The North Country’s Entertainment Magazine
The North Country’s Entertainment Magazine
There is no shortage of social media obituaries for live music in Upstate New York, and if you scroll long enough, you will inevitably stumble across the usual suspects playing their familiar roles: the venue owner bemoaning poor turnout with the tone of a funeral director narrating his own losses, the promoter waxing poetic about the “golden days” as though they alone were entrusted with the keys to nostalgia, and the musician sighing into the void that “the kids don’t care anymore” while seemingly forgetting that once upon a time they were the kids who weren’t supposed to care. These posts arrive with captions dripping in faux gravitas, emojis deployed like cheap confetti to soften the despair, and a level of dramatics that rivals a community theater audition for Les Misérables.
But here is the hard truth that slices through all that noise: scenes are not killed by audiences. Audiences are reactive, not generative—they follow energy, they respond to momentum, they show up when something is worth showing up for. No, scenes are killed by professionals and the so-called “professionals” (you know the type) who conveniently forget their responsibility to pass the torch, who mistake gatekeeping for leadership, and who cling to their scraps of authority so tightly that they strangle the very ecosystem they claim to be protecting.
Music does not die when fewer people show up on a Friday night. It dies when the spark in a new player’s eye gets dismissed instead of encouraged. It dies when young bookers are locked out of venues rather than mentored into them. It dies when artists with fresh ideas are treated as existential threats instead of allies to collaborate with. The passion that fuels a life in music is almost always ignited in a single electric moment. When someone shows you a chord, lets you behind the soundboard, hands you a stack of flyers with a grin and says, “Congratulations, you’re working the door tonight.” Those sparks, tiny and unglamorous though they may seem, passed hand to hand and room to room, are what keep music alive.
Too often, though, the Upstate industry treats those sparks like wildfires to be stamped out before they spread. Gatekeeping masquerades as guardianship. Veterans hoard their knowledge as if the act of sharing it would somehow diminish their own worth. Promoters recycle the same tired bills, terrified to gamble a single slot on an unproven act. Venue owners cling to a narrow pool of “sure things” rather than cultivating variety. All the while, these same figures complain loudly about dwindling crowds, about “kids these days,” about scenes on life support, never pausing to recognize the irony that their own conservatism, their own lack of risk, their own refusal to pass the flame, is the very reason their beloved scene is suffocating.
The truth, which is less convenient but far more urgent, is that music thrives the way ecosystems do through biodiversity. A healthy scene is not built on a monoculture of the same five bands, the same safe ideas, the same rotation of predictable lineups. It is built when genres cross-pollinate, when perspectives collide, when peers throw open their notebooks, their playbooks, their contacts, and teach each other everything they know without calculating who gets the credit. That is not just preservation. That is
growth. That is legacy. That is the difference between being a professional in name only and being a professional whose work echoes beyond their own career.
The most dangerous lie in music is that power is finite—that if someone else learns to book a show, you will somehow lose your own authority, that if another band pulls a bigger draw, your career will vanish into obscurity. In reality, the opposite is true: scenes expand when knowledge expands. Every new promoter, engineer, artist, or manager strengthens the scaffolding for everyone else. The rising tide is not a cliché; it is the only survival strategy this industry has left. Community, partnership, and the fearless sharing of ideas are the lifeblood that has grown so thin in too many corners of this region.
And while we are here, let us put an end to the illusion that social media campaigns are the salve for this slow bleed. Posting that you are “saving the scene” is the equivalent of taking a heavily filtered selfie in front of a burning building instead of grabbing a hose. Real professionals do not need to announce their worth or declare their impact in all caps. Their reputations are written in the opportunities they create, the skills they pass on, the rooms they make accessible, and the sparks they nurture into flames. Their work speaks not in hashtags, but in the artists who will one day say, “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for them.”
If you care about the future of live music in Upstate New York, or anywhere, really, the most radical, rebellious, and sustaining act you can commit is simple. Teach what you know. Share what you have learned, especially the unsexy parts of the business. Book someone new who doesn’t fit the mold of what you think will “sell.” Let a kid run sound for a night and make their mistakes. Invite a younger peer into the conversation about contracts and budgets instead of pretending those things are sacred mysteries. Do not extinguish sparks because you feel threatened by how brightly they might burn. Fan them until they become flames that light the room brighter than you ever could alone.
Because music has never survived on isolation or on those who guarded knowledge as though it were a relic. It has always survived on peer-to-peer exchange, on communities that lifted each other up, on messy, beautiful collisions of talent and ego and generosity where everyone understood, consciously or not, that guarding knowledge is not power. Sharing it is. If we cannot remember that, then all the posts in the world about “supporting live music” will dissolve into digital dust. Because the people who truly save a scene are never the ones shouting about it online. They are the ones too busy building the next one to stop and take a photo.
And maybe that is the truest test of all: do you want to be remembered as the person who lamented the end, or as the person who sparked the beginning?
Christine Collins is a 23 year veteran music industry professional specializing in venue management, branding, marketing and public relations. She currently resides in northern New York, and hosts the “Who is Christine Anyway?” podcast, and works as an author, publicist, and marketing strategist in music. Her origin story begins in the modest walls of the Saranac Lake Youth Center, and has led her to work amongst the nation’s top artists, venues, and brands.
