Local legends Rare Essence are scheduled to perform at the festival Tuesday, sharing a bill with other D.C.-area artists including Prinze George, Oddisee, Paperhaus, Black Alley, Kokayi and Asheru. The showcase is technically part of the Washington, DC Economic Partnership’s technology campaign during the festival, but Rare Essence is paying for the trip itself with a combination of private donations and money it raised at a recent fundraiser concert.

Bandleader Andre “Whiteboy” Johnson, the group’s only remaining original member, says Rare Essence has been looking to play SXSW for several years to meet with industry representatives and get its sound in front of new audiences.

“We’re trying to expand Rare Essence and go-go music beyond the beltway,” Johnson says.

Now nearly 40 years old, Rare Essence could seem like a strange fit for SXSW. It’s not a buzz band with a recent Soundcloud hit or a nationally known group hitting the summer festival circuit. It’s a treasured local band that’s been performing in clubs and gymnasiums across D.C., Maryland and Virginia for decades.

Rare Essence’s fans still call it the “wickedest band alive.” They’ve seen the group through peaks — like the success of singles “Body Moves,” “Lock It” and “Work the Walls” — and tragedy, namely the deaths of trumpeter Anthony “Lil Benny” Harley and drummer Quentin “Footz” Davidson.

But like most go-go bands, Rare Essence hasn’t built a strong national following. It hasn’t had a hit outside the D.C. region for years.

Johnson says his band wants to play SXSW, in part, to change that. He says the best way to market a band like his is to perform live. That’s how go-go music must be heard.

“People like live music, and that’s the main ingredient to go-go,” Johnson says.

There’s a good chance Tuesday’s District music showcase in Austin will attract an audience that’s more D.C.-aware than the rest of the SXSW crowd, but still, Johnson says it could be a challenging performance. Rare Essence shows attract familiar faces. Band members used to do shout-outs by reading the name and neighborhood of fans from a card. Now, Johnson says, the band knows most of the shout-outs by heart. They can’t expect that level of local love in Austin.

During SXSW, Rare Essence will probably play the same songs it performs in D.C., Johnson says, but the shorter set time means the group probably won’t break into extended jam sessions like it regularly does at home — unless the audience demands it.

“We’ve been in situations where people would walk in and not know what this is and stand around for the first couple of songs,” Johnson says, “but by the end of the set, they’re into it like everyone else.”

SXSW isn’t Rare Essence’s only attempt to define itself for new audiences: The band’s trip to Texas coincides with the release of its first batch of new songs in more than a decade. Johnson says the new release contains some of the band’s best music ever. Perhaps a few business meetings and a good performance will yield more concert dates outside the D.C. region and new ears for its fresh material.

Though scholars and music journalists have already declared go-go a strictly local phenomenon, Johnson suggests maybe they’re wrong. Maybe go-go just hasn’t broken out of D.C. yet.

“The reason for us even going to South By Southwest is for us to expand Rare Essence and go-go as much as we can try to get to that next level,” Johnson says.

The strange, disputed tale of Led Zeppelin’s show at the Wheaton Youth Center is the subject of Led Zeppelin Played Here, the latest documentary by Heavy Metal Parking Lot co-director Jeff Krulik. A revised version of the film, which first premiered almost two years ago, shows Wednesday at the Avalon and Jan. 20 at Black Cat.

For five years, Krulik attempted to solve the mystery of Zeppelin’s alleged Wheaton show, tracking down record company promoters, interviewing supposed attendees and even asking Jimmy Page about it at a red carpet event at the Kennedy Center.

Though about a half-dozen Wheaton Youth Center regulars claimed that the show happened, there’s no real evidence to support their claims. No tickets for the concert have been found, since the center sold tickets at the door and used hand stamps. Fliers probably weren’t printed, either — promoter and DJ Barry Richards used his radio show to hype the concert.

In advance of the two local screenings, Bandwidth talked to Krulik about the birth of the concert industry, the fallibility of memory and why he makes films about bands he doesn’t like.

This interview was conducted over phone and email and has been edited for clarity and length.

Bandwidth: You mention in the documentary that you didn’t attend shows at the Wheaton Youth Center yourself. What fascinated you enough about the center to make a documentary about it?

