Ryan Fluke was the owner of the DIY house venue, The Irish Goodbye on Lovell Street in Kalamazoo. He has since moved and has started a new venue in The Vine called the Backrooms. In this story, Fluke reminds the Irish Goodbye from show memories to the house itself, and explains his feelings towards what he calls the end of an era. 

 

 Fluke moved to Kalamazoo from Grand Rapids. He used to help run a DIY venue there called Space Church. 

 

That was a dope spot. We got kind of got cut right down the middle by Covid so we had a few shows, had to stop and then we had one bash right before I moved here last July.

 

He wanted to move to Kalamazoo initially because…

 

I had come to Kalamazoo a few times before with my band Future Misters and I just loved the house show scene down here and we had an absolute riot doing shows at Space Church so pretty much when I saw the house I was moving into I looked at the basement and said yeah we’re going to do this, it’s perfect for it.

 

When he’s not hosting shows…

 

Dumb day job, music, I’m no longer in Future Misters I’m still playing bass with the Tube Socks, I’ve got that. Been training for a marathon because I hate myself. A lot of photography too, been focused a lot more on that lately.

 

He says the Irish Goodbye didn't require a lot of prep time. 

 

I didn’t spend a ton of time decorating it, the most work I put in was trying to make an Irish flag, like the one that hung on that back wall because we just got three different sheets of fabric and hung it up. I got a different mixer that made things go a little smoother. I think I started planning maybe August or September. It took a little bit to find three bands for the first show, but once that one took off people wanted to play at our house pretty bad.

 

When creating the venue, the idea he had in mind was…

 

I wanted it to look like a shitty dive bar. That was the goal, so there were as many beer signs that I could find at stores. I half encouraged you to just put your beer on the wall, I wouldn’t say it but I would lead by example and people started to do that. Just in general I like to have a fun environment I never really gave strict rules to anybody I really never had problems with things like that either.

 

Fluke said he felt inspired by all the venues in Kalamazoo when creating the Irish Goodbye.  

 

Any one that I ever came to in Kalamazoo I had an absolute riot at like we played a few and it always was such a fun environment so I was really going for that. 

 

He said sound setup was fairly new to him when starting the venue. 

 

Trevor from Future Misters who I used to live with used to run pretty much all the sound at Space Church but I had the speakers we used to use there so once I moved here it was just a matter of getting the levels dialed in. Typically house shows have a couple monitors for the stage but other than that I usually just run it with like two PA speakers for a house venue.

 

The first show at the Irish Goodbye was October 29th 2021. 

 

It was one of the most fun, it was a halloween show. One of the guitar players in the last band wore a crayon costume and I’m just never going to forget that, I kept calling him crayon man all night.

 

When creating the lineup for the night…

 

I was trying to find locals that were not playing like every week. Shankool plays around here a lot I hit him up mostly just because I’ve known that dude for a while and I thought it would be cool. Indigo Curve reached out to me, and Bronson Arm reached out to me. They said they had a single dropping with a video that day so I was like yeah, fucking come out and run it.

 

I really fell in love with Bronson Arm after that one. I mean I had never met those guys until that show but they are one of my favorite locals now. Their Spotify stuff is good but live they put out such hard energy.

 

His second show at the Irish Goodbye was a week after the first.

 

A few days before that first show, Estevan hit me up to run this snowboard video release party the following week so I didn’t really have to do any planning for that one it just kind of happened. We had three bands come out to that too, so it was two bands played then there was a snowboard video outside. I got to show you a picture, my whole driveway was full of people and there was just a projector and a screen at the end of our driveway showing the video. There were 200 people at our house, that was the most ridiculous one we ever threw 

 

I’m not gonna lie I started drinking really early that night cause I was so nervous because like oh god its our second show were gonna get a bad name its gonna get shut down, it went off without a hitch, I had no problems, there was a cop that circled the house a couple times just because we had so many people outside, but we had no issues. One dude wanted to bring a fire pit and I was like please don’t, I love the idea but I don’t have a yard please don’t. 

 

The bands that played that night were Dregs, Ocean Floor and Worry Club.

 

The first show I ever went to when I moved here was at Xanadu and it was Dregs final boss fight and Riley out of Texas, and I met Dregs and I did some pictures for them that day. As far as a thrashy hardcore band they are one of my favorites. Not a lot of people are doing what they’re doing.

 

When asked what was most memorable about it…

 

The first time anybody ever dropped a 40 glass bottle in my basement. That was fun. Same dude, he also unplugged the pedalboard of John from Dregs, with his foot and I had to go down there and find what was unplugged.

