Legendary Allston Music Club Great Scott to be Resurrected
WBUR - July 30, 2024
Live music fans have been wondering about Great Scott’s fate since the legendary Boston club shuttered in May of 2020. Now, their wait is over with news that the beloved venue is being revived and reimagined in Allston — called “Rock City” by locals — just a few blocks away from its original location.
“It’s almost too good to be true,” Carl Lavin said in an interview. He booked bands for Great Scott from 2003 until it went dark. Lavin and the larger music community reeled in the wake of the closure during the pandemic.
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Over 44 years of operation, Great Scott evolved into a small-but-mighty haven for artists across genres — from punk and hip-hop to freak folk, industrial, indie and metal. Local bands and national acts packed the intimate, 240-capacity room, including Phoebe Bridgers, Jack Harlow, Ty Segall, Palehound, Pile, Oompa, Clairo and Speedy Ortiz.
Lavin attempted to save the venue in the face of unprecedented, uncertain times with a crowdsourcing campaign, and the community stepped up to the tune of $300,000. But the old location wasn’t an option, so Lavin began hunting for Great Scott’s new home.
“After a number of swings and misses it looks like we’ve found the target here,” he said.
One of those misses was the former Regina’s Pizzeria in Allston, which was ultimately taken over by Hobson’s Bar & Kitchen. But Lavin was thrilled to say Great Scott’s spirit will be reborn across the street from that new restaurant and adjacent to O’Brien’s Pub, a sister venue at the corner of Harvard Avenue and Cambridge Street.
The project moved closer to reality in mid-2023 after Lavin joined forces with Paul Armstrong, publisher of the online music magazine Vanyaland, producer of the Boston Music Awards and CEO of the media company Redefined. Then Armstrong contacted Jordan Warshaw, a local real estate developer with the Noannet Group that built the hotels Raffles in Boston and Cambria in Somerville. Warshaw suggested the team purchase a new space, which Lavin said was a game changer.
“It’s really exciting to know that we’re going to be able to have the support of landlords — because we’ll be the landlords,” he said. “We know that we’re going to have a lot of runway to be able to continue the Great Scott legacy while reimagining how things would have been going forward if nothing had changed in the first place.”
What won’t change is Great Scott and O’Brien’s shared mission to support emerging local bands. The venues will be housed in the same building, but they will operate separately with two different stages. Together their capacity will be 375 patrons.
“The more bands that bring people out and get people excited, the better it is for everybody,” Lavin said. “I think that vibrancy resonates throughout not only the local music scene, but the arts and culture scene in general.”
Lavin said this new concept will also enable the group to preserve O’Brien’s role as a launching pad while ensuring it doesn’t suffer the same fate as Great Scott.
“To be able to have both venues under the same umbrella collectively and so tightly communicating, will definitely help bands progress and graduate into larger rooms,” he said.
Having the ability to expand and renovate a dual-venue is an exciting prospect. The mixed-use building will be designed by local architects CambridgeSeven and will also house retail and artist spaces along with residential rental units.
As for the to-be-resurrected Great Scott’s vibe, Lavin said the sound system will, of course, be a priority, as it was in the old club. “We always called it the Millennium Falcon,” he recalled, “where it might not look like much, but it’s got it where it counts.”
The old Great Scott didn’t have a green room for touring bands, but according to Lavin the new location’s basement is spacious enough to build out dressing rooms with showers and laundry facilities. Amenities for audiences will include bigger bathrooms.
“Great Scott has a history, and we’re not trying to replicate Great Scott,” Lavin said. “But we’re definitely trying to integrate a lot of what made Great Scott charming while reducing the things that made Great Scott challenging.”
Balancing a new aesthetic with the former venue’s time-worn, grimy charm will also be challenging. “It’s Boston, so we know what’s authentic and we know what’s contrived,” Lavin said. “I mean, Great Scott’s grit was absolutely 100% authentic — maybe even too authentic for some people’s tastes. But we’re not going to try and do a Disney version of what Boston authenticity looks like in a new Great Scott. We understand there are elements you could put in to pay homage to the charm and intimacy of Great Scott without having people’s eyes roll about how gritty our new bar is.”
Being able to keep the club in Allston is also huge for Lavin because Great Scott was part of the neighborhood’s fabric. “It feels like we would have been abandoning Allston while also becoming interlopers somewhere else,” he said. “To be who we are, and to be what we’ve tried to be for the community and the neighborhoods, it just always felt right to be in Allston.”
“We understand there are elements you could put in to pay homage to the charm and intimacy of Great Scott without having people’s eyes roll about how gritty our new bar is.”
– Carl Lavin
Kara Elliott-Ortega, chief of the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture, is excited to see developers working proactively with arts partners to bring back and preserve cultural spaces and businesses like Great Scott.
“This is responsive to the Allston Brighton community, and it’s also meeting the needs of our city,” she said about the announcement. “We need these spaces for artists to grow, reach audiences and call Boston home, whether it’s for the long-term or as a launching point for their careers. We have to work together, public and private sectors, to make Boston a place where creativity can thrive. We at the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture look forward to reviewing this project through the City’s development review process.”
For now, Lavin said he is excited about making the new Great Scott a reality, and he’s especially grateful for the fans who joined the fundraising campaign to help save the music landmark alive all those years ago.
“It was the feel-good story of the spring of 2020, and here we are in the summer of ’24 and we’re about to start making something happen,” he said. “They’ve been so supportive and their patience is super appreciated.”
The team’s goal is to begin welcoming bands, and firing up the amps, at the new Great Scott in 2026.