The 9:30 Club:
Change or Die

“To me, the 9:30 Club is one of the last great rooms in America. Seth has kept it the way it has been and should be. And I think that’s why people enjoy going there, because it’s different than another sort of sterile, corporate venue. It’s 9:30 Club, you know? It is what it is.”

— Dave Grohl

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“All that you touch

You Change.

All that you Change

Changes you.

The only lasting truth is Change.

God is Change.”

— Octavia E. Butler

I’m ruminating over the news Foo Fighters frontman and former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl announced in September during a surprise performance at one of the celebrity musician’s most sacred spaces, the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. The iconic venue plans to construct a replica of the original 199-person max occupancy space where the club first opened its doors (and the doors to fame for numerous of its performers) on May 31, 1980.

Although I have yet (yet!) to step foot upon what innumerable musicians consider to be among the holiest of our vocational grounds — a piece of this earth where many have seeded and sprung their world-renowned careers — I feel a sense of excitement for what this new/old development could mean for artists, fans, and the industry as a whole. 

I also feel a sense of solidarity. Not just because I’m a musician who hopes to one day play on that stage but as someone with a deep appreciation for genuine, dynamic community, having not found it until after living 25 years within the wrong one.

I grew up an hour north of New York City, a mid-eighties baby raised on the dogma-laden, contemporary Christian music that l’m willing to bet never played the 9:30 Club. These jingles were meant to ring in my mind as I walked among the “unsaved” at my public school. Intended protection against lost souls and their seductive trappings. 

Feel the spirit move? I couldn’t. 

Not in the spoon-fed songs nor while sitting in the sanctuary, like a stone in a cornfield, all around me a crop of swaying raised hands and their accompanying (near uniform), pious expressions of grieving relief, singing lyrics that were heavy-handed set to aesthetically underwhelming (if not annoying) music. I could never fein to feel it.

Almost nothing about my years within those walls resembled the image of “church” they marketed from the pulpit. This was not a counter-cultural community of love-fueled, money dispossessed humans living dynamic, passionate lives in benevolent support of anyone and everyone. It was more of a subculture of rule-mongers, finger pointers, and (again for emphasis:) really shitty music. 

Don’t even get me started on the fucking T-shirts.

I was encouraged to separate myself from the world, to be cautious of nonbelievers, to be aware of my own innate brokenness. “Secular” music was discouraged. Yet, much of the truchisimo contemporary Christian media alternatives were mere frottage reproductions; made by placing paper over coin, rubbing lead tip across the blank sheet — side to side, up and down — then trying to pass off the resulting smeary image as even more valuable than the original mint.

Everything hidden beneath those sheets became the forbidden fruit that I’d quietly relish as it played over the school bus radio or at the public pool. The Sony boombox purchased with babysitting money became a late-night periscope into the world beyond religion. Something about these songs made me feel something real, and significant … sensations I never felt growing up in church, subsisting on a steady diet of didactic ditties. Instead of raising my hands to the turgid liturgical vapors, hoping to appease the invisible On High through the slitted eyes of nearby believers, it was like the emotional explorations of the so-called world of the lost were crystalline globules I could actually hold in my hand, raise them up toward the sun to admire the glittering of deep inner chamberways, then plop them in my mouth for further savoring.

As it was, however, I had no place to commune with others who took the sacrament of similar fruit. And when my cache of cassette-captured harvests that I’d sickled from the radio was discovered, my mother called me down to the basement to watch as she gave them the hammer, citing her righteous religion’s authority to measure the laden weight as just. (It’s ok though, we’re totally cool now. Like we were just texting a little bit ago — she’s truly great and we’re all always growing.)

As the tale goes, my first experience with a reciprocally verdant sense of community didn’t come until right around the time I renounced my indoctrination. 

No, it wasn’t found through another religion or any sort of spiritual practice. It was a few blocks down the street from my apartment in Lynchburg, Virginia, the city of my deplorable alma mater, at a popular pizza shop and bar where my weird friends and I would work, hang out, drink, smoke weed, and play music (and sometimes still do).

