A look behind the curtains of the San Diego music scene
In an unsuspecting corner of a normal street, inside a normal looking venue is a simple layout — A stage and a small capacity area for concertgoers. Band after band cross the stage, setting up their instruments while a sound engineer makes sure they have the proper levels and sound. Music floods the room and the people, mostly teenagers and young adults, move to the rhythms that pass through the speakers.
This is the San Diego music scene. Off the beaten path of bigger and more well known venues like the Observatory, SOMA and the Irenic or the age 21 and up establishments like Soda Bar and The Casbah. It’s the smaller capacity venues that house 50 to 100 people and book almost exclusively local bands that’s the heart of the music scene in America’s Finest City. It’s also one of the biggest problems plaguing the budding scene, according to Zane Shrem-Besnoy, a local promoter and musician.
Photo by Angelica Wallingford
“There needs to be more like 100 capacity rooms,” Shrem-Besnoy explained. “Che Café has a capacity of like 150 which is perfect…it doesn’t feel empty if there’s only 50 people in there and a lot of local bands that’s what they could pull; about 50 people.”
However, the smaller capacity venues are few and far between, which Shrem-Besnoy says is the one of the reasons why bands, artists and producers who currently call San Diego home might pack their instruments and head north to the thriving scene in Los Angeles.
THE HOMETOWN TRIO
One of the many hometown bands playing the scene and gaining traction is glow!. The trio, made up of San Diego State University Jewish Studies major Sophie Parker, Dagger De La Vergne and Johnny “Blaze” Hurst, have writing together since May 2018.
Before the powerhouse trio became known as glow! around the scene, the members were heavily involved with had other musical projects. Sophia and Dagger met in 2015, started writing music together soon there after and started a band called Trouter Space. However, after De La Vergne moved to Utah for a short period of time, Trouter Space became less active. It wasn’t until he came back summer 2018 and moved in with Sophia that the genesis of glow! began to form.
“I had a lot of songs that were solo songs that I didn’t know what to do with because I really wasn’t doing the Trouter Space thing as much anymore,” De La Vergne said. “When I came out here I was living with her (Sophia) because I didn’t really have a place to stay and we just put all the songs together.”
The duo was looking for a drummer when De La Vergne met Hurst at a Street Surfers and Foxhide show at local venue Queen Bee’s. Hurst, who has a background playing for other local bands in San Diego, also knew Sophia from high school. With the addition of Hurst, the band has been playing shows since December and consistently writing songs since May 2018.
“We just like clicked and he started playing drums for us and the whole band just came together at that point,” De La Vergne said. “He just added a million times more dynamic…”
In a house atop a hill in La Mesa a residential space is turned into an impromptu rehearsal area. In between the couch and the TV stand sits a drum set. To the right of the front door, chords wind the hardwood floor plugged into the amplifiers and tuners. Next to the amps, lone microphone stand where Parker and De La Vergne will switch lead vocals come practice time.
Amongst the chaos of chords and guitar pedals, Hurst sets up his drum kit placing a shirt as a muffler atop his snare, which he later tosses aside before playing one of the band’s songs. He runs through the percussion part of a song that he was working on before they jump into their first song for the hours long rehearsal.
The band’s experience in the local music scene has been overall a good experience, De La Vergne claims. The problem, he says, lies within the organization of shows and the lack of venues to showcase local artists.
“Collectively, I think there’s a lot of good music that comes from here and I love a lot of the bands that come from here,” De La Vergne said. “At the same time it is pretty messy and inconsistent, not together and not really organized.”
FEW AND FAR BETWEEN
The band points to something that is usually central to a thriving music and arts scene: venues, or in San Diego’s case, a lack thereof.
“If you’re a local band and you’re looking for a venue it’s such an uphill battle,” Shrem-Besnoy said. “There’s just not venues… and I think that’s why the music scene has such a hard time getting legs.”
One of the main problems the members of glow! point out is the seemingly impossible list of requirements that bigger venues have in order for bands to play there. The perspective of bands and artists with smaller followings, the bigger venues tend to focus more on the money the can make from a show rather than just getting the music out there. How many people can the band get to attend and presale tickets are just some of the factors that can make or break a band playing these bigger venues.
