Behind The Scene: Dayna Frank
“The passage of Save Our Stages feels like a miracle. There was no other way for the industry to survive—big clubs, small clubs, single operators, multiple venue operators. Everyone was in the exact same boat,” observes Dayna Frank, the board president of the National Independent Venue Association [NIVA]. However, she tempers her enthusiasm by adding, “There is still plenty of work ahead. We still need to figure out how we can reopen in a safe and sensible manner.”
Frank is the president and CEO of Minneapolis’ First Avenue Productions, which oversees a few area venues including the flagship club, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2020. She is also a longtime music fan who was working for VH1 in Los Angeles back in 2009 before she returned home and took over First Avenue from her father after he suffered a stroke. When asked if she can recall the first show that she attended at the club, Frank names a Pixies performance she took in as a pre-teen in the late-‘80s: “I have a very cool older sister and she convinced our 16-year[1]old babysitter to take us to the show without my parents. It was the most awesome experience ever.”
You had been working as a television producer in LA for a few years before you came home to run First Avenue. What prompted you to change direction?
My dad was childhood best friends with the guy who started First Avenue, Allan Fingerhut. Then my dad became a CPA and was tangentially involved, more through friendship than through business. He ended up running Allan’s family office. He was involved in the books and the financial management of it until 2000, when he put together the investment group that purchased the property. Then in 2004, the operations went into bankruptcy and, as the landlord, he purchased the operations out of bankruptcy and started operating it himself.
My dad had a stroke in 2009, and I went back home to find a buyer for the club. My thought was, “Let me see where the bodies are buried so that I can make the best decision.” That’s when I sat in the club for the first time after probably a decade and all of it washed over me—all of the history, all of those teenage memories and how important it was to so many people. It was helpful for me to have spent time away in order to appreciate how much a place like First Avenue means to the local community, and how singular it is and how it really defined a location. So it became my mission to keep it independent and keep it intact—and to make sure that future generations of Minnesotans could enjoy it.
Can you recall a memorable lesson from your early years running First Avenue?
As far as owning and operating a club?Cleaning up puke—I had never done that before. Kicking out drunk people is something I had never done before. Also, sweeping up sidewalks to remove the cigarette butts—it was just really the nuts and bolts of running a club.
Even prior to COVID, I imagine it was a struggle to maintain the club’s identity as an independent entity.
No one stays independent by accident. You really have to work at it. The music industry and the concert business are just battles every day. The business side is one of the things I enjoy most about it, but that can be exhausting as well. So to me, independence means being fully accountable to your local community, to your artists and to your employees. When I look at what is best for First Avenue, I can’t imagine transferring that responsibility out of Minnesota or away from the people who live it and breathe it. That’s what being independent means to me.
Moving to recent events, can you describe the last night of music at First Avenue or the moment when you realized that an extended shutdown loomed on the horizon?
That week of March 9 feels like a whole year to me. I think I can remember every minute of that week. Our last show in the main room was Chelsea Cutler on Thursday, March 12. We were really watching the coasts. D.C. had just gone under mandated closure, along with Seattle and San Francisco. We were kind of watching it spread and wondering if it would get to us. So we proceeded with the show on that Thursday because the governor hadn’t done any kind of mandates yet. I think we had sold 1,600 tickets and we were watching the scans and wondering if people were going to come out. I think we ended up at around 1,200 and we were like, “OK, this is probably going to be our last show for a while.”
Then the next day we just kept refreshing and watching the news and trying to talk to anyone we could get to in order to figure out what was going on because I think we had six shows that night, which was Friday, March 13. One band didn’t feel comfortable, so they canceled. I think we had a dance night that we canceled, and we just kept waiting. We had a band fully loaded into the Fine Line—ready to go—when the mandate came down around 6:00 p.m.
You mentioned that no one stays independent by accident. Can you talk about the challenges of connecting with all these venue owners and pulling them together into NIVA?
There have been no lack of challenges. We have Rev. Moose and the Marauder group and Hal Real from World Cafe Live in Philadelphia to thank for the formation of NIVA. They had actually started discussing the potential for a trade association for independent venues and promoters a month before the shutdown. It was crazy timing. Rev. Moose had brought over Independent Venue Week from the U.K. and was running it in the U.S., so he had this amazing network of independent clubs that he communicated with.
