We dropped the name of our contact. He welcomed us in and shut the door behind us.
The room was smoky, as you might expect from a room where people can still smoke. (For a fee, you could rent a drip pan repurposed as an ash tray.) There was an open-face beverage fridge, a few bottles of spirits on a shelf for purchase. The food menu offered fried chicken and french fries.
On stage, a backline of amps, keyboards, speakers and drums. Suddenly, half the audience became the band. Blues harps were blown, guitar licks were traded. A man by the name of Mississippi Red improvised a song about his lover as he weaved in and out of tables, the mic cord slithering behind him.
As I watched the crowd shake tambourines from their seats, clap along and snuff out their spent cigarettes into aluminum trays before lighting up another, I couldn’t help but think we weren’t supposed to be there.
The allure of DIY
The ubiquity, the impermanence, the delicate balance of having just enough of an audience to make a show special and worthwhile, but not too much of one to make a show uncool… these departures from mainstream entertainment — the definition of which shifts as the term do-it-yourself broadens — are multiplying locally.
This year, I’ve been to fashion shows at skateparks, experienced one odd DJ set in front of trash, and driven past a daytime EDM rave at an operational Arby’s — not to mention all the house shows I didn’t go to because I was afraid I’d be the oldest, unhippest one there.
But how does one write about these gems of local culture, the basement venues and DIY performances, without giving up their locations? Ambiguity is an option; a scene report after the fact is another, especially considering many house shows have limited life spans in residential neighborhoods.
For instance, my months-long indecision about going to see a five-band bill at Mendelsons House has been decided for me, since, I’ve been told, the House proper no longer exists (though DIY booker Max Lightcap still hosts its essence at other venues).
What I’ve discovered is that by the time a majority of people catch onto a phenomenon — which is typically around the time I discover something — the phenomenon has already morphed into something else.
The first house show
In 2018, I saw Lou Barlow, of Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jr. fame, play in a garage on Wayne Ave. I bought a ticket through a Facebook link to see him at an undisclosed venue. The organizer said they would reveal the location the day of the show, which ended up being a building I didn’t expect to see music in. I went alone and was one of maybe 20 people in attendance, watching an acoustic set on a makeshift stage. For the past seven years, my proudest claim has been “I saw Lou Barlow in a garage with 20 other people.”
The “garage” was actually called Pretty House, a now-defunct collectively-run gallery and venue space. It was the first house venue I’d ever been to. (You have to understand, I grew up in a small Northwest Ohio town where there are 1.2 cover bands for every household.) An installation of CRT TVs advertised the name of the venue on the glass faces, something you only knew about if you were inside the building.
The Lou Barlow/Zygotes show at Pretty House was the most DIY thing I’d experienced up to that point. The experience opened up my need to understand.
Art in unlikely places
Earlier this summer, a DJ wouldn’t stop nagging us to check out this apparent hot spot where he liked to perform. He kept calling it “The Dump,” or something to that effect. With a name like that, I envisioned some kind of venue sparsely adorned with trash, an area that only the cool kids knew about since the DJ appeared to be one of the cool kids, too.
On the hottest day of the year, the three of us drove to his favorite performance spot, and it was exactly how he’d been referring to it: It was a scrap yard, with old Dayton Daily News stands and sun-bleached playground equipment strewn about. It was The Dump.
He set up a folding table, his turntable deck and a speaker in front of the fence line near the road. For half an hour, he deejayed on the grassy strip for two people, and for those in passing cars curious enough to slow down. I couldn’t help but think we weren’t supposed to be there.
As far as I’m aware, The Dump is not a venue that other people are privy to, nor is it an LLC, nor do I believe this particular DJ can be seen there very often. In fact, I believe what we were doing was technically considered trespassing. I’m not sure he was entirely pulling our leg, but he clearly believes in the art of performance. And a questionably legal DJ set in front of a landfill further proves that art can pop up anywhere.
Forgiveness over permission
A few years back, Z — the mind and designer behind clothing brand Bezerk — gathered a handful of friends and a Home Depot generator to declare an abandoned Dayton lot Bezerk territory for three hours. It was eventually shut down by police.
