New Direction turns tide

Q and A with co-owner of thriving all-ages venue

The New Direction opened as Fargo-Moorhead’s only full time all-ages D.I.Y. punk venue almost 5 years ago in downtown Fargo by a group of local musicians and promoters hoping to have a steady place to host bands for kids. While punk and hardcore music are its main sources of music, the venue is really open to letting anyone come in and use the space for any type of genre of music.

As college students return to town, we thought it would be a good time to highlight the story of the once fledgling now thriving venue. Two years ago, the owners of the New Direction made the decision to close because of poor attendance and inability to pay bills. A few weeks later they reversed the decision and now the New Direction is doing better than ever before. What happened to change things? We sat down with Jack Stenerson, co-owner of the New Direction to find out how they were able to stay open and what the future holds.

HPR: Can you tell us the story of how close the New Direction was to closing?

Jack Stenerson: It was back in the summer of 2013. Summers in general had always been pretty slow for shows before The New Direction was around. That’s the time when everyone wants to tour but nobody really wants to go to shows, at least for all-ages shows. So we came off a tough winter, rent was still pretty expensive at the time, we’d always struggled with what the landlord wanted for rent. We thought we could make it work originally but it always became a struggle for us. So it just kind of came where every month from probably the beginning of 2013 until we made the decision to close, we were all paying out of pocket, there’s a group of us stuffing as much money as we could into the venue to keep it open.

So I think it was probably mid-August that we all decided. There was another show it was a very popular touring band that came but like eight people paid so we lost a bunch of money on that show again too. So we all went in a room together and decided this isn’t worth it any more. We tried, we did the best we could but there’s not the support and need for an all-ages space like this. So we had the plans, we threw out a timeframe on when we were going to close and what we were going to do, planned a date for a last show and everything. And then got in touch with the landlord and told them we were going to be leaving the place. And it was right after the building got sold to Goldmark. So there was a transitionary period for ownership too. About two months after Goldmark bought the building is when we decided we were going to close down.

So I let the new landlord know and then we announced it on Facebook and everyone was honestly pretty devastated about it. We tried to explain it as best we could why we were closing and the people were like, if there’s anything we can do, let us know. And it was like hey sorry, the decision’s already made, things are in place. We started taking stuff out of there, that just pretty much the end of it.

And then a couple things happened around the same time to kind of turn the tide on the whole thing. First of all, there was a kid who had been going to shows since before the New Direction so I had known him for years at that point. We were the last two people in the venue and we were just kind of hanging out, I was doing the dishes, putting away stuff, microphones and everything and closing up. We were talking about it closing and he was just venting to me on how much it meant to him and he actually broke down into tears and said, “This place is so important to me, I am going to miss it so much. I don’t know what we’re going to do as a music scene without it.”

That was kind of an eye opener for me like wow this place really does mean so much to certain people and to us too, to a lot of people. So that was a big thing and I was like yeah man I wish there was something I could do. The next day, a person in one of the spaces above our space in the same building, she let the landlord know she was moving out too. So what happened was the landlord lost two of their main tenants in the building, us being in the basement and then them upstairs.

So he gave me a call and I assuming it’s because half their income was now gone, he gave me a call basically offering us a deal like, “Hey, I’ll give you a month’s rent for free if you want to extend your lease for another year.” I said, “No man. I am sorry, we already made the decision, we’re done.” Then he was essentially begging us to stay in certain ways and then I kept saying no to his offers because we weren’t going to stay there. And then he came back with an offer at the end of that call that was $350 less per month than we were paying originally and he wanted us to sign a two year lease on it. And I’m like that’s a fantastic offer but I don’t want to be in it for that long, I don’t want to be in a two year lease. So he’s like so do this certain dollar amount for a one year lease, you guys can have some freedom on there too. And then I said well let me talk to the guys, we never expected this. So I brought the offer back to the other guys at the same time and we all decided that maybe we could make it work. Based on how much support we’d gotten from people being bummed about us closing, we made the decision about three weeks after we announced we were closing. I signed that new lease and we turned around and decided we were opening.

