State Champ Radio indie venue of the month
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The staff at the Atlanta’s Masquerade can’t say for certain if the music venue is haunted, but there are stories – lots of stories.
The sprawling four-room venue first established itself in Atlanta in 1989 – two years after the first venue of its name was opened by the same owners in Tampa – and took over the former DuPre Excelsior Mill at 695 North Avenue that had come to life a century earlier. The mill produced a packing material to fill mattresses and other items (before foam eventually made it obsolete) and, like many 19th century factories, several workers were injured in the production process, and the belt of the mill took the life of at least one man.
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While no one has managed to exchange names with those haunting the various Masquerade venues, no one claims to be specifically visited by mill workers. There’s a woman who was seen by several staff members hanging around the freight elevators at the 695 location. One of Masquerade’s owners Berta Ochs says he was supervising the construction before the venue first opened one night and a leftover coin operated basketball machine started up. He could see a man shooting hoops and after yelling at the figure to leave, Ochs said, suddenly he was gone.
Employees have often felt like they were being watched when no one else was around and one employee who was working the venue’s haunted house Chamber of Horrors says she felt a tap on her shoulder, turned to find no one except a medical instrument from the prop table flung at her feet. There have even been online rumors that Masquerade has vampires.
Greg Green, Elena de Soto, and Brian McNamara.
Josh Martin
“Not to dispel the rumors,” says Masquerade marketing manager Camilla Grayson, “But I think that was because there was a plaster vampire up in the rafters that was left over from an event.”
“There’s also a popular roleplaying game called Vampire of the Masquerade that people go around doing live enactments of,” chimes in Masquerade GM and talent booker Greg Green. “That might have played into that whole vampire rumor too.”
Masquerade has not helped itself in the matter with rooms that denote the afterlife. Since its first Atlanta location, it has featured multiple rooms named Heaven, Hell and Purgatory and referred to them as a trinity of nightclubs. The rooms were stacked with Heaven obviously at the top, Hell on the bottom floor and Purgatory somewhere in-between.
“The upstairs Heaven room was known for the bounciness and sway of the floors,” recalls Green, who has been with the venue for nearly 35 years. “When people would get to jumping in unison and you were downstairs, you could see the ceiling looking like a trampoline. When you hear about people reminiscing, it is like, ‘We were jumping on the trampoline floor in Heaven and we just knew we were about to fall through, but never did.’”
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The venue’s 695 North Avenue location was a behemoth on the streets of Atlanta’s Fourth Ward – with an entirely black stone exterior save for a purple cursive neon sign that read Masquerade. It was an intimidating figure brought to life by founders Ochs, Brian McNamara and Dean Riopelle that attracted all forms of rockers and punks in the early 1990s including Fugazi, The Ramones, Foo Fighters, Radiohead and, of course, grunge legends Nirvana who were paid $200 to play for a room of maybe 50 people, according to Green.
Pay receipt for Nirvana’s 1990 performance at Masquerade.
Elena de Soto
With three rooms to fill, Masquerade was able to take a chance on many bands in their early years including Bjork, N.W.A and Coldplay. Green recalls a young Dave Matthews coming through at the start of his career with manager Coran Capshaw (a now-renowned artist manager who runs Red Light Management) selling the musician’s t-shirts out of his trunk.
In 2016, Masquerade had to leave behind the 695 North Avenue location when ownership sold the building as gentrification (and undoubtedly the historic music venue) made the Fourth Ward a desirable neighborhood to build a mixed-use development. Ownership was looking for another space to house the multi-room venue, when the city of Atlanta stepped in.
“The city wanted to keep us given the cultural institution that we were and [the city] had all these vacant spaces that they said, ‘Hey, is there any of this that you can use, even on a temporary basis,’” Green explains. The space is part of Underground Atlanta, a formerly neglected shopping and entertainment district that first opened in 1969, but the buildings date back to the mid-to-late 1800s when they served as the Georgia Railroad Depot and were a major hub early on for the city. “We didn’t really have a choice at the time. And wound up moving equipment, gear and all the stuff, building out on a small scale what it would take to operate temporarily and it just worked. That was nine years ago and we’ve stayed and we’ve expanded.”
