If you go to shows at Mac’s Bar or The Loft, you’ve likely been to one of Scott Bell’s live-n-loud events.

Bell, 25, has been booking hardcore, rock, punk, and indie shows in the area for seven years, and started booking with Fusion Shows in January. Bell previously booked hundreds of shows with Bermuda Mohawk Productions, who helped create the local “all-ages” scene. REVUE caught up with Bell in the gritty basement office of Mac's Bar, here's what he had to say.

Photos by Jena McShane

How would you describe Fusion Shows to someone?
“We’re a really small group of eight to 12 people – about nine percent unpaid and 100 percent of them underpaid. We just try to do Michigan right musically.”

Fusion Shows always has a huge roster of shows, is it a full-time gig?
“Yeah, but I also stay confidently broke by touring with bands – I tour manage and sling t-shirts at the same time. I drive the van for the Menzingers, Cheap Girls, Mustard Plug, and Deals Gone Bad. If I had more time I would spread myself out to other bands, too.”

Are you able to pay rent doing this?
“Yeah, but I jam pretty econo. A lot of my friends’ definition of broke is not even close to mine. But yeah, considering where I started and what I used to think was making it, it’s gotten better.”

What’s the hardest part about booking shows?
“I’d say, as a whole, losing touch with the bands. Paying attention and getting all salad days about it and thinking, ‘Ah, these bands today are so whatever.’ But they aren’t. They aren’t stage diving any different than what I came up with in 2005 – and that’s me talking like ‘05 is OG. Really, I’m always trying to make sure that every group of kids is coming out and that every genre is somewhat represented. They don’t have to be my ideal of punk rock, but if there are kids who get it or could get it, then we need to nurture that with open arms.”

You started booking in 2005 at The Litter Box (a defunct house venue on Francis St., Lansing) and a hall out in Delta Township. What type of shows happened at the Litter Box?
“A lot of punk rock shows that we couldn’t get in at Mac’s Bar – just friends on tour and local bands. Nothing too major, but still notable enough bands that some kids cared – enough to engender a small community. It still didn’t pay its electrical bill or its heat.”

Were you charging admission back then?
“Yeah, but it was such a sliding scale. That was like ‘05, ‘06, ’07, shit in Michigan was bad. The going rate for a house show was like $2 or $3. My famous moves were always things like, people would hand me $20 and expect $18 back; I’d be like, ‘No, maybe $15, but you get to drink for free.’ It was point-of-purchase hustling.”

Did the serious lack of local all-ages shows motivate you to start booking Mac’s Bar?
“Absolutely, that’s why I started booking. Prior to that, me and Adam Aymor, who is one of my best friends and is in the Cheap Girls now, would just drive to Detroit one or two times a week to shows at Alvin’s or the Magic Stick. I started booking in Lansing out of necessity. It’s like, ‘If I book shows in Lansing I don’t have to pay for gas and I don’t have to pay $10 to get into the show … that’s money saved right there.’”

Is it hard getting people to come out to shows?
“I’d like to think it’s easier but I can’t really claim what it was like without the Internet. I remember having to click every MySpace person I knew. I’ve heard OG stories where you had to wait to get press photos mailed to you, and then you had to make that flier and then deliver that photo to REVUE magazine – the Internet has made it much easier.”

Walking along East Michigan Avenue in Lansing on a Tuesday evening is a unique experience.

On the quiet, desolate street comes a beat and energy out of Stober’s Bar that can’t be ignored.

Thumping out of Lansing’s oldest bar is the sound of a trumpet wailing away and once inside the jazz envelops you like an old friend.

While the room is dimly lit, there’s a blue light that shines over Jeff Shoup, the house-band drummer for the weekly event - "Jazz Tuesdays," making the room feel all the more like a genuine jazz club. The Jeff Shoup Quintet (pictured left) also includes Andy Wilson (trumpet), Ryan Freitas (saxophone), Louis Rudner (stand-up bass), and Cory Allen (guitar).


“Stober’s is something a little different because it’s about the music,” Shoup said. “We’re not there to provide background for people to chit-chat, we’re there to play.”