Night after night (until I quit drinking for good) I’d show up not knowing who would be there but still knowing that people I wanted to see would inevitably be there. For the first few years of its operation, the restaurant was one of the few places where the rift between the transplants to the city's infamous Christian college and the locally born was made invisible, obscured by a shared interest in brick-oven pizza, microbrews, traveling musicians, and finding fun in a small mountain town.

“The shop,” as anyone who was there during what I perceive to be its heyday (2010-2015) calls it, was like our clubhouse. We made money. Shared songs. Shared ideas. Smoked weed. Watched soon-to-break-out bands before they became better known. Even some close friends of mine who used to play there have since moved on to sign deals at Capitol Records, etc.. 

The shop became one of the main meeting places for the post-collegiate diaspora and anyone else left of convention, while still being a favorite eatery for many squares, too, who would show up to witness the tight-knit, v-neck-teed staff’s antics as much as they’d come in for the food.

I’d feel this organic electricity when stepping through the front door on a Friday or Saturday (or any day’s) night, coming in for my shift, to see a band, or to be the band. Elements of that energy still exist when I now pass through, but despite everything staying largely the same on the surface, the spark just isn’t the same anymore. 

For me. And that’s totally fine.

I imagine longtime attendees of the 9:30 Club experienced a level of things not being the same when the venue grew, or have some feelings about how the new location is now gestting the old. That’s just the weirdass cycle of life: it comes and it goes and it shifts and it rifts, spilling its magic into something new yet the same. 

In her post-apocalyptic novel, The Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler says, “God is change.” 

Stated differently: “life is change.” Stated inversely (if you’ll indulge me): “stagnancy is death.” 

The 9:30 Club seems to have a mindful, relaxed grip on the reins of change. Despite being considered one of the most well-loved music venues in the world (even with its current location topping out at a mere 1,200 attendees), the club has had its fair share of shakeups and uncertainties. Through those moments, decisions were made to try something new in order to keep its essential elements the same

And so now, in light of plans for the original facility to be rebuilt next door to the current location, I wonder what newness will sprout in light of plans for the original facility to be rebuilt next door to the current location. When the past is being replicated, what sort of regeneration will come from this resurrection of a time and a place past?

“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” 

— Isaiah 43:18-19 (ESV)

// 9:30: history of a time and a place |

The existence of the 9:30 Club reminds me of those instances when you walk by a unique building with your other broke artist friends and think of what you could do with it if only you had the ever out-of-reach resources. Weeks or years pass by. You stand by and watch something predictable and mundane take up the space that displaces your unfertilized dreams — sometimes irrevocably neutering whatever charm that was inherent to the structure itself, that which set it apart as something special, even magical. 

We want to have nice things, but infer from yet another civic disappointment that the people with the deep ideas and the people with deep pockets never get to meet one another. Or maybe it’s just that those with the good ideas usually doubt their abilities to carry them out. Who knows? Not gonna get into it now.

In order to grow the 9:30 Club, though, those rarefied components came together in one husband-and-wife package. 

Bob Boilen, host of NPR’s radio show All Songs Considered and the video series Tiny Desk Concerts, was in the band Tiny Desk Unit that played as the opening act for the club’s first night. In an essay he wrote on the occasion of the club turning 40 and being closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Boilen reflected upon his relationship with 9:30, its importance, and its overall history. Boilen shared that artist Dody DiSanto and her real estate developer husband Jon Bowers fell in love with the eight-story Richardsonian architecture of  930 F Street NW, known as the Atlantic building (and, later, out of love with one another before inevitably selling the club). 

At the time of the property’s purchase, DiSanto and Bowers bought out the lease of the Atlantis, a faltering music club already in the building, and put the 9:30 Club in its place, named after the street address.

