DIY Venues: The Independent Music Scene of Milwaukee

It is a Saturday afternoon in a grungy, old house off Locust Avenue. The house smells of heavy incense, with psychedelic tapestries draped on the walls filled with second-hand bohemian furniture with clothing draped across it. These elements are the usual trappings of renters in their early twenties, but with one key difference, Pietro Vercuzio, 20, and his roommate, Jeffery Ingle, 20, are in the process of throwing their first show out of their new DIY venue, the Sub Cellar.

“I love live music,” said Vercuzio, “It is my favorite form of entertainment, so I feel like it’s a valid cause, and I want to help support these artists.”

People are loading amps from cars into a basement that is adorned with string lights and musical gear. Musicians are performing sound checks as people start to pile in.

“We bought a drumkit which we put in the basement, and our friends started to use it as a practice space,” said Ingle, “That started as an idea that this is a cool space and maybe if we bring people with actual talent then it could turn into something really special.”

Vercuzio’s burgeoning venue is one of many DIY venues that populate the East Side of Milwaukee, venues that aim to create a space for independent musicians looking to hone their craft and play live without the limitations of venues such as the Rave or The Fiserv Forum.

Hunter “LoBi” LoBianco is a 24-year-old musician and founder of the Oscillator Lounge, another DIY venue that is run out of a surprisingly spacious attic off of Oakland Avenue. “There is a large amount of gatekeeping and favoritism as with any scene, and we want to avoid that, ideally,” said LoBianco, “A lot of DIY venues do not want to do that, we don’t look at social media following as a prerequisite for you to play here, we try to promote all kinds of music regardless of the artist’s following.”

The Lounge aims to become a multi-media venue. It is currently offering an event space for musical artists to perform with plans to expand to other artistic ventures such as independent film festivals and poetry readings.

LoBianco runs the Lounge with his partner, Elizaveta Lepikhova, a 23-year-old UWM graduate student, whom he describes as the beating heart of the venue.

“I answer DMs on time, make sure that people are wearing their masks, customize the stamps for entry, and during the shows, shoot photos and video and upload them to Google Drive,” said Lepikhova, “Many of friends are musicians, so I wanted to support this community and help out my partner.

Over in RiverWest, Tyler Gwizdek, a 31-year-old guitarist, and his roommates run HeapFest. The venue throws a free 12-hour music festival consisting of mostly metal and rock acts.

“Me and my roommates went to this three-day festival called MayBash and we were inspired by them we wanted to do our own thing,” said Gwizdek. “Over the next year, we built a stage and we got everything, threw our first show and started doing shows continuously.”

HeapFest occurs twice or thrice a year from noon to midnight, with local and touring artists. The artists often perform on top of a makeshift stage built Gwizdek per city ordinance codes.

“With the Rave, you have to follow rules and to get food or drinks is expensive and the band disappears backstage”, said Gwizdek. “I like the feel of a backyard venue, you get to meet the band afterwards and talk with them, it feels more personal.”

While all of these venues are self-sustaining, there is a shared concern that they will eventually have the same institutional problems that befall the more established venues. Midcoast Collective is a grassroots abolitionist organization that focuses on raising funds for the organizations that benefit the community through their concert series with artists that donate their time.

“It was pretty organic,” said Steph Wetter, a 25-year-old musician and organizer at Midcoast, ” A lot of us are musicians, but we’re also organizers, all this happened during the pandemic and the post-George Floyd uprisings, so we want to have the community organizers get funds and resources and be able to speak at our events and hopefully rally people to their cause while also giving artists to perform.”

80% of the profits go to the organizations the collective partners with, including the Butterfly Collective, Black Space and Planned Parenthood. The remaining 20% to incentivize tentative creative projects that give back to the community, such as podcasts and merchandising, to eventually building an art house for visual artists and a record label for musicians.

“Our incentive isn’t to profit, it’s to create a platform that unites underground musicians,” said Sean Schueler, a musician and organizer at Midcoast, “We want to be an antithesis to the capitalist music industry and offer a cooperative alternative where artists are just making art together, for each other and for the community.”