A Dozen New and Upcoming Venues Are Bringing Fresh Energy to the Cleveland Music Scene

If there’s a truism for the local music scene in the past few decades, it’s that the city’s reputation tends to tease its reality.

Cleveland is a music city. Cleveland is not a music city. You can make the argument for either.

The heart of the debate was on display recently in late August in the Foster Theater on the sixth floor of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Sean Watterson and Cindy Barber, owners of the Happy Dog and Beachland Ballroom, took the podium to tell a room of four dozen venue owners, singer-songwriters and local leaders the results of the Greater Cleveland Music Census -- a months-long, data-heavy look into the assembled tapestry of the scene from its stages to artists to the machinery that makes it all work (or not).

The data was pretty much what you’d expect in the post-pandemic era: artists and venues are still struggling financially. Our bands, which bank half their income on local shows, lament “stagnant pay rates” and a “scarcity of music work.” Your average Cleveland musician, the Census tells us, is a straight, white male with little marketing who balances a day job with two to three gigs a month. Gigs that pay $308 on average. Meaning, if that same guitarist manages to book ten shows a month, he’s still barely cracking $37,000 a year.

Which begs the question: Is Cleveland in need of more venues? The answer, according to the Census, was yes. To draw more acts to Northeast Ohio, to diversify the offerings, to build an infrastructure where everyone from singer-songwriters to techs can grow and thrive.

In Watterson and Barber’s minds, Cleveland’s music scene doesn’t bloom if its musicians, venues and fans aren’t in clear-eyed harmony with one another. If bands can’t eat off the cover payout. If show bookers are posting flyers alone. If fans, piqued at Cleveland’s potential to be a crown music jewel in the Midwest, can’t find a decent show to go to on any night of the week.

“If you want to plan for success, you’ve got to plan to take care of the people who are there, who are making it attractive,” Watterson said at the Rock Hall podium. “I mean, we are a music city.”

Judging by the number of new venues that have sprouted up in the past year and the number of upcoming ones debuting soon, the traction is there. Here’s a look at all the changes.

Spotlight Cleveland

Two-dollar Black Labels and Little Kings. Four-buck Great Lakes and Saucy Brew. Framed photos of Michael Stanley and Trent Reznor. “Every single song you hear on our house music—like 700 songs,” Spotlight Cleveland owner Corinne Henahan says, “is a band from Cleveland.” Situated on an otherwise dark corner in the West Eighties on Madison, Spotlight yearns to be the Cleveland neighborhood music bar to end all music bars. Opening in January 2021, Henahan and partner Jim Dewey set out to fashion, completely through their own handiwork, an ’80s-aesthetic hub for music some 300 nights of the year including comedy roast battles, Latin jazz, and, one recent night, world famous turntablist DJ Logic. “He showed up and played to 22 people that night, in our corner bar,” Henahan recalls, near Spotlight’s fire pit outside. “That’s what we’re going for: a secret listening room for side projects.”

The Globe Iron

The first music venue to rise in the West Bank of the Flats since the Music Box in 2014, the Globe Iron will be a major rehab of—you guessed it—an old and abandoned iron facility in the shadow of the Main Avenue Bridge. Set to open to crowds in early 2025, the Globe will have space for some 1,200 concertgoers in a black box interior, with second-story VIP areas and a limestone courtyard for possible outdoor shows. (And weddings, of course.) James Carol, the Globe’s incoming show-booker, envisions the venue being a “step up” from the Grog and the Beachland, and slotting a range of performers—from locals like The Rosies to nationally-renowned folk rock heroes like Caamp. “I’d like to go from an EDM artist to a singer-songwriter to a rock band to a hip hop artist,” Carol tells Scene. “No matter what different genres being offered, I want everybody to kind of look at this place and be able to say, ‘Wow, all right, this is what I want for this show.’”

The Odeon

Long a fixture along the Cuyahoga River, the Odeon is a pretty good metaphor for the historic part of the Flats East Bank on Old River Road: aging, relatively abandoned, but worth restoring, after multiple false starts, into something new. Since 2022, GBX Group, the Midtown-based preserver of historic buildings, has worked to raise some $850,000 to fit the Odeon for reopening—for building out its main stage, adding a VIP area, modernizing its sound and lighting equipment and stripping out its old green rooms. (But keeping its industrial chic facade.) By next spring, GBX representatives said, with aid from historic state tax credits, the Odeon could (finally) see life again. “We’re going to be very diverse and inclusive in our musical choices and genres,” Kismet Koncert’s Mike Brown, who will manage the Odeon, says. “So, I mean, anything that we feel is fitting to sell a ticket.”