The couple’s main interest in the club, according to Boilen, "had more to do with creating a scene than ranking in money." 

Fuck, I love that.

Particularly, they wanted to showcase the local punk, go-go, and hardcore scenes. Throw them into the same ring as national acts. Bring in musicians that you couldn’t see elsewhere, so people had to go to the then nearly derelict downtown neighborhood where the club first lived.

Cultivating that scene as they were, the building itself was already part of a scene — an infamous, historical crime scene, in fact. Boilen’s band Tiny Desk Unit (and others) rented the basement as a rehearsal space. The way to enter was through the back alley, which the club shared with Ford’s Theatre, the stage for Abraham Lincoln’s presidenticide. It was in that load-in alley where horses stood waiting to facilitate John Wilkes Booths’ thespian escape.

The small, awkwardly shaped performance hall wasn’t ideal. Large columns blocked the view of the stage. The place reeked of giant rats, stale beer, nicotine, and I don’t even need to tell you what else. “The smell,” as the odor is officially known, was infamous. 

Still, eager crowds rolled in night after night, no matter the fetid stench. The smell became part of the club’s charm and lore, a putrid yet honorific perfume people endured in exchange for something far more potent. 

Where other clubs might have turned people away (like the entirety of the punk scene), DiSanto was famously chill, allowing both punk bands to perform and underage fans to attend, which — according to The Guardian’s story on 9:30’s 35th anniversary, she instructed whoever was running the door to draw large “X” marks on the hands of anyone too young to drink. These markings later became the telltale “XXX” symbol for the straightedge hardcore scene.

The Guardian quotes Donna Westmoreland, I.M.P.’s chief operating officer who began at 9:30 as a bar manager in 1990: "At the old club, we were such a tight-knit group of people, it was like a clubhouse more than a club. But it was a club that anyone that wanted to be a part of it could join.”

Audiences often packed themselves in, far past occupancy limits. Roddy Franz, the guitarist of local new wave favorite The Urban Verbs said that “for a fact” his band brought in more than 800 people in one night, more than one time.

"I compare it to the Renaissance,” said former promoter John Paige, in a Washington Post article about the club’s 30th birthday. "There was this huge energy waiting to break through. It was looking for a focus and a place, and Jon and Dody had the building."

The scene was born as intended, and yet the club wasn’t making any money. The venue’s current owner, Seth Hurwitz (who initially started booking shows for 9:30 under his company I.M.P.), said that if DiSanto “kept the losses to 100 grand, it was a good year.”

Following her divorce from Bowers, DiSanto sold the club to I.M.P. in 1986. Under the leadership of Hurwitz (alongside I.M.P. co-founder and Hurwitz’s former high school teacher Richard Heinecke), the club began to make money but didn’t lose sight of keeping the spark alive and crackling, even if that meant turning down money-making acts that they didn’t think fit the vibe.

Many compare it to a church — a place where folks congregate again an again for a unified reason, over time creating its own aura of culture and a sacred momentum that put local musicians, nationally touring bands, and everyone in between and across genres on the same stage, the same playing field

Some of the acts who played that slanted, obscured stage have since become legends in their own right include heavy-hitters like Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Minor Threat, Fugazi, and Bad Brains.

The club focused on local talent but continually booked the biggest names in the business. It soon became a status symbol for musicians who graced the stage. Still, nothing stays the same forever. The new Black Cat venue opened, boasting three times the occupancy, and 9:30 began to lose performers to the larger, better-paying, better-equipped facility.

//The Metamorphosis |

Facing the decision to change or go under, Hurwitz and Heinecke opted to find a larger location that could be renovated to meet the specifications requested by artists, eventually settling on the old WUST gospel radio station’s building (formerly owned by jazz icon Duke Ellington) to create vision for “THE definitive mega nightclub," according to the official website’s historical account. 

