STAGING A COMEBACK

Take me back to the moment when the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020. What were you feeling as the owner of a music venue and a concert promoter?

Everything came apart like a house of cards. We had spent the past three or four months booking into the spring. I was already done with the Holler on the Hill lineup, and that was going to be our best group of bands at that festival ever. On March 12, I drove to The Vogue, where the Drive-By Truckers were on stage sound-checking. By that time in the afternoon, we knew we had to pull that show. I came back to the HI-FI and had to cancel the J. Roddy show here. Once we got all that stuff cleared for that day and the next, then it hit me: I called Michael Huber [president of Indy Chamber] and said, “This is going to be way worse than anybody thinks it’s going to be. We need to move right now.” To Michael’s credit, the next morning, he had an