Jeff Krulik

Jeff Krulik: Well, the reason why I didn’t go to any of the concerts is because I would’ve been 8 or 9 years old. I’m interested in these stories, but I wasn’t around. My curiosity, my obsession — a lot of that drives the documentary. I’ve always had an interest in the local cultural history or this area. I grew up here — I’m from Bowie and I went to the University of Maryland.

Did you know many of the people in the documentary personally?

I knew some of them personally. My original intent was to honor the Laurel Pop Festival, which was the unheralded, somewhat forgotten festival one month before Woodstock. Clearly if you went to it, you remembered it, but anyone who didn’t go to it didn’t realize it was going on. I’d wanted to do a documentary about that, but tracing the arc of Led Zeppelin allowed for a different kind of story because they had such a meteoric rise that year. And if you realize that maybe they played their first local gig at this modest youth center, in a gymnasium, it was pretty incredible. Not out of the realm of possibility, because a lot of those bands had humble starts — this was a place that other bands were playing.

It’s like I said in the movie — it started out to be a nostalgia trip, and now it’s become a mystery. And I didn’t do it because I’m a Led Zeppelin fan. I’m very interested in the cultural and music industry in this area and concertgoing and the concert scene and people who carved out the concert business from nothing. I mean, it was all unprecedented. These days the business is very button-down and ironclad. A very solid, billion dollar business that’s organized and is like any other multimillion-dollar business controlled by corporations. And it didn’t used to be like that.

“These days the [concert] business is very button-down and ironclad. A very solid, billion dollar business that’s organized and is like any other multimillion-dollar business controlled by corporations. And it didn’t used to be like that.”

When did these shows stop happening? When was the industry fully cemented, or institutionalized?

That kind of evolved in the early ‘70s as people became promoters. In this case, you had the Cellar Door, which was a club in Georgetown that basically realized that the owners were bringing in acts but the club could only hold 100 people. And there was such demand for the acts, they started putting on acts in Lisner Auditorium and selling 1,500 tickets in one night. All of the sudden the light bulb goes off.

Do you think that people remember the show differently?

This thing has kind of turned into a Rashomon. People remember things differently and that’s the challenge of it — to kind of connect the dots and see if they can be cross-checked. No one has come up with any smoking gun, like a picture or a diary entry. I don’t have hard proof, but I have supporting evidence, and I believe that it took place. You have people’s stories, and you have to kind of cross-check. For the most part, they do.

The popular belief was that it didn’t happen. It wound up going onto the Led Zeppelin website. The website now lists it as an unconfirmed rumor. The next night in Pittsburgh is not even listed; it was for a while, and that’s another phantom show. If there was a residency or if there’s ads in the paper, you’ve got proof. They were in Detroit, which ended Sunday night, and Thursday they played for three nights at the Boston Tea Party, which was advertised, and it took place. There’s Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, where, I mean, they were somewhere.

We obviously live in an age where perhaps every single gig can be documented, whether it’s a Facebook event, post on a venue website or an Instagram picture. Is there anything lost by this, or should we be glad that we have documentation to keep our memories from falling victim to confabulation?

I suppose the verdict is still out on it. I’m biased because I came up during a period where there wasn’t such excessive documentation and you clearly were at that event or concert or party or day job and you basically had that experience as it unfolded, without sharing with the world. There seemed something most pure and genuine and more real about it. Of course, at 53 years old now, I can’t remember squat, and I’m envious of friends who wrote down every club show they saw, or in general kept a diary or journal. One of my most prized possessions is a creative writing class journal I kept for one semester in college. Boy, does that bring me back, and I really cherish that.

Why are you screening Led Zeppelin Played Here now?

We’ve changed it around a little bit, tightened it up. It’s because there are still venues that are looking for things to screen, and there are a lot of people who haven’t seen it and may have heard about it. I don’t have it online or for sale because of the rights issues. These kind of curated screenings are the only way to see it. I’ve had screenings with 500 people and screenings with five people. I’m willing to screen it anywhere that will have me. If it’s local, I’ll be there. It’s always fun to have a conversation afterwards and people will add their own commentary and stories and sometimes people will show up and say that they were there.

Do you think that these youth center shows were unique to D.C., Maryland and Virginia, or do you think that this was a nationwide thing?

