Hardcore, and D.C. hardcore in particular, has a rep for being stuck in the past. But it stays fresh by continually creating new pasts to draw from. A few years back, bands like Coke Bust brought the early ’80s thrashy style of hardcore back into vogue. But there are others reviving the mid-’80s melody of Dag Nasty, the late ’80s aggression of Swiz and the late-’90s chug of Damnation A.D. Soon there will be late ’00s tribute bands to Coke Bust, too. The logical endpoint is to be, to paraphrase The Onion, nostalgic for bands that don’t exist yet.

This Was My Night & This Was a Lot of Other Nights is another chapter in the scene’s love affair with itself, though an entertaining and necessary one. Editors Tim Follos and Hussain Mohammed compile show reviews and interviews from Follos’ blog Day After Day DC, covering the past decade — the most recent era of harDCore. It reads like a blog, in good ways and bad: The energy of the house shows reviewed (though “lovingly described” is more accurate; Follos has hardly an unkind word for anyone) is palpable, and he draws from a depth of knowledge and eye for detail only a true fan could.

At the same time, the long personal asides, shout-outs and inside jokes (most involving Sick Fix‘s Pat Vogel) remind you this was written by and for a small group of friends who all hang out and play in bands together.

This Was My Night isn’t so much about a particular city or era, but rather a particular crowd of 20-something, group-house-dwelling, radical politics-having, dog-walking, (ex-)vegan straight edge punx dedicated to putting on shows in makeshift spaces on shoestring budgets.

So the 12-page review of the 2013 Damaged City Fest that opens the book is kind of overkill. And for a book aiming to document an era that produced hundreds of local bands, a lot of the same ones show up again and again — Ilsa and The Max Levine Ensemble, both terrific bands, but reflective of the authors’ personal preferences.

There are a lot of others from that period that don’t appear, either for taking a different punk-derived trajectory, or just being in different social circles. They include Deathfix, Mass Movement of the Moth, The Apes, The Shirks, The Cassettes, Medications, Imperial China and the whole Sockets Records roster. Today, as always, there isn’t one D.C. punk scene, there are many scenes, and they don’t always communicate well with each other.

‘This Was My Night & This Was A Lot of Other Nights,’ back cover

This Was My Night isn’t so much about a particular city or era, but rather a particular crowd of 20-something, group-house-dwelling, radical politics-having, dog-walking, (ex-)vegan straight edge punx dedicated to putting on shows in makeshift spaces on shoestring budgets. And in that sense, it’s really about one band, Coke Bust, whose members and fellow super-promoters Chris Moore and Nick Candela (aka Nick Tape, who’s since moved to Brazil) held this scene together mostly by themselves through sheer force of will.

Thus one of the best pieces in the book is by Nick Tape, in which he describes the benefits of booking shows at the Corpse Fortress, the famously filthy, hot, dilapidated Silver Spring house that put on memorable shows until the neighbors finally got sick of the ruckus and got them all evicted.

“As a promoter, access to a venue with no rules and no set fee is enormously helpful,” Tape writes. “The lack of a fee allows promoters of shows with mediocre turnout to still pay bands somewhat respectable amounts at the end of the night.”

The second half of the book is made up of interviews with familiar punk figures, some of which are more lucid than others (Bad Brains’ H.R. is, predictably, in another world). There’s a bittersweet chat with the now-deceased Dave Brockie of Gwar. There’s a theological discussion with Positive Force co-founder (and fellow scene historian) Mark Andersen. There’s the requisite Ian MacKaye interview — a surprisingly unique one given the man must give dozens of interviews a month — in which he takes a deep dive into the history of Georgetown.

Follos is a skilled interviewer, able to draw out rich personal stories without being too much of the fanboy that he is (and most of us who read the book are). He can also be mischievous, asking Brian Baker, “Why is it necessary for Bad Religion to have three guitarists?” and getting Ian Svenonius to accidentally agree with conservative columnist George Will.

It’s fair to wonder whether a book like this needs to exist, especially for a genre saturated in self-documentation — and especially today, when many of the bands documented still exist, and a lot of the material is already accessible online. But I’d say it does. Given the book’s ultra-insider perspective, the target readership seems to be the 50 or so people who already appear in the book.

But only an insider could tell the story of the Bobby Fisher Memorial Building, another DIY space that the Borf graffiti collective jury rigged and briefly put on art installations and punk shows before it inevitably got shut down: “Towards the end, they cut our power, because we were stealing power from a neighbor who was also stealing power,” writes Chris Moore. “We ran over 15 shows on generators. Cops never shut down the shows… Seeing 20 people installing soundproofing and insulation… that’s awesome.”

The authors of This Was My Night & This Was a Lot of Other Nights host a book-release party Monday, April 25 at Black Cat with Scanners and Mirror Motives.