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The Masquerade at Underground Atlanta now features four rooms Heaven (1,450 capacity), Hell (625), Purgatory (300) and Altar (250) connected by a shared courtyard. A fifth venue is expected to open in 2026.
Despite moving to a new location – surrounded by pedestrian-only spaces with shops and art galleries – Masquerade has not lost its spooky factor. Underground Atlanta’s custodial staff refuses to enter certain areas of the entertainment district at night and has heard people talking at night when no one was around. On one of the interior buildings there’s a plaque that says this wall was part of the first Civil War era hospital in Atlanta, “The dead and wounded were brought here,” explains Grayson.
A back hallway that connects all the venues is littered with creepy dolls with burnt-out eyes brought in by operations manager Howie Stepp – though no one knows where he sources the dolls from. Online, fans say they’ve seen a headless confederate soldier that walks around at night, and the courtyard is along Kenny’s Alley, which is named after a man who died in a jousting accident at the Georgia State Fair in the 1800s. That same courtyard is where fans from every room gather between sets to smoke, order some food, grab drinks and interact with music lovers of all genres.
New Found Glory play the Heaven room of Masquerade in 2022.
Elena de Soto
“The courtyard is the great equalizer,” Grayson says. “It’s awesome watching a K-pop fan interact with a ska fan because they’re both coming out of shows at the same time. It’s an awesome mix of people from all walks of life.”
With the ten-year anniversary of the new location looming, Masquerade is reaching new milestones. By the end of 2025, Green says the venue and their company Masquerade Presents, that promotes larger concerts in the city, will have presented a record 800 shows. Despite steep competition from various local venues including the more than 70,000-capacity Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the Live Nation-owned Coca-Cola Roxy and Tabernacle, and the home of NBA’s Atlanta Hawks State Farm Arena, Masquerade has continued to thrive by taking a chance on up-and-coming artists and seeing that goodwill returned.
“We really don’t look at the individual shows as a series of battles to be won or lost,” Green says. “We look at it as one long campaign. If we can come out just a little bit better off at the end of the year than we were at the beginning, then it’s a win.”
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In recent years, they have hosted shows with Japanese Breakfast, Mitski and Doja Cat. Alex G played 10 years ago at the 250-capacity Purgatory, worked his way up from Hell to Heaven and, earlier this month, he returned to Atlanta to play the 22,000-cap Eastern with Masquerade Presents as a co-promoter. Arena act Travis Scott played the Heaven room earlier this year to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his debut Rodeo.
“Part of our ability to maintain over all that time is an attitude of treating people just as well when they’re young and getting their start as we do when they’re superstars,” Green says. “Providing them with amenities they might not get at other small rooms like private green rooms and showers and laundry and all the things.”
“We’re able to take that risk on [rising acts] a second time, because we really believe in the music that people are creating, and not just focused on the numbers and the data. We were actually there. We’re talking to our staff that we’re working it that said this was really cool,” Grayson adds. “We’re like, ‘They are worth having back because they absolutely kicked ass to 30 people.”
Last Month’s Indie Venue Profile: Antone’s in Austin
After six years of working at famed Minneapolis venue First Avenue, Sonia Grover, Nate Kranz and the rest of the staff got phone calls one November morning in 2004 telling them to come get their stuff — the nightclub was closing. The legendary venue, best known as Prince’s stomping grounds and the site of his 1984 Purple Rain film, would be shuttering its doors for good.
“We were just kind of told the doors are going to lock, so if you have anything in the building, get your s— and get it out of here,” says Kranz, who serves as First Avenue’s GM.
Just five months earlier, the venue’s original founder, Alan Fingerhut, had fired the club’s longtime management team of Steve McClellan and Jack Meyers, as well as financial advisor Byron Frank, and decided to run First Avenue himself, which ultimately led the club into bankruptcy.