 

Dregs also played at his venue again with Antighost in April.

 

I knew antighost had wanted to play in this area, they played at Space Church once or twice too. They were from Grand Rapids initially, that's how I met them. I like that they’re doing a version of grunge now. It’s a very interesting style of music.

 

At the end of the Antighost show our toilet in the tiny bathroom on the first floor started leaking all the sudden just straight into the basement like pouring down, and Joe the bassist for Antighost he insisted like I can fix that dude I was like nah dude were renting this place get out, don't even mess with it. He was so insistent though he really wanted to help fix it, it just turned into a mess cause all of us that lived there was pretty in the bag by that point and now we had to deal with a water leak.

 

The last Irish Goodbye show was in May.

 

I tried to keep it quiet. People knew because I’d tell one person and then just 50 people found out 

 

When creating the bill for the last show…

 

Scare city reached out to me initially so that’s why I did that night. I put Tube Socks on it cause it was gonna be the last show. I feel like we finished the night playing the longest set I don’t know how long it was but it was like the most dumb fun I’ve had on stage in a while and there was just like 15 people left in the basement that stands out to me. That’s why I put us last too, I figured if people don’t stick around at that point we’ll just keep practicing.

 

As for the rest of the bill that night…

 

I had Sumaric, I know Dylan the drummer for that band, I had been in Grand Rapids the week or two before and I was mentioning wanting an opening band, and he’s like well we just started getting together we can get a set together, and I was like I don’t even know what you play but run it.

 

Basement Window also played that night. He compared his experience running Space Church to the Irish Goodbye

 

We ran it real similar where as we had the show people could just kind of roam about the house as long as they weren’t messing with my stuff. At Space Church we had a furnace right in the middle of our basement so people were just running into that shit all the time. Our washer and drier had like dents in it from people running into them all the time.

 

I feel like the Irish Goodbye shows, I liked being a host by the end of them. Initially getting in front of people and talking like that I’m not good at that, so at Space Church I wasn’t as good at that. There’s not much that I ran differently, maybe little things that streamlined it better. I pretty much at the Irish Goodbye encouraged one drum set if we could just to make that go easier.

 

When asked how the Grand Rapids scene differs from the Kalamazoo house show scene…

 

Grand Rapids is finally kind of getting there with the house show scene but Kalamazoo has always beat the crap out of the GR scene, there just hasn’t been as many house shows. And I have noticed, more so in GR people will mess with stuff in your house, like not every show, but I know of the Tree House in GR, he said one of the nights somebody just stole their donation bin which I’ve never had that happen here, I’m sure it does happen but I like GR a lot but I feel like it’s a little bigger of a city and down here there’s about the same amount of artists and musicians it feels like as there are up there, so it’s just more so of that crowd down here so you get a lot less of that fuckery for lack of a better word. I like the people down here typically a little more, just seems like they get music and art a little bit better. There aren’t as many house shows in GR, it's a different scene it’s mostly just bars and breweries stuff like that. 

 

Though Kalamazoo has a few venues in the area too. 

 

Papa Petes usually throws some solid shows, Old Dog they’ve had a couple good ones I’ve seen over there. Definitely more focused on the house show scene. Most musicians too, a lot I know say house shows are the best, even if you’re not getting as good of a payout it’s just such a fun time.

 

He explains why he hosts despite the lack of pay from doing so. 

 

It’s just so much fun, it’s also the networking, I meet so many people through it. I’ve met a lot of different bands, and because I take pictures at every show, sometimes they hit me up, like the pictures, throw me some cash, usually they don’t. I just love music. I love seeing dope musicians up there, as much as I’ve probably lost money doing this it’s just so much fun. I just like to support people that are doing cool shit.

 

He says his favorite part is bringing everybody together and being a facilitator of a good night. 

 

That shit feels so good, when you like throw a nice party and everybody having a good time and at the end of the night you’re drunk making hash browns. It’s either pretty good hashbrowns or sloppy pancakes, I don’t make pancakes well in general, I don’t make them well at all when I’m drunk, it is such a fucking mess.

 

He says he hasn’t had too many issues with “stragglers,” but…

 

Some people do hang out a little long and you kind of wonder like are you crashing here, like do you need a spot? We had a guy once, he slept in our basement on a yoga mat. I was like, that’s fine, but you know we got couches, like you could have talked to me, like that’s such a weird move. Hard move, I guess, go to a house show and bring a yoga mat. I guess you never know where you’re gonna end up kind of thing. Really not a problem with stragglers, usually people can tell, alright I gotta get out of here,

 

The Irish goodbye had 10 shows over the course of 8 months. Fluke said, before Covid-19, some house venues in the area were running a few shows a week. 