“DIY.” It’s a term you can stick in front of any music genre to indicate a way of doing things. It doesn’t describe a particular sound. It doesn’t just mean “punk.” Really, it’s just the idea that we musicians don’t need the backing of the music industry to make music. We can and should seize the means of production. We should do it ourselves.

In 2015, doing it ourselves is easier than it’s ever been, thanks to technology that eliminates barriers between musicians and listeners. But today’s crowded creative environment has also prompted artists to begin rethinking the way they define and practice DIY.

What are the boundaries of DIY? Are you doing it yourself if you’ve hired someone to do publicity for your band’s tour? What if someone booked the tour for you? Is playing a traditional music venue DIY, or do you strictly play houses and nonprofit show spaces? At what point does the stability of your project depend on outside involvement?

When considering the costs of DIY touring, bands often bump into and wander back and forth across these ill-defined boundaries. They ask themselves questions like, “What effect does it have economically and experientially to hire a booking agent?” and “To what extent should courting media coverage factor into our tour budget?”

I don’t have answers to these questions. But I chatted with several musicians who have been mulling them over while they attempt to produce and share their music in a sustainable way. Here’s what we talked about.

Publicity

The ups and downs of playing the promo game

Artists have an incentive to get out the word about their shows: They want people to see them play. But first, people have to know about the show.

Good ol’ word-of-mouth can go a long way, but in a world where Facebook and Google algorithms dictate who sees what about which bands, having the endorsement of reputable music blogs seems to play an increasingly large role in artists’ promotion strategies.

The problem is DIY publicity is next to impossible. Media outlets are bombarded by tons of press releases and inquiries every day. Necessarily, some of them are more likely to check out music sent by entities they already know or trust, and often, those entities are PR companies.

That means that even DIY labels and artists will sometimes a hire PR firm to promote a record or tour. Daoud Tyler-Ameen of D.C. indie-pop project Art Sorority for Girls says pro publicists try to strike a balance between inundating and intriguing media stakeholders with pitches for their clients’ music.

“They will spend a year building it up in such a way that you keep getting hammered with the name,” Tyler-Ameen says. The goal is that “the media coverage rolling up to a release is spaced apart far enough and novel enough each time that you don’t get sick of it.”

Confusingly, though, sometimes publicity just happens on its own.

“People think, ‘Oh, they’re doing fine. They got written about in Rolling Stone.’ But that doesn’t translate to money. It’s a cool thing to show your parents, but it’s not a real, actual thing.” — Sam Cook-Parrott of Radiator Hospital

“We played mostly local shows for the first year of us being a band. Then someone from Pitchfork and someone from Stereogum each wrote about our band, and suddenly it was like, ‘Whoa, a lot of people know about us!'” says Amanda Bartley, who plays in Columbus, Ohio, band All Dogs. “We had a lot of people contact us about doing PR stuff for us and we haven’t pursued any of that, which is kind of a testament to the Internet doing that for us.”

But the fickle Internet is nothing to bet on. Waiting for accidental exposure can be like playing the lottery. Jeff Rosenstock, formerly of Bomb the Music Industry, has been touring in bands for 15 years. Despite various other measures of success, he rarely used to catch any attention from music blogs.

Rosenstock told me last fall, “I don’t know what blog buzz is like. I bet it’s awesome.”

That changed this year, when Rosenstock put out a record on a label with an in-house publicist. Quickly he found himself written about on Consequence of Sound, Noisey, Stereogum, A.V. Club and Spin.com, just to name a few.

But getting attention in the music media can lead to an inflated outside perception of success, says Sam Cook-Parrott of Philadelphia’s Radiator Hospital.

“People think, ‘Oh, they’re doing fine. They got written about in Rolling Stone. Don’t f*****g worry about it.’ Does success mean getting written about in a cool blog or in Rolling Stone? Because what does that mean? That doesn’t translate to money,” Cook-Parrott says. “It’s a cool thing to show your parents, but it’s not a real, actual thing.”

Plus, there’s a feeling among some bands that the promo cycle can lend an empty glaze of marketing to the art of writing and producing music.

“I think that bands are way more short-sighted than they used to be,” Cook-Parrott says. “It’s like with blockbuster movies and it’s all about the opening weekend. That’s not how making a record should be.”

Booking Agents

When they’re cool (and when they’re weird)

There was a time when hiring a booking agent was considered the definitive line between whether a band could be called DIY or not. But putting together a tour can be draining for bands, particularly in the DIY world, where booking networks are informal and constantly changing. The time and energy that goes into organizing a tour can feel like a full-time job, which is especially tough for musicians who already have one.

When are house shows better than club gigs? (Photo: Michael Andrade)

Tyler-Ameen, who works full time, says he felt exhausted by booking two of his own tours in 2014.