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Kranz and Grover, who is First Avenue’s current talent buyer, got a friend to pick them up in a station wagon and immediately went down to the iconic venue, which was built inside an old Greyhound bus depot, to get their band folders and, most importantly, their “huge OfficeMax style paper calendars,” says Kranz. “We’re like, ‘Look, we have no idea what the hell is going on if we lose that calendar.’”
As Kranz and Grover were scrambling to move the many shows they’d booked to other Twin City venues, other staff were grabbing bits of memorabilia that have not made their way back to First Avenue since. At the same time, the local population went into fight mode.
“It can’t be overstated how much love there is for First Avenue from the local community,” says Kranz, “and that includes our government officials.”
The staff quickly started communicating with Byron Frank, who had made the wise financial decision to purchase the building only four years earlier and stepped up to prevent the venue’s imminent closure. To help in this effort, then-mayor R.T. Rybak (a frequent First Avenue visitor) moved the bureaucracy along at lightning speed — making calls to federal judges, getting the bankruptcy proceedings to move at a record pace, securing a new liquor license and anything else the club needed.
“The mayor was invaluable in being able to tell the city staff, ‘This is not the normal course of business. This is important to the city. This is the heartbeat of our city. You need to move this to the top of the docket,’” says Kranz.
Within two weeks, First Avenue and its attached 250-capacity venue 7th Street Entry were hosting shows again, and the city has remained protective of the cultural institution that Grover calls “a truly special, magical place” and which has hosted such legendary artists as Frank Zappa, Tina Turner, The Kinks, B.B. King, U2 and Run-DMC.
To commemorate First Avenue’s 40th anniversary in 2010, the staff decided to add the now-iconic white stars to the formerly all-black building. The stars — introduced in honor of one of the venue’s former names, Uncle Sam’s — feature the names of bands and artists who have played First Avenue, with some stars left blank for those to come. Grover explains that the staff knew the paint job would be relatively quick and decided not to make a public announcement about the process.
“For a day or so, the building was white or cream colored and, oh, boy, did we learn the hard way that we should have made an announcement beforehand,” says Grover. The paint job was in the local news and all over social media, with community members calling the venue in a panic. “The community feels like…Byron owned First Avenue at the time, but this belongs to all of us, so everyone should have known what was going on.”
The stars are now a tourist attraction for a building whose reputation precedes itself. The distinctly curved building was originally the Northland-Greyhound Bus Depot. The space was designed at the height of luxury travel in 1937, with public phones, shower rooms, air conditioning and checkered terrazzo floors (which remain to this day) in stunning art deco style. Just over 30 years later, the bus depot relocated, and Minneapolis native Fingerhut had the vision to turn the space into a rock club called The Depot in 1970. Later in the decade, it took on the name Uncle Sam’s, but by 1981, it became First Avenue and 7th Street Entry and was led by the partnership of McClellan and Meyers.
Nathan Kranz, musician Bob Mould, Sonia Grover and Dayna Frank.
First Avenue
The 1980s also saw the emergence of one of Minneapolis’ greatest sons, Prince, and in a sense, First Avenue became his venue. Anyone who worked at or frequented the venue has a story of seeing Prince there, says Grover, but “I don’t think people ever took it for granted.”
“The vibe was always different if Prince was in the room,” says Kranz. “It gave [people] the feeling of, ‘Well, s—. I’m definitely in the right f—ing spot right now.’ ”
First Avenue’s current stage is one custom-designed by Prince for the filming of Purple Rain, and Frank added the only VIP space in the venue, the Owner’s Box, to give the superstar a space to watch any shows he attended, with or without notice.
“Every year we go down the list of, ‘What can we do to get better, to improve?’ We’re like, ‘What about a new stage?’ But how do you tear up the stage that Prince personally designed? You don’t,” says Dayna Frank, First Avenue’s current owner. She adds that what makes First Avenue “so special is that mix of authenticity and legacy while still having the highest-class modern amenities, best sound system and best traffic flow in one location.”
