Gasa Gasa Reopens with New Owner, New Concert Series

The indie rock venue has live music and tentative shows on the books for later this summer.

The New Orleans indie music community was concerned when Gasa Gasa went up for sale last July. The Freret Street venue had been one of the few musical homes for indie rock and folk acts in New Orleans as well as a stop for up-and-coming touring bands still finding their audiences. Now it’s not only back with a new owner, but it’s already using its courtyard to put on shows.

Musician Branden Kempt—better known professionally as Branden Daniel—now leads an ownership team that hasn’t wasted any time getting back in business. On January 28, Gasa Gasa hosted its first show with Juno Dunes performing inside in the club while patrons bought tickets to sit at the eight tables on the patio and watch the show on monitors outside. On February 4, the hip-hop duo Saxkixave—rapper Alfred Banks and Tank and the Bangas’ Albert Allenback—played the indoor/outdoor show as well, and although they found it odd to be in one room with the audience outside, Banks enjoyed himself.

“It’s a weird feeling to perform for nobody but know that everyone’s watching you,” he says. “You say Make some noise and kinda hear it from the other room. But it felt good to be back on stage and it felt good to be performing for people.”

The shows are inspired in part by Kempt’s experience as a musician on tour. “That’s how I preferred to listen to bands—outside through the wall,” he says. Banks appreciated the show as an effort to return to some semblance of normalcy and was encouraged by the crowd’s response. “The coolest part of it was that the crowd seemed to really enjoy the format,” Banks says. “They feel safe, they feel good, and they feel they can enjoy the music.”

The shows live-streamed to the patio are part of a plan to use that space to get musicians to work and bring in some revenue. Kempt also plan to feature stand-up comedy in the courtyard on Monday nights, food trucks on Wednesday nights, the indoor/outdoor live music shows on Thursdays, and live DJs on Friday and Saturday nights. The audience for all of those nights can only sit with a maximum of four to a table with an eight-table limit, and the staff enforces distancing rules. 

“A lot of it’s innocent,” Kempt says. “Two friends haven’t seen each other in a year. They walk in with masks on and sit down, and all of a sudden they see each other and jump up and give each other a hug without masks on. We’ve had to say, Okay guys, this is not something we can do. We do it because we don’t want a breakout coming out of our venue. There’s nothing in our plans that is so important that we’re willing to put people’s health on the line.”

Kempt performs as a member of BD + the Sheeks, which are based in Seattle. Two years ago, he and his wife made the spur of the moment decision to move to New Orleans. She is from Louisiana and lived in New Orleans, so for her it meant coming home. They bought a house and became part of the Freret neighborhood, .      and he loved Gasa Gasa as a venue from the first time he visited it as a patron. “A year later, I’m playing a show there, which just happened to be two days before quarantine,” Kempt says. 

He wasn’t looking to get into the bar business, but when he heard that another indie venue, Spaceland in Los Angeles, was going under, “I had this great instinct to save it,” Kempt says. He realized that the idea was impractical since he lived in New Orleans, but when Gasa Gasa went up for sale, he revisited the idea of buying a club. He knew he couldn’t afford it on his own, but he found partners who made it possible. “My brothers-in-law own a bar group,” Kempt says. “They have the experience, so they were able to structure a deal so that we could run Gasa.” 

They decided that they had to use the courtyard to survive. They want to make it not only a live music but a popular bar, and during the pandemic, the outdoor space makes that possible. They had hoped to launch in September but finally opened in December, when they had to contend with unpredictable, often inhospitable weather. The initial projections for what they could do outside were a little optimistic, but “we’ve had some really good nights,” he says.

Kempt takes pride in the fact that many in the Gasa Gasa team are musicians including the bar manager/assistant general manager, who is also a recording artist. Kempt wanted a staff that would understand and be sympathetic to musicians and the dynamics necessary to create the vibe that makes for a good indie venue. 

“A music venue is never really yours,” he says. “It’s the community’s. Our goal is to make sure that everybody’s treated as well as possible so that we can build that family community home that are the only places I remember playing, honestly. The places where the great things happened. And the great things are usually when the bar staff and the sound guy and the entire environment is right to make you feel at home as a performer.” 

At the moment, he has plans for changes to help raise the room’s capacity a little including remodeling the bar, but the first priority was to deal with a leak from the air conditioner that had dripped water for a year and a half behind the wall behind the stage. They had to clean that up and remediate the mold, but while working on that, they knocked out the small room to the left of the stage. It was designed to be the sound booth, but once the previous owners decided that the soundboard worked better in the audience, it became wasted space. 

“By opening that up, we got three-by-eight feet more on stage, which is awesome,” Kempt says. 

Right now, he plans to make extensive use of Gasa Gasa’s patio, but he wants to be ready for indoor shows by mid-summer. “I’ve been talking agencies and managers, and people in the business, and everybody’s looking at July as the time when touring acts are going to get back to it.” There are so many acts looking to resume touring that Gasa Gasa already has some double-booked nights on the calendar, with one band playing a matinee and a second show with a different headliner playing later. 

Kempt hired Ron Richard to once again book the club. Richard originally booked Gasa Gasa and then One Eyed Jacks, and he has already started putting holds on dates for bands planning summer and fall tours. “Restrictions vary from state to state, so I think agents are trying to wait to see when the vaccine becomes more readily available before announcing a string of tours,” he says. “I did get a call from a big agent after Jazz Fest announced its rescheduled dates and he said they were doing their diligence and making these artist avails to New Orleans in case it does happen.”

At this point though, all these agreements are handshake deals. Richard can’t sign contracts with bands because his offers are based on the possible attendance. The state of the vaccination roll-out and individual city governments will have a lot to say what capacities will actually be, assuming shows can happen at all.

“At this point, this job is very weird,” Richard says. “We’re planning it, but will it happen?”

For now, Kempt insists that Gasa Gasa is doing everything it can take make sure the shows on its patio are consistent with the city’s COVID-19 guidelines, including enforcing social distancing, even after the drinks have kicked in.  

“We know that we can’t cram them in there,” he says. “We know we have to keep them at their table and socially distant. We haven’t had any indoor service yet and won’t until Mayor Cantrell says we can, and even then, we have a super-cautious bartender. It’s worked out so far. Barring someone being out of their mind who should probably be kicked out anyway, there really hasn’t been any problem with people forgetting the COVID rules.”