 

I respect a venue that can do that but I know that it becomes really hard to get people to come out to come out to every show then. And for traveling bands, it’s hard to get people to throw cash every night.

 

Getting money for traveling bands was a focus for Fluke. He said he’d sometimes suffer from some pre-show anxiety over it.

 

It’s mostly like are people gonna show up, especially the first show, but there were a few in between where just it didn’t feel like a ton of people came out and I was always nervous for that to happen again, because I always want bands to play for a good amount of people, and then especially if you’re on the road I want to get you as much of a payout as I can so if either of those were lacking then I would just think about that for weeks.

 

He said he took different approaches to booking bands. 

 

Sometimes I reach out to bands but most of the time it just kind of organically happened. Some of them I was just really reaching. I don’t know if you were at that one that Teen Mortgage came out to, I listened to them on Spotify and I just kind of dry hit them up I was like you guys are dope I know you guys are from Washington DC but you should come to Kalamazoo sometime and they did. A lot of the time I do have those traveling bands just hit me up when they‘ve just came across the venue, which is fun. It makes you feel good. It's like ah shit you guys are dope of course you can play in my basement.

 

It's kind of a funny thing when you take away the fact that it's a DIY venue, but somebody just being like, can I play instruments in your basement?

 

Yeah, exactly. I love breaking it down to that. It feels so good.

 

When it came to creating a bill…

 

If its a four band bill I want it to be split between locals and traveling, just so, ideally what you want to do is have sandwich where you have a local open it to get people in and a local close it that you know people will stay for. Some people don’t stick around if they don’t know the bands, that’s definitely not everybody, I definitely have been able to close a night with an out of town band and I just know they’re fucking dope, but I mean, at least every show I had at least one or two local just cause you always want to do that for the draw.

 

And because…

 

There’s a lot of really talented mother fuckers in this neighborhood

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Every once in a while you get outliers and you don’t really know where to put them. Like my neighbors played, they were in Potted Meat they were so dope and they all moved away from each other. They only were together for like three months, I was like you guys got to play for this show because they hit all over the map because they just started playing and didn’t really know what kind of genre they wanted to do. They did a fortunate sun cover, they did a really hard metal song, and then they did a funk song they wrote. I guess all in all I tried to do themes but sometimes it’s fun to have people that don’t fit in it at all,

 

He said he’d try to involve artists in the neighborhood to make posters for shows. 

 

I made two out of ten of them. Usually people would reach out or I would reach out to somebody. I wanted to make posters but anytime I would try it’s just not a strong point of mine, so usually I would tend to reach out, sometimes people would just send me posters and I’d be like sweet. I’ll use that, thank you, you want money?

 

He says running a venue allows him to explore some of his own passions as well, like photography 

 

I honestly didn’t even think about it serving a purpose for the venue until later on, I started doing the crowd shots and people loved those. So it was mostly from the beginning because I love photography and I like trying to get better at it, shooting in the basement sucks its so dark, I learned to love it though since I practiced every show obviously, it did start to serve a purpose cause I’ll post the crowd shots. Some of the faces you catch from people it will be a crowd of people watching the music and then one person looking at the camera it's just so funny. They just saw the flash and then looked over, it cracks me up though.

 

He said running a venue also pairs well with being a musician.

 

It feels cool to play at any house venue but your own especially

 

Fluke said being a good host is another one of his passions.

 

If people crashed like a band that was out of town I would try and make them breakfast but the first band I tried to do that for left right as I got all the stuff and started cutting potatoes, the second time I thought a band was gonna crash and they didn’t end up crashing and I was already making potatoes and I was like alright here we go. It finally panned out the last show, Scare City crashed and had like three dudes with them, and  I was like, I’m making hashbrowns you guys sticking around? And they were like yeah sounds great, I made like two pots of coffee I made a fuck ton of hash browns bacon, That one was funny I was cooking and running around the whole time, all the food was gone by the time I got my plate. I had like two burnt pieces of bacon while I was getting it ready, but hey it felt good to be a good host. 

 

He said he didn't try to control the crowd, and his venue really didn’t have any rules or safety precautions.  

 

Mostly just trusted the crowd. I felt like the less I tried to take control of anything the better it would usually go, like if there was ever a problem I’d confront it if I had to but I really didn’t take many precautions and usually things went alright. I don’t think anybody ever got hurt

 

I am so easy going, oh you wanna do that, it’s not harming anybody you can do that. Let people do their thing, as long as you’re not here to cause anybody harm go for it.