“They kicked my ass,” Tyler-Ameen says. “It really did feel each time pretty consuming, where I would get out of work and go and send emails until I was tired. And that was the case for weeks. Which doesn’t seem sustainable.”

Katie Alice Greer, who sings in D.C. punk band Priests, writes in an email that her band’s decision to work with a booking agent had a lot to do with time management — particularly making time to earn money.

“I had a very low-cost living situation and a job with flexible hours [in 2013],” Greer says. That meant she and Priests’ drummer were able to book most of their tours themselves. But when they both had to ramp up their work schedules, she says, they hired a booking agent.

“House shows are always a lot more fun while you’re playing. But sometimes on tour I don’t want to have a meet-and-greet every single day.” — Gabrielle Smith of Frankie Cosmos

“It certainly helps to have an extra head (with a lot of experience) involved in the process of mapping out a tour that will make sense,” Greer writes.

But some DIY bands choose a combined strategy: They book some of their own shows, and leave others to a professional. That’s the method familiar to Gabrielle Smith, who plays with indie bands Eskimeaux, Frankie Cosmos, Bellows and Told Slant. Two of her bands book their own tours and two work with booking agents. When those worlds meet, she says things get a little strange.

“It totally is weird when we play a house show and the booking agent asks for a W-2 and a headcount,” Smith says.

When bands work with professional bookers, they’re more likely to play commercial spaces like bars and clubs, and that transition can be a little jarring. For one thing, there’s an experiential difference between the two kinds of shows.

“House shows are always a lot more fun while you’re playing. The entire interaction beforehand can be really amazing and really warm and welcoming, but also can be really uncomfortable,” Smith says. “Sometimes on tour I don’t necessarily want to have a meet-and-greet every single day. On that level, having the booking agent and playing at a place that’s not a house every single day can be more comforting.”

Then there’s the question of how money is handled.

“The houses don’t take money most of the times, and a bar will. Or they’ll say, ‘We’re gonna give you $100′ and maybe they make more, but you’ve agreed to that amount,” Cook-Parrott says. “A house show is pretty clean. They tell you, ‘This is the money we made’ and sometimes it’s way more than you’d ever make if you just played some $100 guarantee show at a bar.”

When playing house shows is working optimally, it can feel magical, like an alternate economy worth putting faith in. But it’s also precarious.

Smith describes a common experience of playing a house show, where no effort is taken to collect money at the door: “They give you $10 or $15, and they’re like, ‘Hope this is enough. Thanks for playing. Bye!'”

If no explicit financial arrangement has been made, there’s not much you can do but fill your gas tank up one eighth of the way and hope the next show pays better.

Talking About Money

Mum’s the word

Sometimes income itself isn’t the only economic obstacle to a DIY tour. Conversations about money — or the lack of them — can be a huge factor in a tour’s economic success.

Bands can feel uncomfortable talking about money with show promoters, especially when they’re relying on an informal network of people exchanging favors. Take Bartley, who says she didn’t talk to anyone about money before booking her most recent tour.

“I just kind of assumed that everyone I talked to was kind of on the same page,” Bartley says.

But that assumption can leave musicians vulnerable.

“When it is uncomfortable, I remind myself that it is absolutely necessary,” says Greer. “I will not be in a position where I am not paid fairly because money was not explicitly discussed.”

Rosenstock says he has a way of conducting conversations about money on the road.

“When we would play house shows, I’d talk to the people at the house beforehand and be like, ‘Hey, I don’t wanna be a d**k, but I think somebody should be at the door making sure everybody gives six bucks or five bucks or whatever it is,” Rosenstock says.

“When [talking about money] is uncomfortable, I remind myself that it is absolutely necessary. I will not be in a position where I am not paid fairly because money was not explicitly discussed.” — Katie Alice Greer of Priests

He thinks money at shows should be going toward bands, not beer for the party. “I’d rather that money be able to sustain us to go on tour again next year than for that money to fuel this ‘You need alcohol to party so put another bunch of dollars in this huge company’ thing. Don’t you think it would be nicer if we got that money tonight instead of Anheuser-Busch?”

Rosenstock says that approach has worked for him. “I would never, ever ever get a response that was like, ‘F**k you.’ It’d always be like ‘Yeah, you’re right. Totally.'”

Still, hiring someone else to handle the money side can be a sufficiently attractive reason for some musicians to work with a booking agent.

“We’re all very polite people, so we’re not that good at getting paid maybe what we know certain places have budgets that they can afford to pay us, and we’ve definitely been shorted in a lot of ways,” Smith says of her bands. “With the booking agent it’s always pre-arranged. There’s a guarantee or a very specific percentage that we’d get of the door … and if they tried to give us less, we had the backing of someone else.”

