Back in 2005, twelve kids from Salem — some of them not even out of high school — started making some great music together. One of them was Kyle Morton.
Typhoon, at OPB's studios in 2013. Morton (fourth from right) says the size of the band also worked against them in 21+ clubs. "Pretty much every venue assumed we were sneaking in half our friends."
Nathan Tang / OPB
“There really were no venues at the time,” Morton remembers. “I mean there were a couple of places like the YMCA and a couple of grange halls we could rent out.”
So they played the grange halls. And did house concerts. Against the odds, they grew into the indie folk orchestra Typhoon. Today, Typhoon has no problem filling the Crystal Ballroom — a place their parents used to drive them to see shows back in the day.
But when Typhoon first came to Portland, some bandmates were still underage. Morton says that led to some pretty laughable situations as they played more 21-and-over clubs.
“I think the first time we played a proper music venue we were just ushered into the basement, put in this windowless room, and just left there until it was our turn to play,” Morton says. “We were eyed with with the utmost suspicion, just feeling like, we were huge liabilities for the venue. And I suppose we were.”
After all, no club wants to be caught with underage musicians or audience members drinking.
It’s not like people under 21 can’t go to shows. The Crystal Ballroom, the Hawthorne Theater, Roseland and a handful of other Portland venues book all-ages concerts on a semi-regular basis. Physical barriers get set up and extra security staff watch like hawks for alcohol violations. Sounds cozy, right?
Stella Augustine is a 15-year-old volunteer with the KBOO Radio Youth Collective.
“I think the problem with those spaces is they’re generally too expensive for youth to afford,” she says. These shows also pose extra costs for the clubs on nights when they’re bound to earn less money from liquor sales.
The system kind of works for young fans watching acts big enough to fill those venues. But it does nothing for smaller, up-and-coming bands — the Typhoons-in-training.
“A lot of youth performers who are very talented that do not have anywhere to play, they’re relegated to the house show scene, and lack those opportunities to be in a professional environment, increase their fanbase." says Gina Altamura, a talent booker for the Portland club Holocene.
When Altamura was in her late teens she was promoting concerts she was too young to attend, working with Aaron Hall. Hall has booked clubs in Portland and co-owns Dig-A-Pony. He’s also is the music director for XRAY-FM. Hall notes, when real estate costs were lower, Portland had several dedicated all-ages clubs like Slabtown and Backspace.
“A lot of those places have since shut down,” Hall says, “because it’s a really difficult model to sustain. Also, Portland’s housing and rental market has changed, so it’s much harder for an 18– [or] 19-year-old kid to get out of a school and go rent a house with friends and start throwing shows in a more off-the-grid way.”
Friends of Noise includes under 21 musicians and fans as well as a number of industry pros.
Courtesy of Friends of Noise
Aaron Hall, Gina Altamira and Stella Augustine are part of a group called Friends of Noise. They plan to host concerts in a variety of venues all summer, to build a case for a nonprofit, all-ages music venue to host rock, hip-hop, dance, and other shows put on by younger bands.
Andre Middleton of Portland Community Media is also part of the brain trust. He says the search for a building is on, but the group does not want to lock down a space for at least two more years.
“Our goal is to build up good will and good political will,” Middleton says. “We think there’s money out there to keep it sustainable. We don’t need to commit to a big building at this point. But at some point if we can find a space in east county, there’s a community out there that is hungry for opportunities for young people to do things other than hanging out.”
The hope is the building can be both venue and living lab for booking, sound engineering, and other aspects of the music business.
Doug Rogers used to own Slabtown, a venue that hosted hundreds of all-ages shows in northwest Portland, until 2014. He likes the sound of a space outside the central city.
“It needs to be in Milwaukie,” Rogers says, “or east [Multnomah] County or Aloha, not in these hip places. Kids today have a lot of digital spaces to interact but they need a place where they can interact face to face to inspire at each other if our music scene isn’t going to be a washed up attempt to re-create what was going on 25 years ago.”
Rogers and others can tell you: There are headaches when you’re working with large groups of teens making noise.
Eric Robison is the owner of the now-defunct all ages coffeehouse and venue Backspace.
“These are kids,” he says, “and they’re going to try to get away with stuff.”
Robison says when Backspace was in operating, he tried not talk down to young concertgoers, while still getting them on board with the rules.
“It’s doing the dance of telling my staff that when they speak to kids at the shows, [they have to] explain to them: ‘All ages venues are rare. Breaking rules, bringing in alcohol or vandalizing or being disrespectful lessens the chance of you having these experiences,’" he says. "Most of the time they understood that.”
Even the nonprofit spaces elsewhere on the West Coast have their challenges. Tim Lennon is the executive director for the Vera Project, a nonprofit all-ages space in Seattle.
“The biggest challenge is paying the bills. Most clubs don’t make their money from ticket sales. They’re funded by sales at the bar — we don’t have a bar," Lennon says. "It’s a struggle every month to make ends meet."
Lennon says the Vera Project does what he calls, “the typical nonprofit hustle," fundraising and hosting events and classes in addition to the concert schedule.
But if Friends of Noise can run a tight ship, and stay connected with young audiences, Lennon, Roberts and Robison think the group will do well.
Stella Augustine says she thinks trust Friends of Noise can build with their preliminary show schedule will be key to cementing their plans.
“Having it be really respectable so a lot of people are on board,” she says. “If the community is on board, then people like parents would see this is a safe place to see live music.”
Friends of Noise will kick off its summer series with a funk and hip-hop show Sunday night at Los Prados Hall in St. Johns with the Doo Doo Funk All-Stars, Neo G Yo and other artists.
They’ll be booking some under-21 bands for PDX Pop Now, and a silent disco show at a venue to be announced.