The 9:30 Club occupied the new 1,200-max-occupancy space in 1996. The Smashing Pumpkins kicked things off with two back-to-back shows to christen the location, which features “perfect nightlines and the best sound,” the venue’s website says, and a movable stage that can be arranged to accommodate the size of the crowd to make sure the space feels full regardless of the audience.

Oh, also, the smell and the rats are gone. “I spent 16 years apologizing for the old place, and now bands come in and tell me how much they love the place. I never get tired of hearing that,” said Hurwitz, in the Washington Post article. 

In the same story, singer Peter Zaremba said, “For the Fleshtones, the new 9:30 club doesn't have the same feeling of home that the original did. It's a really fine, fine place to play, and they still treat bands really well. But it's a different scene, a different audience. It's just not 1980 anymore. But that's a good thing.”

Other acts that have played the 9:30 Club are Lianne La Havas, of Montreal, Femi Kuti, Sonic Youth, David Bowie, The Cranberries, tUnE-yArDs, Sufjan Stevens, Ani DiFranco, James Brown, Animal Collective, Radiohead, Beastie Boys, Bob Dylan, Cat Power, and (you get the damn idea … pretty much anyone considered great by more than a few).

9:30 has many times been classified as the No. 1 nightclub in Billboard, Pollstar, and Rolling Stone, more than any other club in the country. And in addition to music, the club has also hosted comedy, art, and fashion showcases, as well as music video dance events that took place before MTV even existed.

It doesn't take long to discern why 9:30 had such a meteoric rise in its reputation and popularity, having birthed itself in a lovely, fuming shithole. In the introduction of the coffee table book 9:30: A Time and A Place, released for the club’s 35th anniversary, author Roger Gastman said that "the biggest surprise in doing the research for this sprawling history you now hold in your hands was how 9:30 has had to deal with countless hurdles and risks along the way. And they made it here by sticking to their guns, backing their staff, and outworking anybody who opposed them.”

The current location contains a Hall of Records, which houses albums from every headliner who has ever played the club. And in 2016, “Live At 9:30” began airing on TV, which the club website describes as “a dynamic, modern-day music variety series, and the best seat (that’s not) in the house."

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There’s no way to truly recapture the magic from a distinct time and place, and that’s kind of the point. What made those moments mythical is what will make mythical moments out of those to come. No harkening back, existing being as it is, unfurling before our eyes while we unfurl (and later die).

We can’t recreate things as they were, but you can go to 9:30 and see, say, Fleetwood Mac play era-defining songs from decades past. This makes me consider what we are calling up by hosting such a performance. Like if you were one of the people who RickRolled themselves by going to the Rick Astley concert on Valentine’s Day in 2017, you step back into another time to experience a song that most everyone has heard. 

We are calling up not just the songs but the feelings you had when you first heard them, a moment in our collective timelines we can pull out like a creased Poloroid to coo over together in sweet-and-sour nostalgia.

No, we can’t quite recreate things as they were, but why would we when there’s so much that we can create new, now? 

9:30 sits in the gaping nexus that otherwise distinguishes (at least in our minds)  “us” and “them” — where those who have “made it” and those still struggling to find their way meet on the same plane, mending the perception that believing in one’s self and actualizing on your abilities are only for others’ lives. That dreams and transformations are only for others.

Only for others, we say? Let’s do some lexical geometry to solve this dilemma:

If “other” (in the tradition I was raised) is a definition for the word “holy,” and “holy” is the word used to describe “God” (e.g., “God is holy”), and, as Octavia Butler says, “God is change,” then, if we truly believe unto our personal selves that growth and magic are only for “others,” then, we might not be so wrong. 

How we handle that reality just depends on how we interpret it, both in our minds and through our hands: change or don’t (or ... die, so-to-speak).

You got this. I got this. The new 9:30 gets this. I’m hoping to see some of my favorite artists play the club sometime soon. Maybe you will, too. And if you happen to see a big-haired Argentine demigirl slipping in a set of earplugs before the show, know that it’s OK to say, “hello.” Ask her about change.