Shoup, who started playing the drums at 11, has been a musician in the Lansing area since the early ‘90s. He said, as long as he can recall, jazz has always been a part of the Lansing area.

“I remember, back then, the place for it was Gregory’s Ice and Smoke,” Shoup said. “I went out there to see Andrew Speight (jazz saxophonist), he used to teach at Michigan State – he used to play with some really bad cats.”

Today in the Lansing area there’s three primary venues for live jazz on a weekly basis: Stober’s Bar (Tuesdays), Gracie’s Place in Williamston, and Mumbai Cuisine in East Lansing (Thursdays). Michigan State University and Lansing Community College are also very prominent players in Lansing.

Even though there has constantly been some sort of jazz in the area it has always been a rather small scene.

“It’s not non-existent but it’s very scarce,” said Taylor Herron, a Jazz Studies senior. “There’s just not that many venues for it.”

The recession isn’t helping the scene’s potential either but the MSU jazz program has.

“Being a musician is a career and for a lot of places they just can’t afford to pay decent money,” Herron continued. “The university has definitely helped plant some sort of a scene.”

That jazzy seed the university planted started to grow back in 2000.

That fall Rodney Whitaker, the granddaddy of Lansing jazz according to Shoup, took over the Jazz Studies program at Michigan State, making an essentially non-existent program whole and bringing in a group of people that really loved jazz into the community.

“You just had this influx of kids from all over the country and all over the planet too,” Shoup said. “It’s become a huge portion of the Lansing scene.”

This influx brought students into both the audience and on the stage as musicians. “Its kind of like jazz is cool again,” Candice Wilmore said.  

According to Wilmore, one of the founding members of the Jazz Alliance of Mid-Michigan (JAMM) and a regular in the jazz scene, the majority of the younger musicians playing in the area are from MSU, including those that come out for the jam session at Stober’s on Tuesday nights.

Two of those younger musicians would be Herron and Theo Batzer, an MSU alumnus who plays the electric guitar.

For Herron, who started playing the saxophone in elementary school, it’s always been about jazz, he doesn’t really listen to much else.

“I’ve never really thought about doing anything else,” he said. “It’s always been there.”

While Herron has always had a love for jazz, Batzer was drawn to jazz by checking out progressive rock music that was driven by improvisation. But with jazz, Batzer said he can go even further.

“With rock musicians it seems like after you get to a certain point you stop having to learn things and you just get really good at what you do,” Batzer said. “I’m sure that point comes with jazz too but it just seems to me you can keep working at it for a lifetime and never be bored.”

“Focusing on it as well, for a musician, it keeps your eye on the mountain. It puts things in perspective and really lets you shoot for the moon if you want,” Batzer added. “It (jazz) doesn’t judge and it gives you advice, in a really nonchalant way. It’s whatever you want it to be, it’s whatever you need it to be.”

While the university has played a large part in the jazz scene there are still many great players that are Lansing natives, Shoup said.

Some of these key Lansing players include Randy Gelispie, a drummer who toured with some rather big names back in the ‘60s. Others would include bass player Ed Fedewa and Jim Alfredson, who’s currently touring with Organissimo, an area trio.

As diverse as the musicians are so are the people watching, especially at Stober’s, ranging from college kids to older couples, each with their own unique story as to why they love it.

“It’s (Stober’s) nice because it’s one of those bars where I don’t think anyone would feel uncomfortable,” Shoup said. “It’s not click-y. You’ll be surprised at who you see out there sometimes.”

When I came home one afternoon, I realized that being part of a nascent music scene meant some great perks.

Other than the loud noise you could inflict on strangers, the Bad Brains would roll you joints in your living room, play your entire Pablo Moses collection with the bass turned up the right way and cook spinach noodles with spicy peanut sauce for lunch.

In the ‘80s, the music may not have been any better than today, but it was easier to find because it stuck out more. In Lansing, it sometimes came to my door.

As a member of a Lansing-based hardcore outfit called the Fix, the only such unit in town, I was also part of the network of hospitable places to stay for bands touring the U.S. I had used the network and it was only fair to give back.