Guarantees Vs. Door Deals

Punkonomics!

When a venue commits to paying a band a certain amount of money no matter how many (or few) people come to see a show, that’s called a guarantee. They can be pragmatic. But they’re also deeply stigmatized in the punk and indie-rock scenes.

In a network of show promoters where anti-capitalist (or at least anti-commercial) ethics have been central to their community identity, it can come across as arrogant to demand a fixed amount of money to play a show, especially if that means a promoter will be paying out of pocket at the end of the night.

On the other hand, promoters don’t always understand the costs of tour — or worse yet, they do understand and still pay too little. A guarantee can offer protection against that.

“The guarantee is set in place so [bands] are able to sustain a tour and are able to do future tours. It’s taboo in the punk scene to even consider something like that.” — Chris Moore of Coke Bust

But Rosenstock says that politics aside, some bands are better off doing a door deal.

“Say you’re asking someone who runs a house,” he says. “You’re like, ‘Hey, we have a $250 guarantee,’ and you bring, like, 10 people to the show. That promoter’s going to be like, ‘OK, I’ll pay this band 250 bucks, but I’m never gonna book them again because this was a nightmare.'”

Guarantees are typical when bands work with a booking agent. Professional bookers tend to prefer it that way so they can assure their own percentage and a cut for the band. But if the booker’s only criteria is a venue that will agree to a guarantee, other important factors like finding the right place for a band’s audience can fall by the wayside.

“I played in a band for a little while and we did a big tour and it was booked by this guy. We played shows every night, and we played $100 guarantee shows that no one came to. If we would have booked the show ourselves, a bunch of people would have come,” Cook-Parrott says.

So on Radiator Hospital’s last tour, the band did things differently.

“We did it all ourselves and the shows were consistently f*****g awesome. Because we were communicating with our friends and with people who understand our music,” Cook-Parrott says. “Not just the dude at the bar down the street who needs to fill entertainment every night.”

Chris Moore, who plays in D.C. hardcore bands Coke Bust, Sick Fix and DOC, says none of his bands have a guarantee. But he doesn’t fault anyone for having one because guarantees serve a purpose.

“The guarantee is set in place so they are able to sustain a tour and are able to do future tours,” Moore says. “It’s taboo in the punk scene to even consider something like that.”

* * *

Regardless of where bands stand on booking agents, publicists, bar gigs or guarantees, sustainability is the key issue in these conversations. Few people in the DIY music community expect to strike it rich, but when pursuing music is keeping musicians broke, considering compensation for their labor comes into focus.

To what extent should music be the labor of love it’s widely understood to be? In the face of a music economy that’s being reshaped on every level, to what degree can musicians expect to be paid to keep making music? And what happens when the answers to those questions mean the difference between having a band and not having one?

We’re still talking about it.

Stay tuned for Combs’ next installment in a series of essays about the DIY music economy. Read Part 1, “These Are The Real Costs Of Going On A DIY Tour.”

Photos, from top: Young Trynas at the Dougout, July 2014; modified iPad email inbox used under a Creative Commons license; Swimsuit Addition at the Rocketship, July 2014; modified donation jar used under a Creative Commons license; donation bowl used under a Creative Commons license.

For Gray, who has cerebral palsy and uses a walker, it was yet another show he missed because a venue was inaccessible.

“The steps were so wide and so rickety and the ceiling was so low and steep, that my friend couldn’t even help me down the stairs,” he says.

Stairs, narrow doorways, cramped corridors: They’re barriers to mobility-impaired people in any building, but they pose a particularly large problem in the underground music scene—even in D.C., a government hub that’s otherwise pretty accessible.

Bands all over the country get their start playing unconventional spaces like houses and dive bars—and for a few reasons, those spaces aren’t always subject to the regulations established by the Americans With Disabilities Act, the pivotal civil rights legislation that celebrated its 24th anniversary last month.

Consequently, even while D.C.’s DIY scene experiences a small-scale renaissance, a segment of the music community is effectively barred from participating—often by factors as common as a flight of stairs.

But with such glaring obstacles preventing mobility-impaired people from going to shows, activity around the issue seems minimal in D.C.’s music scene. Why don’t more people talk about accessibility? And how can venues and show-bookers do better by disabled music fans?

Understanding Accessibility

The good news is that many of D.C.’s big commercial venues comply with ADA, which affords basic rights to people with physical or mental impairments and establishes accessibility requirements for new buildings. It also makes sure that buildings that predate the legislation meet certain accessibility standards when possible.

The bad news is that many other D.C. venues don’t comply with ADA’s standards—and they don’t always have to.