I think it happened all over the country. Nobody starts off headlining — everyone starts in a garage somewhere.

As with Judas Priest in Heavy Metal Parking Lot, you’re not a Led Zeppelin superfan. Why did you decide to make documentaries about groups that you weren’t necessarily interested in yourself?

It’s not about the bands. The bands are the vehicle to explore something. In this case, I have always been interested in the machinery of rock concerts. And quite honestly, I’m interested in historical preservation. It’s my fascination with the places than the artists or the musicians — the buildings, the gathering spots. Heavy Metal Parking Lot was about the people, it wasn’t about Judas Priest. Both [co-director John Heyn] and I recognized that it was about the fans. The fact that it was Judas Priest playing that night — it was just dumb luck. We didn’t seek out Judas Priest that night, we just wanted to go to a heavy metal concert. … It was about the fans and about that scene that wasn’t profiled in the spirit that we did because no one really had cameras. We were using these clunky professional cameras from this public access studio, walking around this parking lot.

A theme in both Heavy Metal Parking Lot and Led Zeppelin Played Here is rock fandom and building an identity around being a fan of rock or a particular rock band. Is that something that you had in mind when you set out to make either or both films?

I wanted it to be more about the emergence of rock concert culture than anyone one particular artist. Led Zeppelin happens to be my hook to tell this story. It’s also a film about the vagaries of memory. And that’s something that emerged afterwards, I didn’t set out with that agenda originally. Often a film doesn’t truly emerge until after you’ve begun and collected hours of footage, at least that’s how I tend to work.

With Heavy Metal Parking Lot, what little agenda we had was to just focus on the fans and see what we might get. This was a time when heavy metal might not have been in the mainstream as today, but was still a dominant presence on MTV via Headbangers Ball, that sort of thing. You knew it was a popular arena attraction, even if there was little to no airplay. The bottom line is we didn’t necessarily set out with any one particular vision or goal in mind, we just plunged in and started gathering footage and then [watched] what eventually would emerge. Of course, with Heavy Metal Parking Lot, we had that answer in two hours. Led Zeppelin Played Here took nearly five years.

What is it that makes you a believer that this show happened?

I want to believe. I mean, I sought out as much evidence as I could find. I still wanted to find more proof, and I wanted to end the film. I started it in 2008, and I had to set a deadline — which was January 20, 2013 [ed note: the day of President Obama’s second inauguration] — to have something together for the preview screening. There are some minor tweaks here and there. But I just think that I was able to present as much supporting evidence. There was a public hearing. And someone said that I made this film without a shred of supporting evidence. I don’t have hard proof — but if you have some supporting evidence, that can help make the case.

The film shows Jan. 14 at Avalon and Jan. 20 at Black Cat.

Like the legendary electronic ensemble from Düsseldorf, Paperhaus’ members are audiophiles who can recognize a good sound system. Frontman Alex Tebeleff—who’s put in years playing through crappy PAs in basements and rock clubs—came up with the idea to cover Trans-Europe Express around the time he played a Madchester-themed DJ set at the U Street club in September. After his set that night, he spent some time admiring the venue’s sound system with U Hall co-owner Will Eastman.

“Me and Will were talking and I made a comment like, ‘Can you imagine something like Kraftwerk coming out of these speakers?'” says Tebeleff, 27. “It just came out of a conversation between two music nerds, basically.”

A Kraftwerk superfan, Tebeleff cites the German ensemble’s influence on pop music of all kinds, from hip-hop forebear Afrika Bambaataa to dance-punk ensemble LCD Soundsystem to his band, which usually plays a fairly straightforward strain of indie rock. When he spins music for his pals, “I always enjoy surprising people playing ‘Trans-Europe Express’ into [Bambaataa’s] ‘Planet Rock,'” says Tebeleff. Plus, Paperhaus used to cover “Neon Lights,” a melodic cut from Kraftwerk’s The Man Machine.

Paperhaus doesn’t plan to alter the record or put a unique stamp on Trans-Europe Express, save a few minor tonal adjustments. He says the group will play 85 percent of the melodies on the record, but expects to add live drums and bring new timbres and textures to the songs. The Petworth band recruited neighbor and Br’er keyboardist Erik Sleight to play a synthesizer, and they’re plotting to stack the stage with twice the amount of normal Paperhaus gear, including drum samplers, bass synths, poly synths, a vocoder and effects pedals.