The Bad Brains stayed for a week at my place at 2204 Stirling. Black Flag stayed at the Fix house at 823 Beulah after a sold out Black Flag/Fix show in March 1981 at Club Doobee, now The Watershed Tavern & Grill in Haslett. Walk in the place and little has changed since it hosted Oingo Boingo, the Fast, Lydia Lunch, Destroy All Monsters, and D.O.A.

The latter were also guests at the Beulah house. They outdrank us – no easy feat – like the proud Canadians they were. One morning D.O.A. bassist Randy Rampage was walking out to the van looking rock as could be, with bleached do’ flying high and wallet chains dangling hipside. Some kids came up and asked him if he was in a band. “Yes, I’m in KISS,” Rampage told them.

Most of the local venues were at first tenuous and often one-time only shots. There was a Hobie’s downtown, where the rich realtors are now building their so-called “lofts” off Washington, that was used on at least one occasion. That would be the night Ron Wood of The Dogs let off a fire extinguisher toward the end of a Fix set in the jammed back room of the eatery, choking every drunk soul in the place.

The Lansing Civic Players hall also worked a couple of times – Minor Threat on one packed bill. That place ended in acrimony when someone uptight noticed that local heroes the Crucifucks were on a bill that was to include Boston hardcore band SS Decontrol who were big for five minutes.

It wasn’t that the Crucifucks were on the bill, but the flyer. “The Civic Players found out about it and I got like thirty calls in the middle of the night,” said Meatmen honcho Tesco Vee, who was putting the show together. “I put my phone number on that flier, and some guy started calling, “What the hell is this Crucifucks shit?” Vee, of course, also co-founded the legendary Touch & Go zine in Lansing along with Dave Stimson.

Madison had Merlins, Ann Arbor had the Second Chance; what was taking E.L. so long to establish a full-time venue for our music? What is now Harper's in downtown East Lansing was Dooley’s at the time. It was good to go just one night a week, the usually dead Mondays. The Stranglers played there twice, as did the Ramones, X, even U2.

Johnny Thunders and Gang War came and Thunders spent the night in the East Lansing jail. “The dumb fuck robbed the bar and left a trail of coins out to the van,” says Ron Cooke, Gang War bassist.

When Flat, Black & Circular owners Dave Bernath and Dick Rosemont opened a small café in East Lansing, a lot of folks thought that the college town was catching up. Bunches Continental Café served sandwiches with sprouts on them, then at night opened its glass tabletops and Cali-copped wooden booths to music. Not some weak jazz or blues that was wasting everyone’s time in the area, but real music with a backbone.

Gun Club played two sets one night in March 1982 to almost nobody. Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s plastic cowboy boots hurt his credibility. It was the Ward Dotson/Rob Ritter version touring the Fire of Love LP.

R.E.M. wheeled in around the same time and was listless and standoffish to the few curious locals there. Southern-fried hicks trying to play some bastardized Byrds. ‘They’ll never amount to much,’ we sniffed. The band got $300 that night. The Bad Brains showed up a couple weeks later and showed everyone how it’s done. Two nights of mayhem that came off with nary a blemish to the plants, the old-school glass pie display and other very enticing breakables.

The Boners from Detroit played Bunches, and singer Jerry Vile couldn’t keep it together around the pastries. “Towards the door there was one of those rotating things with pies in it,” recalls Paul Zimmerman, who put out the White Noise fanzine with Vile in the early '80s. “Jerry was eying that thing. Next thing I know, I’m turned around talking to someone and sure enough he hit me with a pie.”

The owners could have been mad, but nothing was busted. In fact, “None of those glass tables ever got broken,” Bernath marvels today. He was booking the good stuff with little regard to what made him dough; MX-80 Sound played to a dozen people. Eugene Chadbourne came in. The Flesheaters, the Panther Burns. When the place closed in November 1982, Bernath was in talks to bring NYC legends Suicide to town.

Lansing didn’t have a Mr. Brown’s (Columbus) or a Seventh Street Entry (Minneapolis). It did have a moving host of little places, though, that could bring the national, now legendary, noise.