Jolene’s

If you were to send an ambitious Clevelander down to Nashville’s Broadway Street and have them return with a million-dollar business idea, you might get something like Jolene’s. Intended to wake up a somewhat sleepy East 4th with three floors of Country & Western, Jolene’s is the brainchild of restaurateur Jason Beudert, who’s hot off the success of Geraci’s, STEAK and Lionheart. Filling in a spot that hasn’t flourished since the days of the Greenhouse Tavern, Beudert envisions youthful, high-energy country DJs and bands all week—on Jolene’s elevated bar inside, and playing its saddle-lined rooftop outdoors until two a.m. (And eating fried chicken from Sauce the City.) He’s looking to pay a bit more for quality acts, both Appalachian and rooted here. “I think our goal is to get as many local bands as possible,” he says. And raise them up right. “I’m hoping that what we do at Jolene’s is going to launch that next generation.”

Little Rose Tavern

What Spotlight is to the West Eighties neighborhood, Little Rose Tavern is to Jefferson. The two West Side venues, both neighborhood bars that kicked off during Covid, aim to book without blinders on—noise rock to bar blues—and seem to operate sans formalities. Such spirit seems embedded in Little Rose owner Roseanna Safos, a punk musician who bought the tiny place with a front patio about four years back. Her attitude runs throughout the spot, from its sound equipment (a “busted-up board”) to its food specials (“Mom Style Tacos”) to Polaroids dotting the walls to Safos’ own mood about the truckload of Music Census data. (“Sounds annoying,” she says.) All comfort food for passing-through bands. As is Safos’ theory of finances: every band gets 100 percent of the cover charge. “I just feel like venues should pay the people,” Safos said, working the grills as Chicago’s Plastic Crime Wave Syndicate tore up the “stage.” “I mean, is that your money? The bands brought the people. The bands made the money.”

Phantasy Nightclub

“It wasn’t the place you’d dreamed you’d end up,” Trent Reznor once said about the Phantasy, “but it helped shape and motivate and influence the sound and spirit of things.” What was once home to, in part, the birth of Nine Inch Nails has required a slog to try and resurrect since the club closed in 2018. For the past few years, the former metal and punk club has been in the hands of West 117 Development, which has, since 2021, positioned the Phantasy as a natural extension of its LGBTQ-friendly mega-club Studio West, a block north. “Over $1 million,” West 117 founder Daniel Budish told Scene, has been used to rid the building of asbestos, modernize the utilities, upgrade its “ancient electrical”—all to prepare for a much meatier renovation. (Whenever that may be.) Music-wise, Budish said that he foresees the Phantasy responding to one of the demands of the Music Census: a need for queer(er) stages. “We imagine a huge diversity of acts in the space,” Budish told Scene. “But the driving force will remain trying to spotlight the LGBTQ+ community.”

Baker Hall at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Last October, hundreds of city politicians, sports team owners, Motown legends and local musicians gathered at the Rock Hall plaza to celebrate both the museum’s 29th anniversary and the groundbreaking of its $135 million expansion. But the significance underlying that new space was somewhat overlooked: Baker Hall, a multi-level venue that will fit roughly 1,400 concertgoers, could be the most appealing Downtown place for gigs in the next few years. That’s part of Lisa Vinciquerra’s intention once Baker Hall is running in 2026. Vinciquerra, the rock whiz with a tough-to-pronounce last name, told Scene she’s planning to look local to help fill Baker Hall. Like those she’s hired for plaza summer shows: LILIEAE, Apostle Jones, LoConti. And pay them Rock Hall wages. “Honestly, I bet cover bands make more money than original acts, but those aren’t the bands I want,” she said. “I’d love to change that.”

The Treelawn

To jazz aficionado Eric Hanson, a treelawn is a word with particular significance in his heart. He once named a past band after it, as he did a booking agency. And the name extends to the former Slovenian social club he opened with Cindy Barber last February. “I just think it’s a cool concept, between the sidewalk and the street, the private and the public,” Hanson said. “It’s kind of a grand metaphor.” A true-blue jazz club in Cleveland is a rare thing, especially after the recently failed attempt to revive Nighttown in Cleveland Heights. Though the Treelawn has a large-capacity Music Hall, Hanson strives to keep its front-of-house Social Club (a 100-seat bar and stage) booked five times a week with up-and-coming acts, like Tim Picard Quartet and Gregby Camp, Jr. As well as veterans, like saxophonists Ernie Krivda and Howie Smith. “But we’re overwhelmingly local—I’d say seventy-five percent local,” Hanson says. “And we’re trying to book more.”

