A new concert venue in Rapid City celebrates its grand opening this weekend.
The space is part of a larger effort to increase female representation in the Rapid City music scene.
Organizers say the venue will provide a home for shows that have been underground--almost literally.
Just west of Rapid City, Nameless Cave has hosted local and touring bands over the last seven years. The venue nestled into a canyon in the Black Hills is just above a cave. Information about the shows spread by word of mouth, and performances, attracted more and more people.
But one of the organizers, NaTasha Edelwiess says it got out of hand. She says the county required improvements for shows to continue.
“To make this a legal venue would have cost like a million dollars in taking out a mountain to make another road out of the end of this canyon,” Edelwiess says. “Though it was my dream, now it’s the namesake of this place.”
Another organizer, Dexter Carman, says the audience got too big for such an informal venue.
“It’s not really safe to do that anymore, with the amount of people showing up and the lack of cohesion,” Carman says.
Carmen says he and Edelweiss are working with others to start up a new venue space. They’re calling that store front space in downtown Rapid City the Cave Collective.
Charlotte Walling is working on the project too. She says it’s tough to find venues that will host local bands.
“Rapid City is definitely kind of coming into a time where there is a lot of booking going on,” Walling says. “So, a shortage of venues has been really stifling for the musicians and the promoters.”
Walling says venues that are in Rapid City are either too expensive or booked.
This weekend, The Cave Collective is having its opening kickoff celebration with five bands from the Black Hills area. While the venue is situated above ground and located downtown, organizers say they hope to keep the same informal atmosphere.
In the 80’s and 90’s, punk and hardcore music was a staple in Rapid City. And Edelwiess started noticing something as she booked more and more shows. Something got revitalized…
“I was trying to figure out where all these kids came from all of the sudden that are like packing these shows,” Edelweiss says. “Then I realized, they’re the kids of the original punk scene here. So, they know what a punk show is and they’re starting awesome bands. There are so many new bands that are blossoming.”
One local musician just out of high school, whose parents were part of the initial punk scene in Rapid City, is Wyatt Fenner. He’s a singer and guitarist for the group Someday Best. He says trying to book a show in Rapid involves…
“Plenty… plenty of frustration," Fenner says.
Fenner and his bandmates struggle to find a stage to play on. Fenner says they mostly play at the record store, Black Hills Vinyl. There’s also the VFW downtown, but that’s about it.
Alec Ruml is another singer and guitarist in the group. He agrees it’s frustrating to book shows.
“Like, certain weekends when you’re playing shows, you ask a venue here, a venue there—we only have four venues—you kind of get shut down. It sucks when bands are coming through,” Ruml says. “Not only that, some places don’t have sound, so you have to bring your own sound.”
They have high hopes for The Cave Collective.
Organizers see the venue as more than just a performance stage. The long term goal is to add a flea market and coffee shop—as well as provide space for an LGBTQ resource center and the local chapter of Food Not Bombs—a group that feeds the hungry once a month.
The impetus behind this venture is a newly formed group called Sisters Watching Sisters. It’s a community of women in the area who are performers, promotors and music fans. The goal of the group is to improve safety and status of women and girls in the local music scene. The top priority was to secure a venue space with a stage.
Charlotte Walling says the group saw an opportunity and seized on it.
“NaTasha is starting a venue so there’s safe space for people to have shows,” Walling says. “We’re talking about doing some mixers where people can form more bands. We’re trying to help get gear and knowledge to people that want to start bands that have struggled to start bands. It’s all about increasing representation, increasing safety and status.”
Walling and others are hoping the Cave Collective can help create a new generation of female led bands. So far, organizers have pulled together for initial expenses, and with a limited budget they’re hoping for community support and to crowdsource additional costs.
First official shows take place this weekend.