The Gasa Gasa Lesson: Drink More Beer

Gasa Gasa, by Alex Rawls

The indie rock venue recently closed not because people weren’t attending shows but because they weren’t spending enough while there.

New Orleans’ online hive mind agrees that more people need to see live music in the city’s clubs, My Spilt Milk included. Branden Kempt of the recently closed Gasa Gasa fine tuned that message: Clubgoers need to drink more.

“Wallets tightened in the last year,” Kempt says. “Where we saw that was in alcohol sales. There seems to be less and less drinks sold at shows.” In the last six months, they had well-attended shows, some three-quarters full or sold out, but the bar sales weren’t what they expected. There were some occasions when the lower sales were a booking issue, whether it was a straight edge band or a jam band with a stoner audience, but it also happened on nights with no built-in explanation. Kempt recalls one night where alcohol sales were maybe 50 percent of what they anticipated doing that night. “And that was a conservative estimate.”

This drop wasn’t just a Gasa Gasa phenomenon. In June, Elias Leight wrote in Billboard about the national decline in bar sales at shows catering to Gen Z audiences. According to Dayna Frank, president/CEO of First Avenue Productions in Minneapolis, “One of the big trends we’re seeing is that Gen Z doesn’t drink as much. They’re either eating edibles before they come or there’s more of a sober, mental health [focus]… Most of the ticket price goes on to the band, so really what [venues] subsist on is beverages. That’s not going to be a sustainable revenue stream.”

At Gasa Gasa, attendance didn’t on its own translate to financial stability because the club tried to be as artist-friendly as possible, splitting the cover charge with the musicians 70/30, 80/20 and in some cases 90/10, giving the performers the bigger share and a guarantee. The club ate most of the production costs, sharing the sound person’s pay with the band.

Kempt understood the importance of those kinds of deals from his experience as a touring musician. He performs under the name Branden Daniel, and his band BD and the Sheeks played Gasa Gasa two days before it closed for COVID. He and the Gasa Gasa ownership group bought the club in 2020 because he felt strongly about the venue. He not only liked the room, which is near to his home in the Freret neighborhood, but he believes “It’s an important size of room. It’s an important sounding room. It’s a special stage.” It gave local bands and touring acts a place to hone their chops and find their audiences.

The first year was a challenge, starting with bands playing inside while audiences watched from the patio outside via closed circuit television. As hard as that was, Kempt says the shows that they had to run at 50 percent capacity were the most challenging. Through that time though, they saw positive signs. The cash infusions from the government combined with the forced time apart from others due to COVID meant that when people came to shows, they were ready to spend money.

Part of the new owners’ concept was to make better use of the patio, and that plan worked. It was responsible for a third to at times half of a day’s revenue at times if they had the right DJ on the patio, but with winter coming, they anticipated that revenue stream diminishing and they didn’t have the money to make the patio more of an all-weather stop.

Gasa Gasa never really did the business the owners expected. The second COVID wave set the business back, and while they were recovering from that, Hurricane Ida hammered it again. This summer was the last straw as crowds were down, Kempt thinks because of extreme heat and lack of rain. Not only were people not coming out but he knew bartenders who notoriously live from night to night that had to leave the state for a few weeks because they needed to cool down.

“A lot more people than usual got out of the city,” Kempt says.

By the summer, Kempt was no longer involved in managing Gasa Gasa. He stepped from the business in October 2022. He was still part of the ownership team, but he left the business in the hands of his partners Lance Paddock, Scott Paddock and Remi DeMatteo and day-to-day operations to bar manager Shawn Wyman and booker Lindsey Baker. “I left when I left because I had gotten them far enough that they could manage things on their own,” he says.

The decision to put Gasa Gasa up for sale came, Kempt says, because the owners “had enough going on with the other bars they own that they couldn’t afford to be the financial backbone of Gasa through the winter. Financial pressures from their other businesses forced the owners’ hand.” The club went up for sale two months before it closed, and there were talks with potential buyers who understood the business and wanted to see it continue.

“We were really hoping that the sale and transition would happen like it just happened with d.b.a. where it didn’t have to close and the calendar didn’t change,” he says. “It didn’t work out that way. The people who were interested stayed on the fence too long.”

When it was clear that no deal would be completed quickly, Wyman, Baker and the owners decided on a closing date. Wyman had November 1 in mind but Baker wanted longer. They settled on November 14. Kempt was there, and after closing they and some of the people involved spent time together reflecting on their time working at Gasa Gasa. “We know the experience that we had and we know what we meant to each other,” he says.

These days, Kempt is applying what he has learned as a musician and club owner to manage artists. He’s reluctant to connect the recent New Orleans club closures and sales because while they all dealt with some of the same big picture issues, they also had specific differences that were contributing factors. He reflects on his experience with Gasa Gasa with pride in what he and the staff accomplished.

“The only failure here is not having that smooth transition,” Kempt says.