If you use a mobility aid like a wheelchair or walker, you’ll do fine at numerous D.C. spots including the Howard Theatre, The Hamilton, Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, U Street Music Hall and Gypsy Sally’s. They make it easy with elevators that open their levels to all patrons. Black Cat gets high marks not only for its wide front doors and accessible backstage concert space, but also for the freight elevator to its main concert room upstairs.

Some DIY spots do accessibility well, too: Columbia Heights church St. Stephen’s is equipped with ramps, and Comet Ping Pong and Takoma Park’s Electric Maid are easy to enter.

Some major music venues in town are only partially accessible. Disabled patrons can easily navigate the 9:30 Club—unless they want to visit the balcony, which requires a hike up a set of stairs. Everyone can access Rock & Roll Hotel‘s first floor, too, but not the second-floor dance hall or rooftop bar.

The concert rooms at DC9 and Velvet Lounge can only be accessed via a flight of stairs, making shows at those venues inaccessible to customers who use mobility aids. (Though DC9 booker Steve Lambert says club staff is happy to help showgoers up the stairs.) Critically, plenty of house venues are inaccessible, too—they’re often old rowhouses with staircases to the front door and stairs to the basement. Unfortunately, places like these are not required to go accessible, assuming they meet certain criteria established by ADA legislation.

Marian Vessels, director of the Mid-Atlantic ADA Center, says that since so many D.C. buildings were built before the ADA’s construction requirements took effect in 1992, they were built without accessibility in mind. But she says if an accommodation is cheap and easy, businesses must make it. That means if the only thing preventing your venue from compliance is, say, an easily widened doorway, you must modify it. But for many businesses, constructing a ramp or adding an elevator would be either physically or financially impracticable.

If it’s structurally and financially feasible for a house venue to be made accessible, the property owner has to do it—because when that house hosts shows, it’s considered a public gathering place.

Private residences normally don’t have to comply with the ADA. But the rules change for houses that host public events. If it’s structurally and financially feasible for a house venue to be made accessible, the property owner has to do it—because when that house hosts shows, it’s considered a public gathering place.

“If you put flyers out that say something like, ‘Free movie night! Come as you are! We’ll have a good time!’ now you’ve become a place of public accommodation,” says Jim Pecht, an accessibility specialist at the United States Access Board.

Erik Butler, who runs D.C. house venue The Rough House, says that his space has a makeshift ramp. If other houses did the same, they could open doors they might not have realized were closed.

Going accessible offers a longer-term gain, too. Residences serve as seedbeds for the local music scene, particularly in D.C., where house shows have been happening for decades (and not just in the punk community). If a disabled music fan can’t get into a basement show, it means one less person is supporting local music—and that’s no good for a DIY scene like D.C.’s, which normally prides itself on its inclusiveness.

“Just Treat Everyone Like A Person”

You couldn’t accuse D.C.’s punk scene of broad insensitivity; it’s a community that tends to be clued into social-justice issues, and promoters, venues and musicians regularly support progressive or otherwise worthy causes.

Take D.C. punk activist group Positive Force, which has hosted numerous benefit concerts over its nearly 30 years of existence, and the national happening Punk Rock Karaoke, whose local iterations have benefited an assortment of D.C.-area organizations like Girls Rock! D.C., D.C. Books to Prisons and Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive.

Yet for all its idealism, D.C.’s DIY music scene doesn’t seem as attuned to accessibility as a social-justice issue. Evidence exists in the number of shows hosted at inaccessible venues, particularly houses.

Then again, it’s difficult to gauge the size of the accessibility issue in the D.C. music scene, because it’s tough to count the number of disabled people who aren’t coming to shows. But ask people who work at venues, and they’ll tell you they hear from people about accessibility on a fairly regular basis.

Black Cat booker Candice Jones says the 14th Street NW club gets phone calls about accessibility up to several times a month, and Rock & Roll Hotel Marketing Manager Molly Majorack says the venue fields calls about it once every two months. (Majorack also says security staff at the H Street NE club take a course and receive a certificate through the city to train on hospitality for people with disabilities.)

Natalie Illum (shown above), a disability activist, performer and poet, says that she moved to D.C. in 1999 specifically because of its accessibility to people like herself, who identify as having a physical disability. “It’s by default one of the most [ADA] compliant cities in the United States,” she says. “It’s why I live here.”

But Illum became frustrated by local spaces and stages that didn’t accommodate performers with disabilities. “Stages are not necessarily built with people who have mobility issues in mind,” she says. Her idea for a barrier-free performance series inspired a campaign that aimed to raise funds for a venue, ASL services, an accessibility ramp and other costs. She hasn’t met her goal yet, but the campaign is ongoing.