And the kind of the whole tides changed after that. Attendance is way up, new local bands: we were getting so many emails about local bands wanting to play, people wanting to do things from like comedy nights to somebody had a role playing game murder mystery party night kind of thing, they did that once a month and people started renting it out for band practices and the support was just kind of overwhelming after we closed and now it’s going on two years after we decided we were going to close and we haven’t had a bad month since. We haven’t had to pay in since, we’ve been able to build up a savings account and get cooler, better bands through and finally upgrade the sound system like we wanted to and get new microphones in and do a bunch of things we never thought we’d be able to do so after that closing thing. The support from the community just became pretty overwhelming.”

HPR: What was the biggest key to remaining open? A nice landlord or some or luck or what?

JS: It’s a combination of both. It’s a lot of luck and a lot of things happening the same time that worked out. The landlord is actually super great. Goldmark hasn’t really bothered us at all with anything. His buddy was roommates with the people in the band Disturbed so they used to hang out all the time back in the day so he’s like super into rock music and everything and he just thought it was the coolest thing we were doing stuff down there.

Even before we told him we were closing, he was like, “Hey, if there’s anything you ever need, let me know. We’ll try to get it taken care of. He’s been supporting us a lot and having a good landlord is really key to doing a venue because we’re loud and annoying to probably the other tenants but we’ve never had any problems with him or the other tenants around so he has played a big role in us being able to stay open.

HPR: How important is it for a community like Fargo to have a regular, all-ages venue? Losing that, what would that do to a community?

JS: We went a while without a venue beforehand. We’ve always had certain venues around but The Aquarium’s mostly 21 (plus). We used to book at a place called Gio’s but that got super expensive. So there are places you can technically do all-ages shows but affordable all-ages shows, that’s the real issue. Without the kids in the area, the high school bands and the freshmen in college, they wouldn’t have a place to play at all because they wouldn’t be able to get the $600 to rent out Gio’s. But they can pay a $50 deposit here and put on a show here with it only being that $50. I think the amount of shows in the area would definitely suffer and it really gives kids stuff to do so I’d like to think we are proving service for the community in a lot of ways. Kids have a place to go, without that, the whole music and the arts in the downtown community would kind of suffer without an all-ages place.

HPR: Looking ahead, what are you most excited about for the future?

JS: For the future, we have a great calendar coming into the Fall. We have a two-day festival planned for December but that is going to be mostly hardcore music. Every year, we’ve been doing New Direction Fest as kind of a celebration of all the local and regional music around, just kind of the best of that as well as an anniversary or birthday of the New Direction. This year New Direction Fest 5 is going to be The New Direction’s fifth birthday. And for a place that was opened by just a couple of punk kids who didn’t know what they were doing, being able to stick around for five years is pretty awesome and something that I never thought would happen and is something I am super excited about and super grateful for to be able to do it.

HPR: What have you learned throughout this process going through all that?

JS: Throughout the process, I’ve learned a ton. I booked shows before that but being a show promoter is way, way different than being a business owner. As we were opening, we were like, “Oh taxes, wow that’s a thing.” And then we had to keep a solid book of how much we made and spending and everything, so learning to be a business owner in a couple weeks was kind of a crazy thing but it’s been a learning experience throughout the entire years. We still learn new things, like new better ways to do thing, it’s that kind of transition role from a promoter, just a kid who goes to shows to an actual legitimate business owner.

HPR: If anyone wants to go shows or get involved, what would you recommend?

JS: We have our online calendar at newdirectionfargo.com and then if they want to get in touch with us about pretty much everything, it’s newdirectionfargo@gmail.com so they can get in touch with us. They can talk to us at shows. We have a lot of things for helping the venue even when there are not shows. Like twice a year we have a cleaning day where we just go and clean the entire venue from top to bottom and we have volunteers come through there and we buy them pizza and everyone hangs out and listens to music and keeps the venue looking nice.

There’s a lot of ways people can get involved. We’re starting a street team so people can just come to a show or email us and we’ll get them going on that. We’ll give them some handbills, we’ll give them some flyers and kind of let them know what areas need to be hit in town and just kind of set them free on that. We’re always looking for promotion help like that.