This year, in that same vein, Z didn’t ask permission to host his latest fashion show at Home Ave DIY Skatepark. His brand’s fourth installment, “America is Ghetto,” a show centered around American dystopia, was presented at the skatepark under US 35.
It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. In some cases, like at a DIY skatepark, forgiveness isn’t even a necessity.
Beef, beats and basslines
In August, I texted the phrase “Bass N Cheddar” to a number I found online. I was informed that if I texted this specific number, I’d get a private invitation to a limited capacity event. All I knew going in was that it had something to do with the fast food chain that has the meats.
“Yeah… it’s really happening…” the number texted back. “FREE POP-UP EDM EVENT INSIDE ARBY’S.”
You can understand my intrigue.
Truth be told, I am not an EDM fan, mostly because I’m an awful dancer and don’t like strobe lights. That said, it was an EDM rave inside an Arby’s. I had to at least drive by it.
Brad Turner, part owner of Kastle Productions, was eating at the franchise one day and asked the manager if they could host a show there. The manager agreed to it.
Under the iconic cowboy hat logo on the day of the event, the marquee at the Arby’s on S. Smithville read: “JOIN US 8/08 BASS N CHEDDAR 2/$7 HAM & SWISS MELTS.”
The show was hosted by Dayton EDM Collective, along with several other companies, and featured multiple back-to-back (or B2B) DJs, mostly local to Dayton. The Arby’s was filled to capacity. People were listening to beats drop at four in the afternoon, some with roast beef sandwiches in hand. Customers had the meats and they had the beats.
“There was even a point where workers, like the drive thru ladies, came into the crowd and were dancing,” said Dakota Davidson, of Dayton EDM Collective. “It was awesome. It was pretty cool.”
The Collective has put on its own events before. But Bass N Cheddar was the first time several local promotion companies — Resonance Theory, Bass Critters, 531 Productions, Gem City Rats, Merkaba, Kastle Productions — joined forces in Dayton to host a single event.
“I think what’s driven it so much is the fact that we have all been able to work together,” Davidson said. “I feel like once we all realized that there is a DIY scene here in Dayton, it just took finding people and getting them to come out.”
It’s a trend for shows to be thrown at restaurants and for pop-ups to pop up in atypical places. (See: Baja Blast, a popular DIY punk show in the parking lot of a Taco Bell in Cleveland.) The DIY movement allows artists to create independently outside of the mainstream commercial system, to experiment.
The DIY spirit
Self-produced and self-released music has had an uptick in recent years, as well, with the widened availability and affordability of quality prosumer tools. The sweat equity, guerrilla marketing involved in the production of these DIY shows very seldom reaps monetary reward. But artistically, the rewards are pure.
An argument could be made that places like Belmont Billiards and the Fairborn Phoenix still carry on that DIY mindset, despite the fact that they do often operate like typical venues, i.e. host ticketed events. (Though BBs is, first and foremost, a billiard hall.) Blind Rage Records and Skeleton Dust Records also occasionally host punk and noise shows, which are considered on-the-fringe genres and lumped into DIY regardless.
But how does a place like the Fairborn Phoenix, a once-lavish theater turned gritty black box venue, maintain the scrappy attitude in a large building?
“We maintain it because we don’t have the money. It’s out of necessity,” said the theater’s co-owner Jordan Terrell. “Being an artist is working with what you don’t have. We even talk about this… like, once we get HVAC, is it gonna suck?”
Ah, the age-old question.
What defines DIY?
It’s a grassroots ethos. It’s community-oriented. It’s zines, handbills, tagging and wheatpasting. It’s the shows in garages, nondescript buildings, your neighbor’s basement or backyard, in skate parks and record shops, parking lots, billiard halls and transformed theaters, Arby’s and Taco Bells and scrap yards… places you can’t help but think you’re not supposed to be at, but you know it’s cool that you are.
It’s a collective act of imagination — often overlooked, but by design.
There’s an impermanence to the scene. The spaces flicker in and out of existence. One day you’re whispering a password to a doorman; the next, the doorman’s moved on to another door.
Brandon Berry covers the music and arts scene in Dayton and Southwest Ohio, spotlighting local musicians, underground and touring bands, cultural events, fringe phenomena and creative spaces. Reach him at branberry100@gmail.com.
About the Author