Dayna Frank became the steward of First Avenue in 2009 after her father, Byron Frank, had a stroke. More than a decade before her father got sick, Dayna — who had grown up at First Avenue and attended Sunday night dance parties with other Minneapolis and St. Paul teens — moved away. But once he fell ill, “I stepped in and realized how special and irreplaceable it was,” she says. “I wanted to help maintain it and do what I could to keep it active and keep it independent. My dad thankfully recovered, but I had fallen in love with working there and the people there and stayed on after he got better.”
With 16 years under her belt, Dayna still considers herself “a newbie” on the staff. Both Grover and Kranz have more than 25 years at First Avenue, and the venue’s website boasts an entire page dedicated to employees who have worked there for more than a decade.
“We love live music. It’s so fun to be part of it in a behind-the-scenes way,” says Grover when asked about her longevity at the club. When she started in 1998 as an assistant to the booker, the company only ran First Avenue and 7th St. Entry. Now, First Avenue Productions books more than 1,000 shows annually at the additional venues it owns: the 350-cap Turf Club, the 650-cap Fine Line, the 1,000-cap Fitzgerald Theater and the 2,500-cap Palace Theatre, which it co-operates with Jam Productions.
In 2020, as the live music business shuttered due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dayna doubled down on her commitment to remaining an independent venue when she became the catalyst for the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA). Prior to the pandemic, many indie venues were siloed and viewed each other as competitors in an already thin-margin business. But she had visited indie venues in other cities and gotten to know owners in a non-competitive manner, which led to her reaching out once the pandemic started to create the trade organization.
“If 10 years ago, I had said, ‘Let’s start a trade association,’ there would have been a lot of ‘Why? What’s your angle? Why are you asking me for my economic data?’” says Dayna. “But it was this moment where either we were all gonna survive or none of us were gonna survive.”
Dayna subsequently became the founding president of NIVA, which successfully lobbied for the 2021 Shuttered Venue Operators Grant that provided more than $16 billion in funds to help independent live event venues survive through the pandemic.
“There is something unique about having the ability to control a room or make decisions based solely on what is right for the local community and the local artists and the folks on the ground,” says Dayna of keeping the legendary venue independent. “I’m the only owner. There’s not private equity. There’s no investors. Nate, Sonia and I can do what we feel is right with no outside influences and no ulterior motives. That’s a really wonderful and powerful position to be in.”
In the 1980s, it was considered a win when a small venue like the 9:30 Club only lost $100,000 in a year. Back in ‘86, when promoters Seth Hurwitz and Rich Heinecke (Hurwitz’s former high school substitute teacher) purchased the six-year-old, rat-infested 200-capacity space from married couple Jon Bowers and Dodi Disanto, they knew it was more of an investment than a money-maker.
“The 9:30 was a loss leader,” Hurwitz tells Billboard, “but I needed to do the small acts so I could get them on the big stage like R.E.M., Smashing Pumpkins.”
Those were the rules of regional concert promotion before the giant national corporations like Live Nation and AEG entered the picture. Every region would have a closed network of promoters — “famously designed and perpetrated by Frank Barsalona and Premier Talent,” Hurwitz explains — and to make your way in, you had to start from the bottom.
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Hurwitz can’t say for certain why he always wanted to put on concerts. He speculates that maybe it stems from his love of presenting music to others. In elementary school, he’d skip outside time during recess to play records he brought in, and, at home, he played disc jockey, setting up a little electronic kit where he could broadcast radio just far enough for his household to hear in other rooms.
More likely, he believes he got into the business to feel important and integral to the live music experience. “[I wanted to put on shows] probably so I could go anywhere in the show. In fact, I hate going to other people’s shows because I get told I can’t go here or there and I hate that,” he says.
9:30 Club
John Shore
In his teens, Hurwitz began booking shows at a local movie theater with a stage; he later moved up to larger shows with Heinecke’s financial backing.