One solution that many local groups have come up with to combat the lack of venues is to create their own in the form of house shows. Turning their living space into a functioning venue, holding the capacity crowds that would have otherwise turned up at these smaller venues like the Che Café.
“It’s kind of inhibiting to people like us who are smaller trying to get our name out there, we have all these requirements that we don’t meet for them,” Hurst said. “Everybody is doing house shows because all the venues around here are way to demanding.”
Photo by Angelica Wallingford
When the Che Café closed for renovations a few years ago, 19-year-old promoter Héctor Castro didn’t know where he could throw shows that the longtime San Diego establishment once held on a regular basis but also bring together the community that once frequented these shows.
“That really put a roadblock for us because we love to perform, we love to throw shows, we love to have spaces where people can hang out, where we can see our friends,” Castro said. “We didn’t know where to go, so we started throwing house shows.”
While house shows have become a mainstay across San Diego County, it comes with it’s own set of problems. The main being that these DIY shows are located in residential areas and often times can be unorganized, De La Vergne said.
Kalani Lomu, formerly of longtime San Diego band Bad Kids, has been active in the scene since 2011 and has played in most of the venues scattered throughout San Diego. For Lomu, it’s not the lack of venues that are the problem; it’s the lack of all-ages venues that are the real issue since most bars can double as a performance space.
“The young kids make up a lot of the show goers in the scene and yet there’s like three all ages venues,” Lomu said. “For young bands it’s really not fun being escorted into the venue by the bouncer and then have you kicked to the curb after your set.”
MONEY TALKS
Aside from the lack of venues being an issue for most bands, another issue is the music business in San Diego and the lack of accessibility for people of all backgrounds to participate, according to Castro.
“I live in San Yisidro, I’m not rich, I’m not even in the middle class, I’m not even in the low middle class. I can’t afford to throw $1000 into shows,” Castro said. “It would be amazing to have smaller spaces that can see that and say ‘we have money, we have these promoters that can help you throw these shows and have them happen, we can have spaces that help you have a performance,’ it would be amazing if we had more of that because we don’t.”
The issue of profiting from artists isn’t something particularly new when it comes to music scenes anywhere. The concept of “pay to play” has been used in venues for so long that it’s become almost expected and is something that Shrem-Besnoy disagrees with completely.
“These people come out to see the bands on the stage,” Shrem-Besnoy said. “They (the bands) deserved to get paid because if it wasn’t for them people wouldn’t be coming to the venue.”
Castro started producing shows when he was 17, at the time he considered it to be a great opportunity because he knew the bands he was booking and the venues to hold the events. At that time, because of his connections, it didn’t cost anything for him to put on an event.
However, with his past two shows he decided to invest about $600 of his own money to create an ambiance for his productions that other venues wouldn’t have otherwise been able to accommodate. Castro took it as a risk because he didn’t know whether he would make a return on his investment and pay out the bands that performed.
“It is kind of a weight on me because I know that if no one shows up, I’m going to have to pay out of my pocket and I end up losing money and hurting me,” Castro said. “It scares me from throwing more shows because I don’t know if its going to be helpful for the community or I’m just going to crumble down and not be able to give more to the community.”
COMMUNITY THROUGH DIVERSITY
For Castro, Shrem-Besnoy, Lomu and the members of glow! the San Diego music scene is more than just a bunch of artists showcasing their work, it’s a community with music just as diverse as the people that make it.
“One thing about San Diego is that there’s everything here. Going off of bands there’s Beach Goons, they’re like surf rock. You have hardcore bands like frontside… You have things like Sestivity, which is going in a new direction that mixes keyboards and MIDI controlled sounds into their punk music. And then you just have contemporary rock such as Street Surfers, Wizard and all those guys. Then you have rappers, 1207 is huge,” Hurst said. “They’ve made a name for themselves all out of San Diego.”
While San Diego’s music scene might not be as big as the one in Los Angeles, it doesn’t mean that the culture isn’t there and music plays a huge part in that, Lomu claims.
“There’s so much different music coming out of this place it’s honestly hard to keep track of,” Lomu said. “We might not be known as a ‘music city’ but honestly we probably should be.”
