On May 1, The Rebel Lounge kicked off a month-long 10-year anniversary celebration, and the Indian School Road live music venue says it will continue to book new and diverse bands for Phoenix area music fans – hopefully, well into the next decade (photo by Kathryn M. Miller).
On May 1, The Rebel Lounge kicked off a month-long 10-year anniversary celebration with back-to-back performances by popular Arizona band Authority Zero. A dozen or so more local bands will take the stage throughout May and into June as part of their “Ten Year Anniversary Series.” But before the celebrations began, we caught up with Stephen Chilton, who owns and manages the club, to find out how it all began and what is next for the music venue.
The story really begins, though, with his local concert promotion company, Psyko Steve Presents.
“I started promoting small DIY shows, mostly local artists, when I was in high school in 2000,” said Chilton, “and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
“I went to a lot of shows and was just really into music – local music, especially. A lot of my friends in high school were in bands but they didn’t really know anyone, and I did,” Chilton recalled. “I started small, doing shows downtown at Modified Arts and other spaces that was, at first, a hobby or side thing through high school and college. It just snowballed and grew – I started helping friends, then made more friends and helped them and we got to this point.”
Today, Psyko Steve Presents has around a dozen full-time employees, in addition to the staff at Rebel Lounge, and they will promote in the neighborhood of 700 concerts this year at venues in Arizona and New Mexico.
“Every year we’ve sold more tickets than the last year,” he said. And a lot of their success has come from working with artists when they are first starting out, and then continuing to work with them over the years.
“The biggest show we have on our calendar right now is Men I Trust at Arizona Financial Theatre [Aug. 23], a band we booked at Rebel Lounge a few times years ago. Then we took them to Crescent Ballroom, then to The Van Buren, and now they’re going back to Arizona Financial for the second time. So, a lot of the growth is growing with the artists we work with.”
Another example, “We just did our 8123 Fest with the band The Maine from here. I was booking all their high school shows before they were The Maine. I’ve worked with them for 17 years now and we’ve grown with them,” Chilton said.
It is those kinds of relationships that helped build The Rebel Lounge, taking a cue from its legendary predecessor, The Mason Jar. Founded in 1979, Mason Jar had a reputation for hosting some of rock’s biggest bands on their way to stardom – Rage Against the Machine, Tool, Jane’s Addiction, Green Day, Guns ‘N’ Roses and Nirvana. The early 2000s brought more diverse bands like The Black Keys, Fall Out Boy and Jimmy Eat World. The Mason Jar closed in 2005 and it was revived as a live music venue in 2015 by Chilton and a business partner, becoming The Rebel Lounge.
Rebel has continued in the spirit of Mason Jar – a place where up-and-coming bands play for the first time.
“That spirit of just booking the best new bands is what we try to do at Rebel, and some of those are going to become big,” Chilton said. “We had Benson Boone at Rebel twice and he’s one of the biggest acts in the world right now. We had Chappell Roan there twice, we had Charley Crockett – all when they were doing 100, 200 tickets. We had Charley Crockett in there three times and it never sold out and the last time we brought him to The Van Buren, it sold out the day it went on sale.
“Watching those artists is kind of the best part. All those acts start somewhere. We try to be that place that is really good to new artists. That’s the main goal – particularly with local artists.”
As the venue celebrates its 10th anniversary, the concert series is also celebrating local Arizona bands and the diversity of music that the state fosters; bands such as Authority Zero, who kicked off the series, and Roger Clyne, who played May 5, and groups coming later this month – The Summer Set (May 17), Phoenix Afrobeat Orchestra (May 22), Breakup Shoes (May 24), The Maine (June 4) and more.
Throughout the month, beyond live music, the venue hosts Ghost Poetry, a local poetry slam (“A staff favorite each month,” Chilton said), and other events. And they are holding their own, despite the challenges facing the industry and the ups and downs of the economy.
“Everything has been pretty rocky since COVID,” Chilton said. “It goes in waves. Things at the Rebel level are really struggling. All the huge A-listers are doing incredibly well right now. At the bottom, it is suffering because of that. You see ticket prices going up and people are prioritizing those A-list stars right now, so it’s a lot harder to promote small club shows. A lot of clubs are struggling and a lot of acts at that small level are really struggling. And the cost of touring has just gone through the roof. All of that is putting pressure on ticket prices. It’s a weird time right now for live events.”
During another “weird time,” Chilton sat on the board of the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) when it was founded in March 2020. The organization’s focus then was to help music venues survive the pandemic. While he has taken a step back from the organization, he is still a member and endorses their current focus.
“The big thing they are working on right now, which I’m very supportive of, is trying to get some reforms around ticketing legislation and to protect against some of the worst predatory scalpers,” he said. “The problem with scalpers has gotten worse and worse – they’ve gotten more sophisticated. We are really fighting to protect that ticket price to make sure that fans are able to buy tickets at reasonable prices and make sure that scalpers are not in the middle of that.”
He added, “We see it at Rebel – speculative tickets and scalpers – a show sells out and fans pay insane prices. It’s always frustrating when we see tickets that were $20 or $25 listed for $200. We’re not seeing any of that, the artist is not seeing any of that and the fans are getting ripped off. It’s not fair.”
While NIVA works on the issue legislatively, the biggest way that music fans can support their favorite band and local venues is to avoid the ticket sale/resale hubs if possible and buy direct from the venue.
It can be confusing, Chilton said, for consumers to know what websites are legitimate, what site is a fan club site or secondary sale point, “Their entire business model is to sell you that ticket for more than I am selling it. Try and go to the venue’s website or figure out what the venue’s ticketing is. That will almost always be the cheapest.”
Looking down the road, Chilton says that The Rebel Lounge will keep doing what it does best: bring new, diverse acts to its stage and to the Phoenix audience.
“In the next 10 years, it will be exciting to see what artists come out of the Rebel. We’re a small space and we’ll just keep doing what we’ve been doing and working with new artists. And who knows who the next big thing will be. The artists that are going to come out of Rebel five years from now might not even be touring or making music right now. That’s the fun part – watching who’s on our calendar.
“Penelope Road has a ton of potential. Julia Wolf has a ton of potential. Breakup Shoes, who is local, have a ton of potential. Good Boy Daisy is doing great. I don’t know which one of those is going to be a star, but I know whoever that star is in five years is probably on the Rebel’s calendar right now.”
He added, “Phoenix has such a diverse music scene right now, which is really exciting, and whatever music you are into, you can probably find it at Rebel.”
The Rebel Lounge is located at 2303 E. Indian School Road. Learn more at www.therebellounge.com.