“When it came time to put on a show, [Heinecke] had the money and I had been to New York to visit agents with the promoter Sam L’Hommedieu Jr.,” says Hurwitz of tagging along from D.C. with the co-founder (along with Jack Boyle) of the 162-seat club Cellar Door. “It was just one trip, but I learned a lot. Probably the most important thing I learned was how to pass [on booking an act], which is a lost art.”
In his early twenties, Hurwitz and Heinecke’s promotion company, I.M.P., was working in tandem with Ian Copeland, who was emulating Barsalona’s promoter network in the D.C. metro area. I.M.P. booked the smaller shows in the region at the Ontario and eventually the original 9:30 Club, where they became the exclusive bookers. By 1986, Disanto was done taking the financial hit of running a small club and sold it to I.M.P.
“She was like, ‘Here, you buy it. I’m sick of this.’ And we did,” says Hurwitz of his first venture into venue ownership. By booking shows at the 9:30 Club, Hurwitz and Heinecke had been able to grow with acts as they progressed to money-making shows at arenas, and though he says he didn’t have an interest in buying the club, Hurwitz knew they couldn’t allow the entry point for their talent pipeline to dry up.
Until it did.
In 1993, Dante Ferrando and a group of investors that included then-Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl opened the neighboring venue Black Cat, which could be scaled from 500 to 800 capacity.
“Now there was another [club] with a bigger stage, bigger dressing room, bigger capacity, and all our so-called friends walked,” says Hurwitz. “It was a hard lesson to learn.”
In order to compete, I.M.P. purchased another old venue in a neglected part of town and moved the 9:30 Club to its current location at 815 V Street in January 1996.
“We wanted to create the greatest club ever — never an argument again. No question where people would play,” says Hurwitz. “We invented the mega club. The challenge was at the 9:30 Club, we got all these acts, we got the history (which was honored at that time, not so much now) because we had the best small plays. We still needed the best small plays. We needed to have the best big club and the best small club.”
For the new V Street 9:30 Club, they created a moving stage that could shrink the room from 1,200 to 300 without anyone noticing. And they wanted to move away from the old rock’n’roll ethos of a smelly, dirty black box like the former space. The new 9:30 Club serves good food, has great sightlines, is never too hot (the venue invested in extra AC units to be sure) and the staff is always kind to fans.
9:30 Club
Richie Downs
Another point of pride for Hurwitz is the lack of sponsorship around the 9:30 Club. There is no signage with corporate sponsors. There is no VIP area, balcony seats don’t sell for more money and, most importantly, they do their best to keep ticket prices low.
“It’s an egalitarian sort of situation. It is not this velvet rope kind of thing. You go with your people, you’re treated nicely, you’re not uncomfortable and you have fun,” he says.
The current 9:30 Club opened in January 1996 with two sold-out shows by The Smashing Pumpkins and it’s continued to build its reputation from there. In its nearly 40-year history, the venue has hosted such legendary acts as Tony Bennett, Bob Dylan, Adele, Iggy Pop, Drake, Justin Timberlake, James Brown, Lou Reed, George Clinton, Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson, Radiohead and countless more.
I.M.P. has grown with its artists and now also owns and/or operates the 1,200-capacity Lincoln Theater, the 2,500- to 6,000-capacity Anthem (both in D.C.) and the 19,000-capacity Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Md. In 2023, I.M.P. spent $10 million to build another small club, the 450-capacity Atlantis, which is a replica of the original 9:30 Club minus the smell. While Hurwitz says small clubs are still “a losing proposition,” The Atlantis helps feed bands to the 9:30 Club and I.M.P.’s larger clubs from day one via the company’s promotion and marketing. “It’s not just a placeholder,” he explains. “We want to make you bigger so that we will make more money next time.”
That strategy has panned out for I.M.P. through the lost art of the pass. “We do pass on things that we don’t think are cool enough for the 9:30 Club. A lot of the acts that don’t play us, we actually passed on. So, I’m sorry, but people count on us to curate,” says Hurwitz. “We don’t have enough dates to do the acts we want to do. Why would I do something that I think sucks or has no potential?”
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