SU’s underground music house, The Ark, to shut down indefinitely

Formerly known as the The Ark, 917 Lancaster Ave. was the place to experience live indie music from local musicians in a grungy, unfinished basement.   

From the hours of 9 p.m to 1 a.m, bands like NONEWFRIENDS, Settle for Sadler, Spendtime Palace and The Brazen Youth all played the stage during the 2018-19 school year. Where once was a raised stage and mural depicting an ark braving an ocean of lava, now lies a dusty washer and dryer unit.  

After a successful year of hosting touring and local bands, the hardship of living in a house dedicated to concerts and wild times began eroding the friendship between founders Ryan McKeown, Noah Steinberg and Kyle Smith. For this reason, The Ark has been closed indefinitely. 

“A lot of us just got really, really tired of putting the shows together,” McKeown said. “We were constantly cleaning the place just so we could feel like we were living in a healthy space. It’s a taxing lifestyle.”  

In its one year of operation, The Ark had at least one show each weekend with nightly attendance averaging about 60 people, making it the premiere house to hear the raw sound of the underground music scene, McKeown said. 

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However, operating a house to host independent bands is a longstanding tradition at SU. McKeown said in his first year at SU, he spent most of his time with the older marching band students, who said threw large music shows in the off-campus house nicknamed “Big Red.”  

“After going to these shows during the first few weeks of college, I realized that I wanted to contribute to the music scene in any way I could,” McKeown said.  

His next year, McKeown said he reached out to seniors operating another off-campus music venue that has since closed, known as Space Camp. But when he offered to continue their legacy, they refused. 

The summer before his junior year, McKeown and Steinberg, both sound recording technology majors, laid the groundwork for the music house. They gathered speakers, guitar amplifiers, a drum kit and selected a house for the next year. In order to focus solely on the house, McKeown left the band FLOTUS as their keyboardist, he said. 

The trio originally named the house Noah’s Ark, after founding member Noah Steinberg. It was later shortened to The Ark. 

To set themselves apart from other music houses, McKeown and Steinberg outlined two goals for The Ark: to be as professional as possible while handling the bands and to make it a space that felt like a true “comprehensive” stage venue, McKeown said.  

The Ark founders, Ryan McKeown, Noah Steinberg and Kyle Smith said that keeping up with the venue was hurting their friendship. Katie Reahl | Staff Photographer

Nick Lussier, lead singer of The Brazen Youth, said both he and his bandmates were treated with professionalism and respect the night of their performance last fall.  

“It’s hard to make a house venue seem professional, but they definitely were. They had a lot of equipment and seemed to take pride in who they were booking,” Lussier said. 

During the first semester, they arranged two shows each week with three or more bands playing nightly, McKeown said.  

He added that people would show up not knowing about The Ark and think it had been in existence for years, but the trio said that they had “no idea” what they were doing first semester of last year. 

Peter Groppe, lead guitarist for NONEWFRIENDS and FLOTUS, said he performed at The Ark a total of nine times this past year. He continued to return because the “energy that the crowd brought fueled artists to perform to their highest potential,” Groppe said. 

The founders also agreed they would not take a chunk of the profits and would instead give all of the money they collected on a given night to the acts performing, based on their own experiences being underpaid for performances. They even offered each traveling band free lodging in their house. 

With McKeown and Steinberg acting as the music experts, Smith, as the journalist of the trio, focused his efforts on the promotional aspects via social media. He also charged himself with the task of documenting each show, McKeown said.  

The benefit was the reward of gaining a reputation in the community as a safe, underground venue, McKeown said.  

He added the Ark may be closed, but he hopes it will remain a symbol model for other individuals with the desire to start a live music venue. Groppe said he’ll miss reaching new audiences by playing at The Ark. 

While there are still other venues and houses that independent bands can perform at, The Ark will be missed by those given the opportunity to share their music talents and those who sought it out week after week.  

“The music scene is far from dead. Now that I’m not throwing shows every weekend, I definitely want to help keep the music scene alive because it’s really rare what we have in Syracuse,” McKeown said.