Bay View bar and DIY venue Cactus Club is abuzz just about every day of the week. But on the sunny Monday morning that I visited, the place was empty.
Instead of the sound of drinks sliding across the bar, old friends catching up and music blaring from the stage in the next room, all I heard was the hum of the fridge as I talked to owner/operator Kelsey Kaufmann about all things DIY.
The venue is one of the Milwaukee DIY scene’s most revered stages. Bands from all over the city and across all genres dream about the moment when they headline Cactus Club, and for good reason. It’s a cornerstone of the local music community due, in part, to its artist-first ethos. The club’s mission: platform artists — and not just musicians — from all over Milwaukee.
When you run through the venue’s schedule on any given week, you’re as likely to find an art market as a live show. And Cactus Club has hosted some serious talent in that second category. Artists like Jack White played there early in their career, and he loved the place so much that he recently donated $20,000 to help the club build an accessibility ramp.
It’s moments like these that show off the power of DIY and the thriving community it creates.
Kaufmann, a Milwaukee native, has been part of the DIY scene since they can remember. Playing in bands and hosting their own shows was how they got involved with Cactus Club in the first place. It gave them applicable experience that could support a bigger operation.
“The way DIY operates is in bursts and blooms, when I first started going to shows in the early 2000s, it was all Riverwest basements,” Kaufmann recalled. “Clubs were all 21-plus, so that wasn’t even an option for me. Having Cactus be all ages, having X-Ray Arcade be all ages, Anodyne, Vivarium, etc. — it provides more options for people to explore the scene.”
Artists starting out tend to gig at any place that will take them. These shows end up being held at dive bars or other 21+ spaces that alienate the younger crowd by creating a barrier to entry, which goes against the DIY belief of accessibility for all.
The response, however, was also very DIY: The kids started to open up all-ages basement venues all over Milwaukee. These spaces come and go, typically revolving around the school year and Milwaukee leases, but they act as cultural hubs for people to get a taste of the experience.
There can be a feeling of “graduation” from basement venues, but places like Cactus Club or X-Ray Arcade are an extension of those spaces. The venues are owned and operated by people who grew up watching bands perform in basements and just want to help the scene thrive.
“DIY shows changed my life,” Kaufmann said. “They illuminated that anything is possible and that you can connect with people all over the country who have similar ethos, interests and curiosities. For me, music is almost secondary to a great world-building license, where you are taught and told that collaborating produces the solutions to things you desire.”
Kaufmann’s ethos of community-driven art percolates all over Cactus Club. Event organizers of any caliber are given the opportunity to host an event with very little red tape. People are encouraged to actively engage with the space and use it as they see fit.
The club is essentially a basement venue on a different level, an amorphous space that doesn’t hold itself to any rigid perspective. Instead, it’s symbiotic in how easily an artist can make the venue their own for a night.
“We really straddle this in between: an openness to do other things with a bit more elevated production,” Kaufmann said. “I think we’re just one of many anchors. It felt really important to be artist-run, artist-centered and support queer folks through our programming.”
That’s where the DIY-ness of it all comes from — the desire to help artists and marginalized communities. As Kaufmann said, being in a basement show is life-changing. It’s a cacophony of bliss in which the catharsis of the show connects every individual, merging them into a single being, in a single space.
Jonathan Joseph is a Milwaukee-based multimedia freelance journalist who specializes in art and culture writing (and all things Milwaukee), with work appearing on Radio Milwaukee and in Milwaukee Magazine. Contact him via email or find him on LinkedIn.