Yahoo News The Fader Launches T-Shirt and Merch Collection to Benefit Indie Venues
The pandemic has wreaked havoc on nearly every corner of the music industry, but along with musicians, independent venues are certainly among the hardest hit — a recent survey by the National Independent Venues Association says that 90% of such venues are in danger of closing permanently if they do not receive federal aid.
While there’s a $10 billion “Save Our Stages” aid package slowly working its way through an apparently frozen Congress, one of the many things music fans can do to help indie venues is to buy merchandise — and The Fader has partnered with This T-Shirt — a relief platform founded by Dylan Hattem and Cassandra Aaron of DS Projects — to benefit indie venues and “Save Our Stages,” starting with the Fader’s hometown of New York City. (See the shirt below.)
The shirts spotlight independent venues across New York and the impact they hold within their communities.
Starting Wednesday, the New York iteration of the SAVE OUR STAGES collection will be available for purchase at https://thist-shirt.com/collections/save-our-stages for a limited time.
Proceeds from all t-shirt sales will go directly to the venues listed on each shirt and to NIVA’s Emergency Relief Fund. NIVA’s Emergency Relief Fund was created to support America’s most vulnerable venues and is intended to provide short-term relief for independent music venue owners and promoters on the precipice of eviction or permanently shuttering due to the COVID-19 shutdown. The fund is intended to work hand-in-hand with federal and local programs, assisting with the most immediate needs facing the country’s independent venues and promoters and making it more likely that they will be able to reopen, fully, when it’s safe.
Participating venues include a mix of independent venues across both Manhattan and Brooklyn. A full list of venues from the New York collection is provided below.
Baby’s All Right
Our Wicked Lady
S.O.B’s
Avant Gardner
C’mon Everybody
Good Room
The Sultan Room
National Sawdust
Mercury Lounge
To support venues and cities not represented in the first collection, folks can visit www.saveourstages.com for more information.
Earlier this year, due to the cancellation of Austin’s famed South by Southwest Festival, The Fader took its typically invite-only Fader Fort to a digital platform, which featured over 150 exclusive presentations and musical performances by both emerging and acclaimed artists in an effort to help raise money for those hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in the music industry. The event, dubbed Digital Fort, was thrown a second time on July 25th, with over 40 artists participating from around the globe. To date, The Fader’s charitable initiatives have yielded over $25,000 in contributions.
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