It’s June of 2022 and eighty degrees. I’m wearing a bright red dress dotted with flowers that my mom bought on her honeymoon and I’ve crammed a cowboy hat over my pigtails. Various shades of brown and beige and terracotta color the central Washington scenery that floods below me, cut through by a river the color of my coastal grandmother’s faded jeans.
Tonight, I’m at the Gorge Amphitheater, a half hour drive from the tiny town of Quincy, WA, and five hours from home in Portland, where the trees are thick with birds and chipmunks. A mile and a few hours behind me, my friend and I have set up our tent and our cooler full of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She and I spent the day reminiscing on old crushes, joking about whether her car will break down, and catching up with our favorite high school teacher who’s here with her daughter.
This is my first Brandi Carlile concert and I’m in lesbian paradise. The music echoes through the canyon and the energy around us is radiant and crackling. After the sun sets, I watch two white-haired women kiss as they sway together under a blanket in the cool evening air. Brandi Carlile’s music resounds with gay celebration, heart wrenching loss, moaning wistfulness, and headstrong resistance to xenophobia. I feel the safe hug of Americana music in the rumbling grass beneath my toes.
When I saw Brandi Carlile for the first time, I realized just how impactful and vital it is to hear music live. Concerts give artists the time to describe why and how they wrote their songs, to make necessary commentary about socio-political topics in their music, and to foster a community of people who dance, sing, scream, laugh, and cry together in the span of a few hours. For many people, there is nothing quite as freeing or cathartic as seeing their favorite artist live.
And yet, concerts are disappointingly inaccessible. High ticket prices, long wait times, pressure to spend on outfits, and lack of accommodations for disabled concertgoers all contribute to the inequity of concert culture.
Every time I go to a concert, I notice the many accessibility issues that bar people from enjoying a fun night of live music. Our own DC9 lacks an elevator to take guests up to the second-floor music space, outdoor concerts often are not wheelchair accessible, older venues heat up fast in the summers, accessible seating is drastically limited, and nearly every concert uses strobe lights and overly loud speakers.
People who have the privilege to function with ease in these circumstances have an obligation to demand improved accessibility to concerts. It is not enough that venues reserve a tiny fraction of their seats as accessible seating.
My column this semester will consist of concert reviews, concert previews, interviews with artists and music industry professionals, articles about queerness and diversity in music, and more stories that illuminate the oftentimes enigmatic music industry. To adequately assess and report on the music scene both in and outside the DC area, it is necessary to recognize and criticize barriers that gatekeep live music. Together, we can hold venues, artists, and the industry as a whole responsible.
