Rather than spending your Saturday night at a sweaty basement party or in the Carroll Room, take an eight-minute walk downtown to local Northampton venue The Parlor Room instead. Following a mission to make live music more accessible, the venue is in the process of transitioning to a non-profit organization and hopes to attract a larger audience of college students.
“We’re essentially on campus,” said Chris Freeman, the President and Director of the organization. “We want to be an extra resource for student life.” Freeman cites late-night DJ sets, coffeehouse concerts, a cappella shows, comedy nights and open mics as potential Smithie-run events that could take place in The Parlor Room. Currently, the BYOB venue is open five or six nights a week for live music and other events like makers’ markets and workshops.
Other new initiatives include a school of music and a membership program, which gives access to exclusive members-only events and discounted tickets. The first members-only event will take place this Saturday, where Josh Ritter, a singer-songwriter signed with Signature Sounds, will be performing a free set and Q&A before his nearly sold-out show. Memberships are free for students and low-income individuals in order to promote accessibility.
Smithies may also be able to perform at The Parlor Room to open for professional musicians. “The Parlor Room wants to focus more on giving a platform to younger artists,” said Clara Stokes ’24, a student intern at the Parlor Room. Recent musicians who’ve played include Nora Brown, Haley Heynderickx and four Grammy-winning artists in the past few months alone; in past years, the likes of Adrianne Lenker and Lake Street Dive have sold out shows at the 100-seat venue.
For Freeman, the venue holds sentimental value. He played The Parlor Room with his band back in 2013, years before he began working there. Before the decision came to become a non-profit, Freeman recalls asking himself, “How could I save the place? I wanted to make a viable business out of sustaining our legacy.”
The venue’s current transition to not-for-profit marks a delineation, but not a full split, between the listening room and its parent company Signature Sounds Recordings. Jim Olsen, a co-founder of Signature Sounds, moved the label to its current offices on 32 Masonic Street in 2012 and opened the intimate venue in the front listening room. Olsen will retain a spot on the board of the non-profit.
The transition to a non-profit came as a solution to low profit margins and difficulty drawing in younger audiences. “We’ve been a culturally successful venue for a long time,” said Freeman. “We’re known for giving fair deals to artists and keeping the music as the center of attention. But it got to the point where it was more work than was profitable for Signature Sounds to keep the venue open.”
With non-profit status, The Parlor Room can apply for grants and will be able to follow a more mission-driven rather than profit-driven approach. Freeman feels that this is especially important given the closing of several theaters in Northampton. Legacy venues Pearl Street Nightclub and Iron Horse Music Hall, owned by Eric Suher, the controversial figure behind Iron Horse Entertainment group, have yet to reopen after the pandemic, and The Calvin Theater (another IHEG venue) hasn’t fully bounced back.
“Downtown Northampton is an important, vibrant center for the arts,” said Freeman. “A lot of new venues are opening in Western Mass., but they’re scattered.” The Parlor Room’s intimate, seated shows make the listening room a supportive place for new or up-and-coming independent musicians, who can “gain a foothold in NoHo,” stated Freeman. “It’s the first place where bands playing in this area can gain a really attentive audience.”
For Smithies interested in working with small businesses, marketing or pretty much any aspect of the music industry, The Parlor Room is ready to provide opportunities. The organization has plans to connect with the Lazarus Career Center to provide Praxis-funded internships in everything from sound engineering to booking shows and writing press releases. And because of The Parlor Room’s close relationship with Signature Sounds, they also plan to host seminars and workshops with people from different parts of the industry, including musicians, managers, publicists and record label executives.
Freeman wants to highlight that The Parlor Room in its new form will be about even more than listening to music. It’s meant as a communal space, meant to bring together community members, artists and students. As Freeman puts it, “It’s about building a life in music.”