Tebeleff says Paperhaus wants the audience’s focus to be on the music and not the band’s image onstage, but it wouldn’t be a Kraftwerk-inspired act without a light show. Accordingly, Tebeleff says, there will be one—though something more low-key (and low-cost) than Kraftwerk’s spectacular recent performances.

The one-off December show promises to be a dramatic detour for Paperhaus, which is currently recording its new album, scheduled for a Feb. 10 release. All of this electronics-tinkering probably won’t show up on the record; Tebeleff says that the band’s latest songs represent “some of the dirtiest, nastiest rock ‘n’ roll that we’ve done.”

While Paperhaus has already started practicing for the Dec. 14 gig, the group still isn’t sure how it’ll turn out.

“Part of the fun of getting to see us play it is seeing how the [hell] we pull this off,” Tebeleff says. “I’m not even quite sure how we’re gonna do it yet.”

Paperhaus performs Trans-Europe Express Dec. 14 at U Street Music Hall.

Behind the fence, signs of creative life flicker. Inside the building, up a flight of stairs, producers and rappers bump beats in a two-room recording studio. Outside, a PA and a stage are planted in the yard next to a garage equipped with a DJ booth, old couches and bar stools. Elaborate street art tattoos the fence and the garage’s interior walls. Teenagers are out here, smoking cigarettes in camp chairs. They’re waiting for a show to start.

Since June, this has been the headquarters of Bombay Knox, the hip-hop promotion and management group that has carved its own space in D.C.’s small but growing hip-hop scene with an approach that, at least here, is usually associated with punk rock: It books low-cost all-ages shows, often at unconventional spaces like this one.

It’s difficult to understand the importance of Bombay Knox by describing what it is. Technically, it’s a business that offers a range of creative services—from artist management to promotion to videography to recording. But its reputation is staked on its hip-hop concerts, which it hosts at places as unrefined as an Adams Morgan auto shop and as professional as U Street Music Hall. As local hip-hop begins to produce national stars—Wale, Fat Trel—the group is positioning itself to foster even more homegrown talent in a city that has never been seen as a hip-hop capital.

The architect behind Bombay Knox is Jesse Rubin, a soft-spoken D.C.-area native with a robust red beard. Rubin handles almost all of the group’s noncreative business: He books the shows, answers emails and runs the Twitter account. He conceived Bombay Knox in 2011 while studying film at DePaul University in Chicago and managing hip-hop production team Odd Couple.

“There was a lack of these local shows,” says Bombay Knox founder Jesse Rubin. “There wasn’t a real, solid underground scene [in D.C.].”

Rubin spent his time after graduation floating around New York’s underground hip-hop world, shooting music videos and working in artist management for members of Joey Bada$$’s Pro Era rap crew. The scene felt too crowded for his taste—he had to split management duties and he wasn’t getting big-picture control of artist booking and promotion—but he liked its energy. “In New York, there are cool underground shows every day,” he says. “You can see people from the area and from outside the area that put on cool affordable shows.”

When Rubin returned to the D.C. region in 2012, he realized he could start his own thing in a city that has no equivalent to what he saw up north. “There was a lack of these local shows,” he says. “There wasn’t a real, solid underground scene.”

Bombay Knox hosted its first show in spring 2013 at the now-defunct Georgetown gallery MOCA DC. The format—a cheap, all-ages show featuring young, occasionally unpolished rappers—has changed little since.

The group rarely charges more than $5 to $15 for its events, and many are free. So far, it’s maintained a busy schedule—unlike other local independent hip-hop promoters that book shows sporadically or have fizzled out completely. The group has put together more than 30 events in the last year and a half. Last week, it co-hosted a video game tournament and show with a local hip-hop collective called Kool Klux Klan. Admission price: $5.

Booking cheap shows isn’t always a money-maker for Rubin. “I go into the show knowing my best-case scenario is breaking even on expenses,” he says. “But for me, even if I lose some money, in terms of building up the brand it’s not a bad investment.”