“Eight or nine times out of 10, there’s some drunk guy at the end of the show who tries to clear a path for me, showing the world, ‘We got a disabled guy coming through! Move out of the way!’ and then there’s this spotlight put on me. Is that person trying to help me or are they trying to make himself feel better?” —Sean Gray

Sight-impaired scenester and photographer Ahmad Zaghal goes to a lot of shows—by his count, four or five per week—and he says that for the most part, venue staff is great about helping him out. But he adds that accessibility doesn’t usually occur to able-bodied people until they are confronted with it. “It’s mostly an awareness issue,” he says. “It doesn’t really register until you’ve encountered it in some way.”

Because Zaghal turns up at so many local concerts, he says, many of his fellow showgoers are already aware of his disability, so he doesn’t endure a lot of blatant ignorance or harassment. But Sean Gray—who co-hosts a WMUC radio show with Zaghal—says he’s been confronted with a certain kind of unpleasant helpfulness.

“Eight or nine times out of 10, there’s some drunk guy at the end of the show who tries to clear a path for me, showing the world, ‘We got a disabled guy coming through! Move out of the way!’ and then there’s this spotlight put on me,” Gray says. “Is that person trying to help me or are they trying to make himself feel better?”

Gray compares that scenario to one that has dogged women at shows for years. “It’s the same thing if you said, ‘There’s a woman at this hardcore show, so we better make sure nobody [messes] with her.’ Putting that spotlight on you highlights that you’re The Other and you’re the oppressed group.”

Memphis-based guitarist Will McElroy, who has cerebral palsy, has toured with indie bands Magic Kids and Toxie (shown below). He reports few problems with the venues he’s played over the years. But still, he says, “More awareness could never hurt.”

McElroy says interactions between disabled and able-bodied showgoers should follow a simple but powerful rule: “Just treat everyone like a person.”

What Can Be Done?

Venues don’t have the option of a silver-bullet solution to their accessibility problems because disabilities exist on a spectrum. In other words, a ramp isn’t especially helpful for someone who is hearing-impaired, and ASL translation is useless for a someone who needs to circumvent a flight of stairs.

“There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer,” Gray says. “It would be ignorant of us to say ‘This is what the venue or the staff or the public needs to do to make things better.'”

But all venues can take steps to do better by disabled showgoers. Independent promoter Sasha Lord, who books Comet Ping Pong, says getting the word out about local venues’ accessibility—or inaccessibility—is key. “Be proactive,” she says. “Every venue should assess their accessibility. Knowing your limitations should be the first thing.”

Venues could also include accessibility information on their websites, social-media accounts and flyers. Numerous local venues’ websites tell people to call with questions about ADA compliance. But why should anyone have to make a phone call?

“If I have that information in front of me, it will make the whole interaction, going to that venue, a whole lot easier,” says Gray. “Be public about what is accessible or not.”

Marian Vessels says that to eliminate barriers, venues of all kinds need to think creatively. She suggests that show spaces install inexpensive portable ramps where they can, and those that cannot could consider installing speakers or monitors to broadcast the performance into an accessible space in the venue or offsite. “It’s not ideal,” she says, noting the social aspect of live music. But it’s better.

“If the artist says, ‘I won’t play a venue that’s inaccessible or isn’t a safe space,’ then it puts the venue’s back against the wall. … No band is too small to put their foot down.” —Sean Gray

Independent promoters can opt to host shows in more accessible venues, too. Instead of booking bands at houses with no viable entry for disabled people, look elsewhere.

Gray suggests that performers take up the torch, too, in order to raise the issue with venues. “If the artist says, ‘I won’t play a venue that’s inaccessible or isn’t a safe space,’ then it puts the venue’s back against the wall,” he says. “If enough artists do that, a venue will lose money and start to pay attention. No band is too small to put their foot down.”

Vessels agrees. If a space is inaccessible, “tell the venue why you’re not going in,” she says. That way, venue owners may see how becoming more ADA-compliant could benefit not just people’s lives and the scene, but—in the case of commercial venues—their bottom line. If spaces are still not barrier-free when they could be, maybe they’re just unaware of the problem.

“We don’t expect them to know the answers,” Vessels says. “But they have to know enough to ask.”

The Mid-Atlantic ADA Center’s website provides an easy-to-use guide to tax credits and deductions that are available for businesses to make their space more accessible. Also, the annual Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability Conference provides valuable information about accessibility in the arts.

Photos, from top: Images by Flickr user Marlon Dias, Stewart Chambers and Alex Barth used under a Creative Commons license; images of Toxie and Natalie Illum courtesy of the artists.

Correction: The original version of this blog post said buildings that predate ADA legislation are “grandfathered out” of its regulations. No older buildings are grandfathered out—all must comply to the extent they can be made accessible—but they were less likely to be built with accessibility in mind. The post has been corrected.

