This is something Canadian venues should be looking into, if they’re not doing it already.
Tomorrow morning, popular music brand The FADER is announcing a new charitable merch collection benefitting independent venues in New York City.
As the COVID-19 crisis continues to disrupt the nation, the music industry is facing one of the biggest setbacks in its history. Realizing that 90% of independent music venues across the country are in danger of closing permanently, The FADER has partnered with This T-Shirt – a relief platform founded by Dylan Hattem and Cassandra Aaron of DS Projects – to create the Save Our Stages capsule collection, starting with their hometown of New York City.
In an homage to the classic tour t-shirt, The FADER and This T-Shirt will build on the National Independent Venue Association’s (NIVA) #SaveOurStages campaign, spotlighting independent venues across New York and the impact they hold within their communities. Current times call for bold and passionate messaging. As independent venues are the lifeblood of our culture, the collection taps into the community’s love for live music to communicate that “if we don’t step in, these venues will not survive.”
Starting Sept. 30th, the New York iteration of the SAVE OUR STAGES collection will be available for purchase here for a limited time.
Proceeds from all t-shirt sales will go directly to the venues listed on each shirt and to NIVA’s Emergency Relief Fund. NIVA’s Emergency Relief Fund was created to support America’s most vulnerable venues and is intended to provide short-term relief for independent music venue owners and promoters on the precipice of eviction or permanently shuttering due to the COVID-19 shutdown. The fund is intended to work hand-in-hand with federal and local programs, assisting with the most immediate needs facing the country’s independent venues and promoters and making it more likely that they will be able to reopen, fully, when it’s safe.
Participating venues include a mix of independent venues across both Manhattan and Brooklyn. A full list of venues from the New York collection is provided below.
Baby’s All Right
Our Wicked Lady
S.O.B’s
Avant Gardner
C’mon Everybody
Good Room
The Sultan Room
National Sawdust
Mercury Lounge
To support venues and cities not represented in the first collection, folks can visit SaveOurStages.com for more information.
The SAVE OUR STAGES Collection is another initiative in a long list of charitable acts The FADER has been championing in recent history. Earlier this year, due to the cancellation of Austin’s famed South by Southwest Festival, The FADER took its typically invite-only FADER FORT to a digital platform, which featured over 150 exclusive presentations and musical performances by both emerging and acclaimed artists in an effort to help raise money for those hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in the music industry. The event, dubbed Digital FORT, was thrown a second time on July 25th, with over 40 artists participating from around the globe. To date, The FADER’s charitable initiatives have yielded over $25,000 in contributions.
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