Some promoters might choose to recoup their losses by charging artists to perform on their shows. But Bombay Knox claims to offer an alternative to pay-to-play, which many consider predatory. Pay-to-play is fairly common in local hip-hop and across the country, according to some reports—and Rubin says he stays away from it. For young, cash-strapped artists on the rise, that can make all the difference.

The steady supply of shows has helped Bombay Knox raise its profile and grow: That creaky stage in Hyattsville has hosted acts with healthy followings outside of D.C., like Mr. MFN eXquire, Bones and Drake-endorsed freestyler Nickelus F. Some of the artists it manages have made an impression online, too: Gaithersburg rapper Uno Hype has appeared on tracks with massively popular rappers Smoke DZA, Joey Bada$$ and Chance the Rapper, and he’s been praised by tastemaking outlet Complex. Another Bombay act, D.C.-based Akoko, has sharp ‘90s flows and tight harmonies that have earned the duo thousands of YouTube views.

Rubin hasn’t done everything on his own. He holds down Bombay Knox’s business affairs while a coterie of associates help out with things like merchandise and event art. Manny Phaces handles some of Bombay’s sound engineering. Bombay’s creative director, Kevin Chambers—also a producer known as Flash Frequency—cranks out the group’s clean and modern photos and posters, and—yes—GIFs.

Rubin and his associates have gone the DIY route mostly out of necessity. He suspects that some spaces haven’t wanted to work with him because they associate hip-hop with bad news. Bombay’s time at MOCA DC ended quickly: Rubin says some neighborhood restaurant owners, who were already upset with the venue’s nude art parties, complained that the gallery’s hip-hop shows hurt their businesses.

“When people hear rap or hip-hop, they have this assumption that it’ll be something like Fat Trel,” he says, referring to the rising D.C. rapper with a tough reputation. “Then they see something and they’re like ‘Oh, trouble.'”

Other venues haven’t had the same reaction. In early August, D.C. go-go artist turned rapper Yung Gleesh headlined a wild Bombay Knox show at U Street Music Hall with Uno Hype, Sir. E.U. and Flash Frequency. It was Bombay’s biggest event yet. Meanwhile, Rubin says he’s already in talks with even bigger venues.

For small gigs, the Hyattsville building—which Rubin took over from a friend who had hosted parties there—will do for now. The Akoko show in mid-July drew around 50 people. It was a small turnout by the group’s standards, but the crowd didn’t seem to mind, as it vacillated between head-nodding and moshing. When Bones played the spot in June, multiple guests said it attracted close to 300 people.

Bombay Knox sees the Hyattsville studio as its key to profitability. It offers in-house artists a means to crank out more music, and studio fees could help fund future endeavors. It’s been a blessing for Bombay’s current artists, too; Sir E.U. has been finishing up his album Madagascar there while Rubin works on finalizing details for the first Bombay Knox compilation. Eventually, Rubin wants to ease off on hosting events at the space, and transform the studio into its primary operation. The venue isn’t easily accessible by public transportation, and Rubin says that noise complaints have brought police to the venue before.

But while Uno Hype, Chambers and Phaces hang out in the studio that July night—chatting about Cuba Gooding Jr. and watching Cosgrove’s video interview with Complex—it feels like this cheap, raw space could be the incubator that talented but untested artists need to grow.

Top photo: From left to right, Kevin Chambers, Ace Cosgrove and Manny Phaces in the Bombay Knox studio.

Moderated by Vox Executive Editor Matt Yglesias (who’s written about D.C.‘s economic disincentives for artists), it found performer and writer Holly Bass, ex-Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty, and Transformer gallery co-founder Victoria Reis expressing familiar concerns about creativity’s chances in gentrifying D.C.

“As we go through the process of bulldozing the city, let’s just leave a little bit for the artists,” Canty said.

Every time another alternative art space closes, it seems to confirm that small plates have supplanted underground arts in this town. But while it’s clear that development and rising property values have deeply impacted the arts community, DIY venues have always come and gone in D.C. Sometimes, gentrification is to blame. Other times, it’s a different story.

Take the late Bobby Fisher Memorial Building, which closed when its tenants reportedly couldn’t renegotiate a lease with their landlord. Basement spot Subterranean A stopped doing shows when its residents decided to move on or move out. Casa Fiesta’s management curbed its punk and metal shows, saying loud music drove away customers.

