Behind underground music venue The Blue Room’s final festival

Misita runs the door, memorizing every guests’ name, before guiding them around the back of the house where rickety steps go down to the weed smoke-filled venue. At the same time, Glyn, who lives in the house, helps artists get settled in the small space behind the house’s furnace which has become a makeshift green room.

The Syracuse house show scene is a cycle, they said. Most house venues last one or two years before organizers graduate or move on, but Misita is an exception to that rule. Since he decided to stay at SU for graduate school, he’s been around the DIY house scene and promoting shows for five years, despite a break due to the pandemic.

For the two Syracuse natives, The Blue Room was a culmination of their experiences in the city’s underground scene. The venue that inspired them was Space Camp — where they saw their first house show together in 2017 — an alternative music venue which served as the model for how Misita books artists today.

“They booked what they liked, and it didn’t matter if 20 people showed up, if 10 people showed up or if 100 people showed up,” Misita said. “When The Blue Room started it was, ‘How can we bring in the value system of Space Camp?’”

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When Glyn first saw his new house’s basement, the blue tarps were already on the walls and floor. It sparked an idea, so he reached out to his former manager and high school friend.

“I want to do something and I don’t know what yet,” Glyn recalled telling Misita. “But this place is going to be interesting.”

That’s all Misita needed to hear. Within a few days of deciding to have a show, dozens of students and locals packed into the basement of that new house for The Blue Room’s inaugural concert.

Setting up was easy, Glyn said. He added a few more tarps, used a leftover couch to make a green room and a band sticker-covered desk to hold sound equipment. A week before the show, Misita came up with the name “The Blue Room” because “it had the vibes,” he said.

Glyn, an artist himself, was the first musician to take the stage. Later, two of his local artist friends followed. The show wasn’t full — about 40 people showed up — but they knew they had something special.

“The atmosphere was right,” Glyn said. “It was the perfect way to start the venue.”

That first show was a special moment for Misita as well, finally having his own space with Glyn to hold shows. Under the moniker Mosh Retirement, Misita booked and promoted shows at other venues as an undergraduate student at spots such as the Spark Art Space, but he wanted to do something different.

“I used to go to DIY shows for years beforehand and never really felt included,” Misita said. “I felt like it was always an insider’s club.”

Misita envisioned The Blue Room as a safe space for alternative music and its fans. He and Glyn noticed an opening in the scene for a venue tailored towards hardcore music, punk, shoegaze, hyperpop and other alternative genres, and they wanted to fill that gap.

It was always a dream of Misita’s to put on a festival, but personal mental health challenges and a pandemic ruined the opportunity — now is a “second chance to do things right,” he said.

Most of the artists who played the sold-out Mosh Retirement Fest returned to The Blue Room, and most are professional touring musicians. For Misita, it’s all about leveraging the connections he’s made by promoting local shows and about focusing on the music first, and artists can feel that focus, he said.

The atmosphere of fans enjoying music is what drives Misita and Glyn to host shows. They envisioned a welcoming space where the music came first and brought people together, both college students and locals.

With Misita’s experience promoting shows away from campus and Glyn’s background as a former student at Le Moyne College and Onondaga Community College before he came to SU, crowds are often less than half SU students despite the proximity, the organizers said.

“It’s the people and the atmosphere which make this place so special. Nowhere else is like it,” said local fan Connor Knight. “Every time I come here, I leave with two new friends.”

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The second day of the festival began as chaotic as the first. The first act, hardcore band Misfire, broke a bass string and a guitar strap during their performance, ending their set short like the first act a day earlier. After that, they broke a window in their car while packing up their gear. Glyn dubbed it the “first act curse,” but the seven remaining bands went as smoothly as the other eight the night before.

The early problems only added to the organizers’ stress. Not only did they sell out about 100 tickets for each night, but a local police crackdown on house music venues kept Misita on his toes.

Two campus-area house venues were shut down by police in the week leading up to the festival. No cops stopped by The Blue Room on its final weekend, although a lurking police cruiser sent Misita into crisis mode on the festival’s second day. It’s one reason he wants to move on to legitimate, legal venues.

“I can’t put all this energy into a show and risk having the cops come through,” he said.

The audience waxed and waned over the course of the night as different artists played and people stepped outside for fresh air and drinks from a nearby corner store. Each band had merchandise for sale on a table in the back of the tarp-lined basement, with the space providing a reprieve from the mosh pits in front of the bands.

Before hardcore band Flicker played a cover of “Theme Song for a Syracuse Basement Show,” singer Lukas Reed addressed the crowd and the city’s underground scene.

“The university does its damnedest to keep students separate from the community, but this basement is a bridge to make a greater Syracuse scene,” he said. “It’s sad to see this one go, but we have to take this energy to the next basement and the one after that.”

Even with The Blue Room closing this year, Misita said he isn’t done in Syracuse. He plans on sticking around after he graduates, continuing to manage bands, book tours and work to organize shows at legal, local venues like Funk ‘n Waffles. Mosh Retirement Fest isn’t done either. Misita said he wants to bring it back every semester at a larger venue for locals and students to enjoy his signature alternative music lineups.

“The goal is that Syracuse becomes a legit scene to see smaller bands on a consistent basis,” he said.

Glyn is headed to Los Angeles to pursue music full-time, mostly as a sound mixer and producer for Dan Konopka, the drummer and producer for rock band OK Go.

After ska-pop punk band Keep Flying finished their last song just after midnight, people started filing out of the venue for the final time. Misita spent time taking photos with regular attendees and wishing them well, while Glyn helped the band break down equipment.

“I’m going to miss this,” Glyn said once everyone left. “This is something I’m going to tell my kids about.”

Glyn is moving out in June, but the tarps are staying on the walls and ceiling of the basement.

Banner photo by Nick Robertson | Senior Staff Writer