I’m at the home of Sully and Patsy Stephens in a leafy suburban neighborhood in Columbia, Maryland. Joining me are 25 people, mostly in their 50s and 60s, listening intently to a performance from veteran bluegrass musicians Eddie and Martha Adcock and Tom Gray.

“The venue is our living room, our TV room,” says Sully Stephens. “We move all of the furniture out and put all the chairs in.”

A few years ago the Sully and Patsy went from being concertgoers to concert producers when they saw some of their favorite musicians struggling to find small and mid-size venues in the region.

“We found ourselves in an area that seemed to work for the traveling musicians to stop in, play a few gigs, and move on,” says Sully. “We’re not a big venue but we afford them to opportunity to pay their gas money and food for a day and a half I guess.”

This show isn’t entirely altruistic. There’s a personal payoff for Sully and Patsy as well.

“We just love the music,” says Patsy Stephens. “To have performers in our living room—it’s an intimate setting, and you meet them, you talk to them and they’re up close and personal. I think it’s just cozy.”

“You want to see what’s going on in D.C. music, you should be going to house shows.” —Alex Tebeleff

House concerts aren’t a new phenomenon in the metro area, but the home show movement is experiencing a bit of a renaissance of late. In D.C. alone there are an estimated 35 active venues. With this surge, several grassroots organizations have popped up to help promote shows and assist venues.

Nick DePrey cofounded the website Homestage DC. “The only goal [of Homestage DC] is to nurture and sustain the house show scene,” says DePrey. “And we do that in a bunch of ways. One is a calendar—just letting people know. Because one of the things we found is that if you’re not kind of in the know, and I wasn’t for a long time, you don’t know when these things are. And for a long time we were also just helping people host in whatever capacity that we could. Sort of guerrilla house show hosting. You need a PA, or you don’t know any local bands, or you don’t know how to promote or you don’t know how to rock-proof your house and you’ve never done this before. We can help with all of those things.”

DePrey and I are in Petworth at a venue called The Paperhaus, a two-story rowhouse on a quiet side street. We’re there for a show featuring two indie-rock bands—locals The Sea Life and a touring band from Atlanta called Dog Bite. Although both groups regularly play in traditional rock clubs, DePrey says house venues are still an attractive option. The modest pay they receive from donations tonight is helpful, but the Paperhaus offers them something intangible.

“It offers an opportunity to take risks creatively that I’m not sure would be tolerated or as accepted in traditional venues,” says DePrey.

Beyond the creative freedom, there is also an aesthetic difference to playing in a house.

“It’s more of a wall-of-noise concept than you might be used to,” explains DePrey, who has performed with bands in D.C.-area houses and at traditional venues. “Typically in a house here like The Paperhaus, the drums dominate. So you have to either tell the drummer to be more quiet or you have to match his noise with whatever you’re doing. But yeah, it comes with its own unique challenges as a musician—and it offers its own listening experience.”

Alex Tebeleff books and produces shows at The Paperhaus. “You want to see what’s going on in D.C. music, you should be going to house shows,” he says.

And what was once a small, underground and sometimes invitation-only scene has blossomed into an open and diverse collection of venues.

“It’s more accessible now,” he says. “I think that’s something that’s really important. Literally any kind of music is welcome. Any kind of person is welcome.”

The crowd tonight at The Paperhaus consists of about 25 people. They’re mostly 20-somethings that wouldn’t look out of place at a big rock club like the Black Cat or 9:30 Club. On the surface, these people have very little in common with the crowd at Sully’s place in Columbia. But Tebeleff says there’s a subtle but important similarity.

“I think people come here more for the music than for partying, which is something that really is what creates the atmosphere that I appreciate and why I keep doing it.”

Back in Columbia, Maryland, I tell Sully Stephens about his young counterparts in Petworth and ask if that surprises him.

“I think there are a lot people who would just like to come and listen and want an opportunity to be in an informal setting,” says Sully. “I don’t know much about indie rock at all—us old fogies you know—but it doesn’t surprise me that there are other people doing the same thing. I just think we want to support the live music.”

So if you want to see the next big thing in D.C. music, you may not have to travel very far. In fact, there could be a venue right next door.

To find out where you can see house shows in the D.C. area, visit Homestage DC, DC Showspace, DC Bluegrass Union, the Washington Folk Music Association, the Folklore Society of Greater Washington and Showlist DC. For more on local musicians, visit Listen Local First.

Second photo: Dogbite at Paperhaus by Travis Bozeman

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

But what happens when one of the city’s smallest DIY show spaces begins hosting bands that could fill a club? It’s forced to make tough but necessary compromises.

It’s a Tuesday evening in February, and the Dougout—an unfurnished basement in a group house off of Rhode Island Avenue NE—is mostly empty. It doesn’t look like much, but over the last two years, the house has become one of the city’s premier underground music venues. That’s why it’s being nudged into a more professional setup. The guy sitting on a barstool near the door is a sign of the space’s growth. So are the list of names in his hand and the paper wristbands he’s looping around the wrists of people now trickling through the basement’s exterior door.

