Karli Ingersoll
“You are lucky to have a venue like this. Not all cities have a place like this.”
Jen Wasner of Wye Oak soberly states from the stage in between songs. Almost mournful. Like, man, this should be the norm. But it’s not.
She’s one of my musical heroes so basically I’m on the verge of tears standing ten feet from the stage. The friends standing around me pat my shoulder and glance over knowing how validating a statement like that is coming from someone like her.
“Thanks so much for having us, so many of my friends have told me I have to play here and I feel so honored to be here finally!”
I nod and smile and shake Riley Walker’s hand. I was working the door and Riley is this rugged mid-western by way of Brooklyn guitarist/songwriter. I had added his song “The Roundabout” to one of my playlists a few years before. The world feels small when you find these artists you like and then one day the booking email arrives…”Riley Walker at The Bartlett on such and such a date”. My husband and business partner Caleb is sitting on the couch and starts playing this song on his laptop that sounds familiar. “Hey, what do you think of this?” And of course I’m like, “That’s Riley Walker. I love that song.” So, we book him.
The show comes along and not that many people show up. I post on facebook to try to drum up some extra last minute attendance. It doesn’t work. The music is GOOD. The performance is electric. The band’s drummer is insane. After I pack up my duties at the door I grab a drink and find a spot near the stage to enjoy the set. I can tell everyone in the room and on stage feel like they are part of something special. The band goes on a tangent stretching what would normally be a 5 minute song to an extra 15 minutes. Later one of them tells me they’ve never connected like that on stage before.
“This is one of my favorite venues in the country.”
I’m not skeptical. I’ve been to a lot of venues and Jessica Dobson of Deep Sea Diver has been to ten times as many as me, so when she says it, I believe her. Most small venues are faceless and personality-less. Places where turnover is high and probably no one on staff has even heard of the music coming to the stage that night. Do the people working here even like music? I wonder what kind of person owns this place? Do they ever set foot in it? When we first opened The Bartlett it seemed easy to do it better. Keep it clean, be nice, value the art form of music. Have good sound. Easy, right? Yeah.
My feet are always heavy as I inch toward the door
I thought we’d leave this for ourselves a hundred times before
But I guess we’re always leaving even when we look the same
And it eases me somehow to know that even this will change
Angel Olsen is on stage. After kind of a garage-rock set with her whole band, everyone leaves the stage. She methodically plays through the song “White Fire”, eyes transfixed somewhere in the audience. I fear for the person who makes eye contact. Clear, fierce, defiant. The room is completely silent. The song slows and ends so quietly it’s almost uncomfortable. “Fierce and light and young…Fierce and light and young…”
I’m moved. Maybe it takes courage to end a set like that, or maybe it’s fueled by anger and rebellion. Maybe it’s a big “fuck you” to the way her management or friends or band might suggest a set be capped. Most people would end with their biggest, most popular song! She’s still a rising artist, relatively obscure. The 150 cap room is full, but not sold out.
I spent a lot of time pondering this moment. Why it was so inspiring to me? Why it made me think and feel so many things? It’s humanity and art all wrapped into one. It’s contrast. It’s seeing something you’ve never seen before. It’s that feeling when you know you are experiencing something unfathomably bigger than this very moment. The connectedness of the process of art, the performance of it and the experience of that performance.
“I think we should close The Bartlett.”
“Me too.”
Words I spent at least two years fighting off finally felt so easy.
I’ve got a mind-capsule of stories. Each one stowed away, accompanied by a photo in my phone or a short clip posted to an instagram story. Or if I’m lucky, a batch of incredible photos by Brandon Vasquez or Erick Doxey.
But none of that changes how traumatically challenging it has been to keep it open for 6 years. Along the way we’ve realized why The Bartlett isn’t the norm. It’s not a sustainable model. It technically is too good to be true. And my life has been wrapped up in that reality for 6 years. It is such constant confusion to have created something so beloved to myself and others, that so obviously isn’t working. We spent years in conversations about how to fix it. Maybe a subscription model? Maybe we make it a non-profit? Maybe we book more shows! Maybe we book less shows?? We talked ourselves sick. It has always been a creative problem with no solution. And the longer we spent trying to fix it, the more we naturally had to face it.
You can’t monetize goodness. You just can’t. The Bartlett has been this picture of what Spokane is to me. Celebratory, thoughtful, unpredictable, fanatic, connected…loving. None of those things make a successful business. But they make a dang exciting community to be a part of.
I’m heart-broken that we no-longer have this great space to inhabit. But I’m thrilled about what we’ve done and what I’ve experienced. 4 walls and a great sound system have so much power and The Bartlett has shown that. But the momentum we’ve gathered won’t be slowed easily. My favorite part looking back is how much we’ve found ourselves. Spokane has gone from a fractured, disheveled music community to a strong, inter-connected, collaborative community. Inter-generational, genre diverse and non-competitive. Music fans in this town have emerged and bonded and developed routines of championing live music at every venue and festival.
Together we are the essence of The Bartlett and we’re still alive, so let’s just keep on doing more of what we’ve been doing.
MUCH LOVE,
KARLI INGERSOLL