August 2, 2019
Focus on Hospitality & Tourism
The Palladium looks to build on the success of its new outdoor concert space
PHOTO | REV. AARON MICHAEL PEPELIS
The hardcore band Have Heart plays at the Palladium in 2019.
By Zachary Comeau
In March, Massachusetts hardcore band Have Heart quickly sold out a Friday, July 5 reunion at the Worcester Palladium . It was nearly a decade after the group performed what was then to be its last ever concert.
Tickets to see the band play downstairs at the 2,600-capacity Main Street music hall sold out in less than a minute. Shortly after, the band and Palladium organized announced a second show that Saturday, utilizing a new outdoor concert space bringing more than 8,000 people from all over the world to see one of the genre’s most influential bands and bring their dollars and foot traffic to downtown Worcester.
The Palladium and owner John Peters had already hosted an outdoor concert once before. In August 2018, ska legends Mighty Mighty Bosstones headlined an eight-band ska festival in the parking lot behind the building, which is also owned by Worcester Railers Hockey Club Owner Cliff Rucker, who has a 25% stake in the Palladium.
That proved to be a success, so Peters moved to capitalize on the newly created concert space given the huge demand for tickets for the first show.
“If we do it right, make it work and end up selling that many tickets, it could be a big hit,” Peters said.
Word of the band’s reunion spread like wildfire on social media, Peters said. More than 400 tickets were sold to people outside of the U.S.
On a sweltering hot Saturday afternoon, Have Heart performed to nearly 9,000 fans along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard . To the left of the band was 2019 POW! WOW! Worcester mural Smiley by artist OG Slick and to the right was the DCU Center.
Now, Peters and his staff are eyeing even bigger things for the outdoors space, competing with other outdoor music venues like the Rockland Trust Bank Pavilion in Boston or Indian Ranch in Webster.
Peters estimated at least three outdoor concerts slated for this summer would have been lost to one of those venues if the new Palladium space wasn’t an option.
Now, Peters wants to expand the outdoor concert series each year and continue the venue’s progression toward different music genres other than hard rock.
A cultural impact
Including Have Heart, the Palladium has already held two outdoors concerts this summer and now looks to make this a regular occurrence. Six more are scheduled for this year, and Peters wants roughly a dozen outdoor events each year.
So far, the events have helped to bring thousands of people to downtown Worcester, producing foot traffic on Main Street.
“There’s a lot of excitement and a lot of cool PR for us,” said Che Anderson, deputy cultural development officer in City Hall. “We see this as a cool, positive opportunity.”
In May, the city released a 10-year cultural plan, which is embedded into the city’s Master Plan, calling for a stronger relationship between City Hall and the cultural melting pot of Worcester.
The plan outlines five key goals: Craft the city’s unique identity, activate public spaces, embrace the different cultures in the city, keep youth and families involved in those efforts, and be creative and innovative.
“This ties right into those five key tenants,” Anderson said.
Worcester has long been home to a vibrant music scene, much of it underground. Wormtown, the city’s nickname, is a reference to that scene.
“There’s a sense that Worcester has always had this underground music scene, so it’s great to have the venues embracing it, and it’s great that bigger acts are coming to perform in the city,” Anderson said.
A downtown boost
For local businesses, adding a few thousand people to the streets of Worcester on a slow Sunday afternoon in the summer – when business typically slows down – was a nice boost.
“They definitely filled us up for brunch,” said Jared Forman, co-owner of Main Street eatery deadhorse hill, which is directly next to the Palladium.
Along with the opportunity to sell food before and after events, Forman and other restaurateurs in Worcester are allowed to sell food at the concerts themselves via a food truck or tent. Forman did just that last year for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones show.
“That was very busy and a lot of fun,” he said.
Alec Lopez, co-owner of the Armsby Abbey restaurant on Main Street, said each outdoor concert has provided a noticeable bump in business.
“It’s nothing but exciting to have that life and energy downtown,” he said.
Bob Shedd, a friend of Have Heart, host of the Axe to Grind Podcast and a hardcore festival organizer who helped pull off the show, said the Palladium has long held a reputation for being accomodating and for pulling off huge shows.
Shedd, organizers and attendees spent a considerable amount of time in Worcester that weekend, dining, shopping and exploring in New England’s second largest city, he said.
“A lot of us commented on how much we really liked Worcester and how cool the development of Worcester has been,” Shedd said. “It was just kind of a neat thing.”
A risky bet
Despite the overwhelming number of music fans filling up downtown Worcester for a few weekend afternoons so far, the outdoor concerts are somewhat of a risk, Peters said.
“Half of those shows this summer will lose money and half will make money,” Peters said, commenting on the cost to set up the outdoor stage.
The biggest variable in the music business is how much the band is actually charging to perform. Sometimes, if the act is large enough, you have to roll the dice, Peters said.
“You just hope to make more on the half you make than the half you lose,” he said.
To mitigate some of that risk, Peters is tempering expectations about holding music festivals on the same level of Boston Calling or Lollapalooza, both of which he said began small and grew over the years to become large international events.
Over time, the venue will gather a reputation as not just a place to see music, but as a cultural destination leaving impressions on guests and bringing them back again.
“We’re hoping to do that with this space,” he said.
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