Showgoers are here to see a punk-rock band called Iron Chic, which had sold out Brooklyn show space The Acheron, a venue three times bigger than Dougout, just five days before. At last year’s Fest festival in Florida, the band filled a 1,000-person venue to capacity. The Dougout looks like it can fit 60, maybe.

The Iron Chic gig ran the risk of repeating a bad situation the Dougout had seen just two months earlier.

“The Speedy Ortiz show was a [disaster],” says Geoff Shobert, one of the house’s three residents.

Shobert is talking about a show the Massachusetts punk band played at the house in January. Speedy Ortiz is a cocktail shaker of things generally popular in punk rock at the moment: low-fi distortion with throwback, early ‘90s indie sensibilities and a lead singer with a big, sugary voice. Having played basements like Dougout for a few years, Speedy Ortiz is hurtling toward fame: A week before the Dougout show, Entertainment Weekly’s music blog premiered the group’s new single, and the band appeared in Rolling Stone multiple times last year. Speedy Ortiz might still like playing basements, but at this point, it’s probably too popular to do that—at least safely.

When Speedy Ortiz played Dougout, the band drew enough people to fill the basement twice. Inside, people were pressed chest-to-back, Shobert says, and latecomers spilled into the yard and alleyway.

“There was no way we could let anyone else in,” Shobert says. “We were turning away our friends. We were turning away people who would come here all the time. And people who had already gotten in weren’t even able to get out. They couldn’t go out and have a cigarette, they couldn’t move. People were kicking on the door, screaming profanities at me and [stuff]. People were trying to bribe me with huge amounts of money.”

Sadie Dupuis, singer and guitarist for Speedy Ortiz, has seen a lot of packed shows in DIY spaces, but none that were “people-were-trying-to-bribe-their-way-in packed,” she says by phone.

The band kicked off a new tour last night at Black Cat after spending January playing shows in places like the Dougout. Before that winter outing, she says, the band was out on a higher-profile tour playing much bigger places. So for January, they booked as many basements, warehouses and other DIY spaces as they could, mainly through personal contacts. That’s how the Dougout show came about: The guys in Grass is Green, who were touring with Speedy, knew the Dougout and set up the show.

Dupuis acknowledges the band is getting bigger, but she says they do what they can to look past the hype and keep playing the kind of venues they prefer. “I think we try to strike a balance,” she says. “We were ready to play in spaces that we feel more comfortable in and feel like home for us.” She says the Dougout seemed like any other DIY show until a few days before, when she began to hear from folks nervous about the number of people who had RSVPed for it on Facebook. More than 200 people said they were going.

Marshall Pearson, Shobert’s housemate, was working the night of the Speedy Ortiz show. He got home after the band’s set, when the crush of people had dwindled to just a few. He says his housemates hated having to turn people away. The whole night “left a bad taste in their mouths,” Pearson says.

With the Iron Chic show already on the calendar, the roommates knew that same situation couldn’t play out again. It’s just too risky. The Dougout has been lucky so far, Pearson says; neighbors have been understanding, and most of its shows have been without incident. But the kind of chaos that characterized the Speedy Ortiz show jeopardizes “the longevity of our space,” Pearson says.

The Dougout made some changes for the Iron Chic appearance, which it projected would be just as big as the Speedy Ortiz show. Using the online Big Cartel system already established by D.C. punk-show promoter and Coke Bust member Chris Moore, the Dougout put a few dozen spots on sale. The show sold out within a few days.

* * *

By Iron Chic’s second song, the space is full, but not packed. The Dougout residents guess that around 20 people with reservations haven’t shown up, probably because of factors like the snowy weather and the night of the week. Compared to the Speedy Ortiz show, it’s calm. Attendees huddle around Jason Lubrano, the band’s stocky singer, and sing along, fingers pointed, pressing their hands against the basement’s low ceiling to keep upright.

Two days later, Shobert says that the turnout was exactly what he wanted. The band left happy; fans shouted along, then had enough space to visit the merch table and buy something. “Honestly, I don’t know if we’ll do the ticketing thing again,” he says. “It was a solution for what it was. It’s not something we want to rely on and do all the time.”

Every show is different, of course. Holly Hunt, an instrumental doom-metal band from Florida, plays the space March 23. No word on whether the house will have people reserve spots in advance. However it works out, the Dougout is now closer to understanding what it needs to do to preserve its DIY ethos and grow at the same time: steer toward better organization, for the good of all involved.

“I think it’s great, honestly,” Dupuis says of Dougout’s development. “I mean, isn’t that kind of the ideal?”