 

He reminisced on some of his all time favorite performances. 

 

I was so stoked to put that Teen Mortgage show together, I planned that one for like two to three months so getting to see those guys live dope as hell getting to talk to them, and they’re planning on coming back at some point. I did too, that fist show we had with the indigo curve, they are one of the dopest bands I’ve seen as far as live energy. Like their recordings are great but that first show I kept telling them to play more songs, they probably played for an hour or so.

 

I did really enjoy playing my last show with future misters in my basement though. I was with them for five years. It was a really solid run, I love those guys. I felt like I left it all on the drum kit that night. It was a good way to end it.

 

He also remembered some of his favorite features of the house. 

 

It was a really ideal basement, the house was fun.

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I loved that we had that piano on that first floor, and that certain people would just come in and play it, like Al from Nothing new, pretty much every time he played he would bring his stuff in get set up or whatever and he’d just hop on the piano and I’d be downstairs setting something up and be like uh, there’s al. I did like having that whiteboard too at the top of the stairs. There’s a note from the first show that says thank you for the banana and the hospitality. I loved the tiny bathroom, because I’d be like it’s the smallest bathroom, and then they’d get in there ad be like what the fuck! It would crack me up.

 

Now that he has moved, the Irish Goodbye is no more. 

 

Been like a weird few weeks it all has been coming together as a phase change. I’m excited for a new chapter. I definitely want to keep that name the Irish Goodbye though, I can’t let that go

 

The name was… 

 

Perfect as far as I wanted it to have that bar theme, and just in general it sounded like a fun place to go. It’s my favorite way to say goodbye, I’m not good at the whole let’s take 20 minutes see you around sort of, I like to just get the fuck out of there

 

When asked what's next for him…

 

Gonna probably try and focus on my own projects, definitely want to put some more into the Tube socks as well and I want to try and record my own stuff eventually. Just in general being part of the community still

 

Fluke said he plans to throw more shows at his new place called The Backrooms. He doesn't imagine running it much different from the Irish Goodbye. 

 

I like how everything ran there, unless people didn’t show up I never had issues, maybe some level of promoting, just because sometimes when bands would reach out if they already had some kind of a lineup there would be less locals on it so there would be less of a draw, so maybe just taking slightly more control on that aspect, honestly not much though, that venue was just so much fun.

 

He encourages people to run shows of their own. 

 

To anybody who is trying to run a venue, the biggest thing with it is that you got to know what musicians want, so I guess it helps that I was in a band, but just reaching out to the bands constantly  and be like what can I do, what can I do to make this better for you, I’ll have this here, how many mics do you need is the drummer cool with using my kit, any like little question, cause really that’s what a band wants like aw this guys got his shit together. So that’s the biggest thing for me, cause if you get bands coming out to your house that like your house their gonna promote it too, if they don’t like your house they will not be as big into the promoting aspect,

 

The only challenges he listed that comes along with being a venue owner…

 

If you’re renting the home you will find beer cans in weird spots when you’re trying to move out, I filled a five gallon bucket of ones that were like shoved in the ducts and I would have to like jump to ge them out. Expect that your house is could get trashed, mine never got that bad, just winter sucks cause everyone’s tracking in snow, that’s one thing you don’t think about until it hits, or its like a rainy night and its like oh my god… 

 

One of the last pieces of sentiment that still exists from the Irish Goodbye is the framed photo of a man that hung in the tiny bathroom and was the profile picture for the Irish Goodbye Instagram. 

 

When asked about the backstory of it…

 

Neighbor across the street in GR this was on Fremont street for anybody from GR but the landlord was clearing out the basement and whoever lived there just trashed the place and he was just asking for help round the neighborhood, and he threw me just not enough money to do it, I was just down there and I saw that picture, and I was gonna keep it just for the frame, but it’s just such a funny picture. People would ask me who that was and I just didn’t have a response I just thought it was fucking funny. I always thought it would be so funny that if somehow some way they came out to the show, the people that lived there and just like saw that in my bathroom, you go to some random show and there’s just a picture of your dad in the bathroom. How funny is that? I’m definitely holding onto it, I’m gonna do something with that picture.

 

The photo hangs proudly in the living room of his new place. So far he’s hosted two shows at the Backrooms, and has another planned for Saturday November 4th. The night will feature Ficus, Sleepy Guacho, Smushie and Secret Sound Lab. DM the venue on Instagram with any questions.