. He insisted at the time, according to the NYT piece, “that his venue deals would be partnerships, and that despite controlling a majority share he would not seek to flip assets,” an assertion that was backed up by Geiger’s main financial partner, Jordan Moelis of Deep Field Asset Management, son of Wall Street investment banker Ken Moelis.

Geiger claimed from the beginning that SaveLive is grounded in a desire to aid a deeply beleaguered faction of the music industry, an inclination born of his personal passion for live music in venues of this size. 

This seemed like an admirable guiding principal. Not everyone bought it, however. Rolling Stone was one of several media outlets noting a wariness toward the venture in the world of independent music venues, as it described in this October, 2020 piece. 

“While SaveLive’s type of partnership could protect the many independently-owned venues that are currently in red-alert danger of closing for good, it may also push owners back against a wall: Indie venues tend to pride themselves on being indie and may balk at the idea of being owned by a man who has long represented the fluorescent-lit world of corporate suits,” Rolling Stone’s Samantha Hissong wrote.

“If Geiger ends up landing at another big concert company later on, his majority-ownership in these clubs could change their status.” 

Such fears were underscored in June, when owners of a small Palm Springs, California, music venue sued Geiger, claiming that SaveLive had breached the terms of their deal.

‘It’s already so tough’

Michele Riggi is a Buffalo native who has been working in the music industry in Los Angeles for the last six years, and in New York City for five years previous to that. She moved back to Buffalo in May, and a short time later, was hired by SaveLive to oversee marketing for the new venture in the old Tralf Music Hall site.  Mark Violino, formerly with Artpark in Lewiston, was hired as Electric City’s GM. David Taylor of Buffalo-based Empire State Concerts has been engaged on the promoter side of the equation. 

Riggi is tangibly excited about the former Tralf space. 

“They’ve gutted it and made it a totally new venue,” she told me. “The stage is in a different space. It’s on the back wall, so if you’re looking to your right, the window is on Main Street. We got rid of the kitchen, we have two big bars upstairs and one bar downstairs. It will be mainly a general admission space, but we do have the capability, depending on the tour, to bring in seats. So we do plan on doing some comedy and podcasts there, as well as private events. There will be ample VIP space, too.”

Riggi says that Electric City’s booking plans “will offer something for everyone.”

“In my opinion, Buffalo has kind of forever been in that punk, metal, blues space, and other venues aren’t necessarily branching out into booking other kinds of artists, and that’s something that in my experience - I was in A&R at an independent label in Los Angeles - I love different types of genres. Being able to bring more of that to the area, well, a rising tide lifts all boats, so if we can get more cool artists to the area, then all of the venues are going to benefit.”

Kwitchoff, who, with Kutzbach, has been presenting a broad array of artists across multiple genres at the Town Ballroom in Buffalo for decades, and has done so as a wholly independent indie venue operator and promoter, has some significant concerns, however. 

“I’m concerned that this guy and his company, who supposedly stands for independent venues, is coming to the market with plans to take from the independent promoters and venue owners who have been working here all along,” he says. “And he has venture capital money to outbid all of us.”  

Brazill expressed parallel concerns when I spoke with her. 

“As an independent promoter, I know how hard it is to book bands, competing with rising prices that the Live Nations of the world have created by overpaying artists,” she says. 

“I only book a few events a year in the Buffalo area, but venues like Town Ballroom, Sportsmen’s Tavern, or Asbury Hall have to fill their rooms 300 days a year. That is a tough grind. You constantly have to be talking to agents and hustling. This new venue will make that even harder. 

“Hopefully, everyone can raise each other up and support each other. But I’m worried that we just do not have the population to support over-saturating the market. It is already so tough.“

Kwitchoff offers a more succinct perspective. 

“There has been a good balancing act here for years and none of us have tried to eat the other’s dinner. But this unique ecosystem being disrupted in this way may end up with some places becoming extinct.” 

(I’ll be following up on this story as it develops, so check this space often.)