A Healthy Music City Sustains Its Artists and Venues
Tropicana Joe spins at Stubb's BBQ on Red River, HAAM Day Music Fest 2025. Photo by Jonathan Orenstein.
A message from HAAM CEO Paul Scott
Austin is facing another wave of music venue closures.
This week, the Red River Cultural District published an open letter about the future of Austin’s Music Mile. The letter is a warning about what many of us have been watching with growing concern: a run of recent music venue closures mounting over the past year. Local businesses are facing an uncertain future. HAAM knows when local venues go dark, the people who work inside them lose an already precarious source of income.
Austin is growing, and the pressures facing downtown don’t have simple solutions. But every day, HAAM works alongside the musicians, DJs, and music teachers who depend on those rooms to make a living.
When a venue closes, it not only impacts our world-renowned music scene but also real people and their livelihoods.
Red River venues provide regular gigs to so many Austinites — for the local artists who fill weeknight bills, and for the working professionals who work alongside them. When a stage goes dark, the livelihood that stage made possible goes dark, too.
We know what happens next, because we hear it from our members. Fewer shows mean fewer paychecks. Fewer paychecks mean skipped dental visits, lapsed prescriptions, deferred mental health care, and the quiet calculation of whether staying in Austin is still possible. The musicians HAAM serves don’t experience a venue closure as a headline. They experience it as an additional hit to an already challenging way of life.
Stages and safety nets hold each other up
Austin’s identity as the Live Music Capital of the World rests on working creative people who can afford to live here, stay healthy here, and keep playing here. A healthy music city depends on two things: places where musicians can work and support systems that help them stay healthy enough to keep working.
Red River is one of the country’s most concentrated live-music ecosystems. An independent 2026 study found that the district generated more than $2.3 billion in economic impact over five years, supported more than 3,700 full-time jobs, and produced more than $170 million in labor income. Behind every one of those jobs is a person who needs healthcare, prescriptions, dental care, and sometimes mental health support.
That is where HAAM comes in. Access to affordable healthcare, dental and vision care, help with basic needs, and other essential services is what allows a musician to weather a slow month, recover from an illness, and stay healthy and financially stable enough to keep working. A healthy venue ecosystem gives our members somewhere to play. Healthcare and basic needs assistance give them the stability to keep showing up.
We can help a musician stay healthy or recover from an illness. We cannot restore the gigs they used to play in a room that is no longer there. If one of the strongest venue districts we have in Austin disappears, musicians can’t get work and can’t afford to live here. Musicians will be forced to move elsewhere. HAAM is committed to helping our local musicians, DJs, and music teachers stay rooted here in Central Texas.
HAAM Day brings us together
There is one day each year when this relationship is on full display. On September 22, HAAM Day Music Festival brings more than 600 musicians to more than 200 venues across Austin, with each show supporting critical care for the real lives of the people performing. Some of the rooms that have supported HAAM Day Music Festival over the years are no longer with us.
HAAM Day Music Festival works because venues and local businesses open their doors, donate their stages, and ask their audiences to give. This year, HAAM Day features live music at the long-standing Red River venue Valhalla scheduled for closure at the end of October, as well as Chess Club, the legendary Stubb’s BBQ, 13th Floor, and more. The places that give musicians somewhere to play are standing shoulder to shoulder with a community that helps keep those musicians well.
The venues that support HAAM are investing in their musicians. The best way to support them is to invest in them, too.
Keeping musicians in Austin takes all of us
The venue owners and local leaders fighting for Red River are protecting the places that power Austin’s creative economy. Organizations like HAAM, and our partners across Austin’s social services network, are protecting the people who make it happen.
As Austin makes decisions about the future of its music districts, musicians themselves need to be part of the equation.
To our City leaders and cultural stakeholders: as you weigh the future of downtown, we ask you to remember that the health of Austin’s music scene is about the people who make it happen. The City of Austin proclaimed September as Austin’s first-ever Support Local Music Month, and HAAM Day Music Festival will be the culminating celebration of a city-wide effort to step up and support the health of local music. A healthy venue ecosystem is a critical part of sustaining a music scene.
To our donors and partners: every closure on Red River lands on the members you help us serve. Your support is what allows us to be there for them when a slow season turns into a health scare or a missed rent payment.
To the broader Austin community: on September 22, and every day after, buy the ticket, grab the drink, and show up for the rooms that give our musicians gigs. Behind every set you enjoy are real lives who rely on venues for work.
Our hard-working musicians are still here. We stand with them and the local businesses that define our culture.