Meanwhile, D.C. DIY has sprouted branches. The ethos of “DIT” (Do It Together)—a more community-focused take on DIY—is catching on here, evident in the Brightest Young Things column written by Paperhaus’ Alex Tebeleff, in addition to plans for the first In It Together Festival. Local alternative music spaces continue to open. Some of them crop up in people’s houses (like The Dougout and Ft. Loko)—but more “official” alternative spaces exist here, too.

How are they doing, and what are they doing right?

To find out, I talked to the people behind two of those spaces, Union Arts and Back Alley Theater.

Union Arts
Located inside a gray, blocky building on New York Avenue NE, Union Arts has become one of the busiest DIY venues in the city. Its tenants hope it remains that way for a while—even though the building it occupies may be sold soon.

As reported by Washington City Paper last year, after artist hangout Gold Leaf Studios (formerly The Hosiery) shut down in 2012, a core group of members—including owner Mike Abrams—founded Union Arts in the old Warehouse Loft space at 411 New York Ave. NE. Since then, it’s offered relatively affordable studios and concert space to its renters. Its events are now run mostly by musician Luke Stewart, who says that shows are somewhat of a bonus for the space.

“Even though we have shows here, that’s not our primary focus,” he says.

Union Arts hosts events almost every week, but the shows don’t have to make money. The space is paid for by the artists who rent studios there.

Stewart values the diverse artistic output that Union Arts facilitates. Studio members are in charge of booking or approving events, resulting in a wide range of shows, from experimental jazz to hardcore punk to sufi and ambient music. Studio members hold biweekly meetings and maintain email threads about shows and an internal event calendar. Union Arts is also on its way to becoming a nonprofit, he says.

“The way to be sustainable is to organize, get your [act] together,” said Stewart. “When you start there, you can talk about how to sustain. Otherwise you’re flying blind.”

There’s an element of luck here, too. Unlike spaces in more residential areas, Union Arts dwells in a warehouse district, where gentrification and noise-averse neighbors don’t pose a constant threat. The building rests in a commercial and light manufacturing zone. (Union Arts is also known as Union Arts & Manufacturing.)

But 411 New York Ave. NE has been on the market for more than two years now, says its owner, Gail Harris. (Asking price: $7.5 million.) A contract is now being negotiated with a potential buyer, whom Harris says intends to maintain the building as it is, at least in the short term.

Back Alley Theater
Union Arts isn’t the only large D.C. DIY space that doesn’t double as a living room. Back Alley Theater occupies a wide basement of a resident-owned apartment building on Kennedy Street NW in Brightwood. It’s operated by Amanda Huron and Layne Garrett, longtime D.C. musicians and members of the experimental band Weed Tree.

Back Alley Theater goes back decades, according to a history on its website. First a theater company, it started out of a house in Mt. Pleasant in 1967 and later bounced around: to St. Stephen’s Church on Newton Street NW, then Capitol Hill, then finally to Kennedy Street in 1969. Over 20 years there, it staged politically charged plays by Amiri Baraka and others, but quieted down for nearly two decades. Members of the building’s Madison Terrace Cooperative revived the space as an events center a few years ago.

Huron says residents have been excited to have arts events in the building again, and they haven’t complained about noise from concerts and other happenings in the space. She ensured that the space could operate legitimately, obtaining a certificate of occupancy and a capacity placard from the District.

“People are obsessive about wanting a space,” Huron says. “But when you get that space, there’s a [lot] of work that goes into maintaining it.”

The night after the arts panel at MLK Library, Back Alley Theater is getting ready to host a lineup of avant-garde and jazz artists. Garrett and Huron are prepping. Residents come down to greet Huron while Garrett arranges chairs and offers to set up the P.A. The equipment and furniture were purchased with money from the D.C. Diversity Fund.

Huron hangs up a modest sign outside the door with the venue’s name. It’s not glamorous, but that’s never been the point of putting on these shows.

Her and Garrett’s longtime involvement in D.C.’s experimental-music scene might afford them a more optimistic outlook on DIY spaces. Artists who stick around here long enough would begin to see a pattern: when spaces close, there’s a good chance another one is right around the corner.