Variety Theater

Out of all the new venues Clevelanders could attend before the end of the decade, the Variety may be the most storied: It opened Thanksgiving Day, 1927; it was once operated by Warner Bros; it hosted, in the 1970s, acts like Stevie Ray Vaughn, R.E.M. and Motörhead. (The latter set a sound record of 130 decibels there, in 1984.) Such historicity—and the Variety sitting dark for three decades—is what attracted Kelly Flamos to try and resurrect it. Today, pressed with a $14 million cost sheet, Flamos is hoping to raise that money to, one day, both reopen the Variety and increase its seating, from 1,900 to a notch above 3,000. As for how the venue fits into Cleveland’s repertoire, Flamos has considered putting extra attention on touring hip hop acts. “I'm gonna always strive for the ideal of creating a space that's so for everyone just because that's where I want to be, where everyone's welcome,” she said. “I don't want to, like, put off elitist vibes at a venue I'm behind, you know?”

The Roxy

What if Mahall’s had a younger-yet-more-spacious brother? That’s the spirit of The Roxy, which opened in the former second-floor bowling alley of the Lakewood staple in late 2023. The space—not to be confused with the historic Roxy Theater, the downtown burlesque haven that shuttered in 1977—was key for manager Cory Hadje to invest millions with fellow Mahall’s backers. “We were hoping to build a venue that was kind of in between the capacity of the Beachland and the House of Blues,” he says, “because there’s really not anything between that 500- and 1,200-capacity range.” (The size “missing” from Cleveland’s industry, the Music Census tells us.) A leg-up that will do growing locals a solid—like guitar rockers On Paper, who played The Roxy last January, or Heart Attack Man, Lakewood natives who will be there this winter. As Hadje puts Roxy’s main base: “Bands that are moving up, but haven’t blown up, just yet.”

Dunlap’s

A 1937 Plain Dealer ad for Pacino’s Wonder Bar off West 32nd marketed the venue’s almost carnivalesque acts: Acrobat dancers. Male gypsies. A self-professed “king of comedy.” Today, that venue, now called Dunlap’s Corner Bar, carries on a similar vein. Since late 2023, after owners Nick White and Jason Madison bought the bar, the dive’s hosted underground punk, experimental tunes and, booker Hailey Chase says, “a little bit of country and drag thrown in there.” (Most of that’s local bands that get 100 percent of the door revenue.) The whole aesthetic gives Dunlap’s, being nestled on residential block in Clark-Fulton, an island-in-the-mist sense of being. “I’ve heard a couple say that it has, like, Twin Peaks vibes,” Chase says. “Actually, I’ve had touring bands say that’s exactly why they wanted to play here.”

Crobar

The newest incarnation of the old Croatian Tavern on St. Clair started as a kind of self-premonition for Gerard Guhde. A veteran house DJ, Guhde would come up short when out-of-towners asked for recommendations. “I thought it was kind of ridiculous—there’s places that you could go dance, but it's nowhere that I would go,” he says. “I mean, nowhere I would send somebody.” So, of course, throughout 2021, Guhde built that place himself. After two years, Crobar has become the de facto destination, on a dimly-lit corner in the center of Asiatown, for a shoulder-to-shoulder experience of electronic, house and disco. With its one pool table and tiled wall of mirrors and vinyl, Guhde’s brainchild bleeds head-bobbing retro so much that Crobar’s become a favorite for locals like DJ Marc Lansley and touring acts -- those like Swede DJ Seinfeld, who regularly headlines European festivals. “After his show he told me, ‘I can play for 10,000 people, but the closest person to me is 30 yards away,'” Guhde recalls. At Crobar, “‘I can see the raw emotion on people's faces from track to track.’”

Mercury Music Lounge

With capacity for 500, the newly opened Mercury Music Lounge in Lakewood (18206 Detroit Ave.) fills a void for shows of that size in Cleveland. Which is part of the reason folks from The Foundry Concert Club and the Winchester Music Tavern decided to collaborate on the project. Rae Gentry (The Foundry) and Shane Motolik (The Winchester) met at shows at their respective venues and quickly formed a friendship that has now blossomed into a business relationship. And all the better for fans, who should see a diverse roster of acts both local and beyond. A grand opening kicks all the action off Oct. 11 and 12.

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