Then when the global shutdowns happened, he set up a phone call. Later we’d use Zoom, but we dialed into the first one. At least in First Avenue world, we were huddled around a phone in our conference room, trying to soak in as much information as we possibly could because it was such an unprecedented moment. No one knew what was going on and no one knew what to do. I think everyone was just so hungry to hear from everyone else and to try and figure this out. So what would have never been possible a year ago suddenly became possible.
As I look back, it has been such an honor working with all the people that I’ve met—the independent venues and promoters that I hadn’t known before or hadn’t even heard of. There are so many awesome cities and towns that have independent music scenes. I’ve always had faith in independent promoters and venue managers. I already thought they were awesome and knew there was nothing that we couldn’t do, but this just proved me right in ways I couldn’t even imagine.
In late December, Congress passed the Save Our Stages Act and the president signed it into law. While this must have granted a reprieve for many struggling venues, what are the immediate challenges you face?
We were able to come together because we realized that it was an existential crisis for our entire industry. I never would have expected people to work this hard to keep their competitors in business. If you think about it, that’s what happened. We were all lobbying and advocating together because we knew that 90 percent of us weren’t going to make it but we didn’t know who that 90 percent would be. We didn’t know if it would be our friends or our competitors. So we just all joined together and we fought for everybody. It was a miracle that we were able to come together, hire a lobbyist and take the necessary steps. I really couldn’t be more grateful to everyone for all the work they put in. It was such a team effort. There were just hundreds of thousands of people involved—actually millions if you think about the 2.1 million emails from fans to Congress. It was a national effort.
We might have won the battle but we still have a whole war ahead of us. We still have to beat COVID. We still have to reopen. That is such a daunting, long and arduous path. We need to ensure that our venues are safe and figure out what restrictions there will be. We still don’t know when we can reopen, we still have no timeline. We have no guidelines. We have no path to follow.
On the other hand, thanks to everyone’s incredible work on Save Our Stages, we certainly feel better about our survival. Of course, that’s assuming the money gets distributed in a fashion that follows how the bill was formatted and that it’s implemented correctly.
So assuming that the shuttered venue operator grants go out as directed, then we’re on the right track and it feels miraculous. However, we have to start working on the next steps, ideally helping the government with vaccination.
We’ve sent a letter to President Biden offering our help. We want to do whatever we can. We’ve been closed for almost a year to protect public health and now we want to go to work to protect public health. Let’s get America back to work; let’s get our kids back to school. Let’s beat COVID. Then, hopefully, we can open up as a more equitable industry—as a more fair industry—and bring some joy and light to America.
Do you anticipate that there will be transformative change on that level?
This experience has changed everyone individually and I think it will change who we are as an industry. I’m going to work my hardest every day to make sure that we keep getting better when we reopen— serving our artists better and serving the fans better. We can take advantage of this moment and use this period to accelerate growth and improvement across the board.
That’s my goal and I’m going to work toward opening up a more equitable industry. We’ve all seen some of the structural racism and institutional racism that exists in our world—in business, in economics and in the music industry. Blackout Tuesday certainly had a huge effect on making everyone realize what an important cause this is and how we need to live it every single day.
At this point, what can fans do to help?
I would encourage everyone to listen to new music and buy tickets for a show that they otherwise would never have gone to see. Buy a ticket right now for a show that’s postponed—there are plenty on sale. Buy a ticket for a local artist—maybe a marginalized artist or somebody who doesn’t have a hit single. You can go online to your favorite venue and buy a ticket and then get prepared for when everything reopens.
Then when the time comes, go out and explore, discover new music and show your support by buying a shirt, getting a couple of beers and having the best time of your life.
I’m sure you hear this multiple times a day, but when do you anticipate that you’ll reopen?
I wish I had a crystal ball. That’s the question everyone wants to know and I have the same best guess as everybody. Everyone is kind of hoping for something outdoors this summer—at half capacity, quarter capacity, whatever it might be. Then, certainly after Labor Day, it would be amazing to be back at full capacity indoors.
That’s the dream at this point, depending on the vaccination rollout. That’s why we’re so inclined and so anxious to help and really want to put all of our resources and everything we can behind the vaccination efforts. The sooner we vaccinate, the sooner we get back to live music.
