How to Build Up a Music Scene

Advice from a New York kid raised in it

Ira Zadikow

Ira Zadikow, a lifelong New Yorker and drummer, has simple advice for musicians overcomplicating the hustle: “People could do more by joining up and connecting.”

He has an answer to the age-old question, “How do you build up?” While indie artists today feel pushed into content creation, merch stockpiling, and monthly release schedules, Zadikow turns them another way. Find a place to play, stick with it, and watch what happens.

“I want to set up a place that’s a home base to work from,” he said. “I don’t get the concept of people playing different places all the time, especially if those places are going to charge money.”

Don’t fall for the shiny lights, just find a spot close to home. “Fuck Manhattan,” he said. “Try to do something around where you live, where you have friends, where you work.”

Zadikow is a mentor to many musicians in the city (this writer included) but he brushes away the praise. “First, I don’t have a fucking clue as to how anybody gets signed.”

Still, his weekly open mics at Otto’s Shrunken Head foster a strong sense of community, he holds a coveted studio space in the historic Midtown Music Building, and he often finds himself in the atmosphere of musical greatness. He saw Led Zeppelin as an opener, played with Rob Stoner at the old Bitter End jams, and learned alongside Michael Hill, a founder of the Black Rock Coalition. To Ira, music is less of a choice and more of a pull that keeps coming back.

“Somewhere around 1975, I had to get out of New York so I went down to New Orleans. I had this crazy epiphany like, ‘I have to start playing music again. And I have to get serious.’”

No musician can really agree on what “getting serious” means. To Ira, it meant organizing shows and building up a scene.

“It’s 1983, I’m playing in a top 40 hits band. One day we were coming back from Dan Lynch Blues Bar and we passed this bar called Nightingale. There’s no one in the place, there’s never anyone in the place, and [my friend] Angelo suggested, ‘There’s nobody ever in here, we should maybe try to do a music thing.’ We said, ‘Let us play on a Saturday night and if it works out for you, then we’ll start doing other things here.’ That experience was probably my introduction to the whole DIY thing.”

One night of success was all it took for Zadikow to get booked again and again.

“I don’t know how we got the place packed. Tony [the owner] saw dollar signs in his eyes. So I started booking there every Saturday night, every Friday night, every Sunday, I think we got to the point where I was booking six days a week.”

Not just for fond memories, the scene sparked several bands’ careers.

“Blues Travelers and the Spin Doctors started playing at Nightingale and they started getting a huge crowd. This is somewhere around late 80s, early 90s,” he said. “Then they started playing larger places. Then they both got signed and they blew up huge. For each of them, their first or second album, they had a photo of Nightingale in the CD, in the album. It’s just the fact that I had started this place with Angelo, and at the end of the day, no one knows. It gets lost in history. It gets back to the home thing. They found a home at Nightingale, they play there a lot. They probably still would’ve broke, but the thing is a lot of bands have that story. You get known for a certain place.”

Once you find your footing, you can build up from there.

“I always look for a place to call home,” he said. “Whether it’s Nightingale or Nublu Classic or Otto’s.”

History has proven his point across the city.

“Max’s Kansas City. It was a small place, it became a hang,” he said. “Look at CBGBs. The whole punk thing came out of that. All these punk bands playing at CBGBs got signed. Record companies tend to be very copy-cat-ish once they grab onto a scene. All of a sudden Blondie and Talking Heads and the Ramones, they were all playing at CBGBs around 1976. Nobody knew any of them and all of sudden they all got signed.”

Here’s what Zadikow’s scene has given me: email chains of legendary YouTube performances, an insider perspective on NYC venue do’s and don’t’s, and a reminder that giving up is more of a pipe dream than going for it. His biggest push? “People just have to play.”

Sign up for Ira Zadikow’s open mics at Otto’s Shrunken Head, 538 E 14th Street, every Wednesday at 6 p.m. ◆

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