What makes a great venue?
My friend Sofia Talvik and I call them “unicorns” — those rare performance spaces that sound great, feel great, and inspire the audience too.
Consequence of Sound has compiled a fun list of 100 such unicorns, concentrating on great American music venues, covering rooms and outdoor spaces of all shapes and sizes, from a small strip mall oasis to Madison Square Garden.
I think I’ve played on half a dozen of these stages, seen great shows at quite a few more, and plan to tackle the rest before my 500th birthday.
How about you? What do you think makes a great venue?
Let us know about your favorite venue (in any country) in the comments below.
Chris Robley is an acclaimed singer-songwriter and award-winning poet from Maine.
His Beatlesque indie-pop and milltown Americana songs have been praised by The Associated Press, No Depression, KCRW, The LA Times, Boston Globe, NPR, American Songwriter, and others.
His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, The Poetry Review, and more.
Robley has received a Maine Literary Award in Poetry, Boulevard’s Emerging Writers Prize for Poetry, and in 2016 was selected by former US-poet laureate Robert Pinsky as a finalist for the Dorset Prize.