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Date: 11/29/2022
NORTHAMPTON – The iconic Parlor Room on 32 Masonic St., which is celebrating its 10th year anniversary this fall, has announced that they will transition to a nonprofit model starting Jan. 1, 2023.
Signature Sounds, the acoustic music record label, turned part of a former furniture store into a performance venue in 2012, and since then, the venue has been home to hundreds of performances over the past decade.
“We do a bunch of things,” said Jim Olsen, the label president of Signature Sounds. “We have our record label, which has been going for almost 30 years, and we produce a lot of festivals.”
Signature Sounds began as home-based business for 17 years until Olsen and company transitioned to the Masonic Street location. At first, according to Olsen, the Parlor Room was only going to be used occasionally for Signature Sound artists.
“We thought we were only going to do a few shows a month,” said Olsen. “But when we opened up, very quickly the demand for this kind of space was there from the beginning, so we found ourselves doing more and more shows. We’ve done over 1,000 shows over the past decade.”
Among the performers – some of which Olsen said went on to do big things – were Lake Street Dive, Black Francis, Anais Mitchell, Adrienne Lenker, Juliana Hatfield and many more.
Much like other venues, the Parlor Room had to close for a while during the coronavirus pandemic. Although times were tough, the venue spearheaded the Parlor Room Home Sessions, which raised over $100,000 for artists unable to tour during the pandemic.
Still, reopening presented some obvious challenges.
“Starting everything up again was challenging, and it requires a lot of attention to do it right,” said Olsen. “So, we were approached with this idea of becoming a nonprofit.”
The transition
On Jan. 1, 2023, the Parlor Room will officially be deemed a nonprofit that offers a community space for musicians of all abilities who want to play music, learn from expert musicians and teachers, and obtain advice on how to navigate the music industry. In other words, the Parlor Room will be more than a music venue; it will also be a community hub of sorts.
Chris Freeman, a singer and multi-instrumentalist for the Americana/folk rock group Parsonsfield, is one of the key figures behind this transition and will be the nonprofit’s director. He currently does a lot at the Parlor Room, including the booking shows.
“The Parlor Room has always had this cultural mission of bringing in great music to Northampton and being this intimate listening space for the community to enjoy,” said Freeman, in an interview with Reminder Publishing.
Freeman has been on the Signature Sounds label for years and had the pleasure of performing the fifth show ever at the venue with his band. “Our first ever sold out shows were at The Parlor Room only months after its inception and the community that seemed to surround that night was transformative,” he said.
Coming out of the coronavirus pandemic, Freeman and Olsen wanted to develop a model that could be more sustainable. “There’s a feeling of needing to save the music scene in downtown Northampton,” said Freeman. “By becoming a nonprofit, we’re showing that we’re committed to being in this area, committed to the musicians of this area, and committed to the community in this area … it just felt like the right time to do it.”
According to Freeman, the performance aspects will not change all that much, but a School of Music will be established to offer classes and allow people to gather in groups to play music together. The specifics of those classes are still being fleshed out, according to Freeman.
“There’s a lot of musicians at all different stages of their development that haven’t had a chance to be a part of a group,” said Freeman. “That’s one big mission of the School of Music is to get people in a room making music together.”
Aside from these classes, Freeman said he also wants the Parlor Room to be a career center for those who are looking to learn about building a life through music. “We’re going to host workshops to go over the certain roles of the industry,” said Freeman. “We just want to be a place where musicians and folks who want to be a part of the industry can gain a foothold and some knowledge to move forward.”
In general, Freeman wants to provide what Signature Sounds essentially provided for him and his band years ago. “Signature Sounds was that career center for us,” said Freeman. “We got taken into the family, and they helped us find our first agent; they taught us what a record label really was during that time … they helped us out.”
According to Olsen, Signature Sounds will still collaborate on certain aspects of the venue but for the most part, the longtime label will step aside to allow Freeman and his team to run the day-to-day operations.
The new organization and model will also allow the Parlor Room to now raise money through grants, memberships and sponsors, whereas before, they were mainly raising money through ticket sales.
Reflecting on the last 10 years, Olsen said that the Parlor Room has been a “really nice place to be a part of.”
“There’s no distractions between the audience and the musicians,” said Olsen, speaking on the room’s intimacy. “People really appreciate that you come here to listen to music … this environment is special.”
People can support the Parlor Room by becoming a member through their website: https://parlorroom.org/memberships.