“There’s a lot of nostalgia for the old days, which can get fetishized,” says Huron. “Some spaces have to die for other spaces to live.”

Din has just wrapped up a finale to a weeklong run of shows that brought nine bands to Ft. Loko, the Edgewood row house where she lives and books small concerts. The former American University student lives in the three-bedroom residence with two roommates, but she runs the shows herself. For Saturday’s event, she sets up the basement, ushers in the crowd gathered in the backyard, runs sound and points attendees to a stash of earplugs.

“I just hope there’s no moshing around that pipe,” Din says, patting a vertical water pipe fixed in the center of the basement.

At age 21, Din is one of the youngest female show promoters in D.C. Recently, she’s also been one of the DIY community’s most ambitious, hosting five events in May and three in the past week alone. That kind of volume is bold for a house venue. Nearby DIY basement The Dougout booked three shows this month; indie-rock band Paperhaus, which runs a Petworth house venue by the same name, lists only two May shows on its Facebook page.

Ft. Loko is the latest addition to a group of DIY venues located within a few blocks of each other in Eckington and Edgewood, and collaboration among the neighboring spaces is key to its functionality. Lights borrowed from art loft Hole In The Sky are clipped to a ceiling beam. The mini-PA system comes courtesy of The Dougout.

Din cites her own basement show-going as a major reason for renting the place. “When I looked at the house, [hosting shows] was one of the foremost thoughts in my mind,” says Din. “I know the community, and I know that planning and coordinating is a really integral part of it. And that’s a role I’m willing to play.”

April was a tough month for nontraditional venues in D.C. After two years, Columbia Heights performance and gallery space The Dunes was barred from renewing its lease. A management transition drove Tenleytown restaurant Casa Fiesta out of the punk-show business altogether.

When she read that Casa Fiesta was stamping out shows, Din immediately contacted Tenley Empire—the collective that booked gigs at the restaurant—to try and salvage the remaining dates. She agreed to move three concerts to Ft. Loko, doubling the number of shows she had lined up for the month.

“Reaching out was just an instinctual reaction since I had the capability and like the music that they usually bring in,” says Din. “They’re really nice guys and you can tell how much they really love bringing people together around music, so of course I want to help them any way I can.”

Ft. Loko possesses the same scrappy domestic charm that typifies many basement venues: Christmas lights hang from the ceiling, an Ikea carpet doubles as a drum rug and the flush of a toilet upstairs reverberates downstairs. But Din’s space was a welcome relief to Tenley Empire.

“Without her offering up her home, [the shows] would’ve probably had to be canceled,” says Tenley booker Ryan Zellman. Alex Edelmann, who orchestrated Saturday’s garage-pop lineup, says he appreciates Din’s open mind. “It’s super nice that she’s down to host weird hardcore shows,” he says.

Din is aware of how strained relations can become between house venues and their neighbors, so she strategizes to avoid flare-ups that could endanger the space’s future.

“Longevity is the real threat to DIY venues, so you gotta be smart,” Din says. Before her string of shows last week, Din knocked on doors down the block, delivering cookies and handing out her cellphone number. She even offered one concerned neighbor her basement as a music practice space for her neighbor’s son.

“I wanted to communicate that it’s not about partying or money, and it’s bringing the community art and music,” says Din. “Hopefully they’ll respect that more than other vices.”

But like many house venues, Ft. Loko’s situation with neighbors is tenuous. Although there’s been no police intervention, one neighbor claimed to have seen a show attendee defecate in his yard. The chance of earning a lousy reputation upsets Din.

“You don’t want to antagonize the neighbors,” said Din. “You’ve got to let them know it’s not a bunch of [terrible] people who’ve come to ruin your night.”

As Saturday’s show winds down, the bands thank Din and hawk tapes and T-shirts. Show-goers linger in the backyard, keeping their voices respectfully low. Din says that a lot of kids who come to Ft. Loko know the drill: Stay reasonably quiet or risk the space.

Din says she’s happy that this week’s string of shows is over—and she may go to another house party once everyone has left.

But she won’t get too much downtime. Ft. Loko has another show in less than two weeks.

Photos top to bottom: The Sea Life at Ft. Loko by Michael Andrade; Sharon Din courtesy of Sharon Din