Speak In Tongues: An Oral History of Cleveland's DIY Punk Venue

By Eric Sandy and Ken Blaze

Speak In Tongues was a freewheeling, community-run underground music venue in Cleveland, Ohio that operated on a do-it-yourself basis throughout the late 1990s. The venue fostered a flourishing creative culture, where you could enjoy a puppet show from a spray-painted couch or meet other punks to start a band or a movement, but was also smoothly run with a great sound system and the best curation of music that you could hear in the city during its tenure. On any given night, you could go see hardcore punk, experimental jazz, or thrash shows where fireworks were set off inside the building. Traveling bands regularly booked shows there, including ones that went on to greater fame, like Modest Mouse, Avail, Lifter Puller, Jimmy Eat World, Alkaline Trio, Milemarker, and J Church. Venue operators, and later a management collective, contended with police surveillance, skinheads with knives, an exploding oil drum full of raw meat, a flaming car, and a different number of riots depending on who you ask. There may not have been a bar, but a healthy BYOB policy ensures that everyone’s memory is different, resulting in an entertaining story of a place that truly was what you made it, the source of lifelong friendships and endless lore. This comprehensive oral history tells a story that is greater than the sum of each person’s recollections, forming a picture of a unique, weird, special place that deeply informed the next twenty years of Cleveland’s underground culture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Microcosm Publishing
• Release date: Jun 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781648410666

Eric Sandy

Eric Sandy is a journalist based in Northeast Ohio. He previously worked as a staff writer and managing editor at Cleveland Scene, where an earlier version of the Speak In Tongues story was first published. In 2021, he was a finalist for the Livingston Award. He lives in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, with his wife and two dogs.

Book preview

Front Cover of Speak in TonguesPhoto by Ken Blaze

SPEAK IN TONGUES

An Oral History of Cleveland’s DIY Punk Venue

© Eric Sandy, 2022

This edition © Microcosm Publishing, 2022

First edition, first published June 14, 2022

For a catalog, write or visit:

Microcosm Publishing

2752 N Williams Ave.

Portland, OR 97227

www.Microcosm.Pub

ISBN 9781648410642/eBook ISBN 9781648410666

This is Microcosm #709

Edited by Alexis Orgera

Photos by Ken Blaze, Sean Carnage, and Daev Petrovich

Design by Joe Biel

A greatly abbreviated version of this work was previously published in Cleveland Scene, August 3, 2016

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sandy, Eric, author.

Title: Speak In Tongues : an oral history of Cleveland’s DIY punk venue / by Eric Sandy.

Description: Portland : Microcosm Publishing, 2022. | Summary: Speak In Tongues was a freewheeling, community-run underground music venue in Cleveland, Ohio that operated on a do-it-yourself basis throughout the late 1990s. The venue fostered a flourishing creative culture, where you could enjoy a puppet show from a spray-painted couch or meet other punks to start a band or a movement, but was also smoothly run with a great sound system and the best curation of music that you could hear in the city during its tenure. On any given night, you could go see hardcore punk, experimental jazz, or thrash shows where fireworks were set off inside the building. Traveling bands regularly booked shows there, including ones that went on to greater fame, like Modest Mouse, Avail, Lifter Puller, Jimmy Eat World, Alkaline Trio, Milemarker, and J Church. Venue operators, and later a management collective, contended with police surveillance, skinheads with knives, an exploding oil drum full of raw meat, a flaming car, and a different number of riots depending on who you ask. There may not have been a bar, but a healthy BYOB policy ensures that everyone’s memory is different, resulting in an entertaining story of a place that truly was what you made it, the source of lifelong friendships and endless lore. This comprehensive oral history tells a story that is greater than the sum of each person’s recollections, forming a picture of a unique, weird, special place that deeply informed the next twenty years of Cleveland’s underground culture-- Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021057641 | ISBN 9781648410642 (trade paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Speak In Tongues (Nightclub) | Underground music--Ohio--Cleveland--History and criticism. | Punk rock music--Ohio--Cleveland--History and criticism. | Subculture--Ohio--Cleveland--History--20th century. | LCGFT: Oral histories.

Classification: LCC ML3477.8.C59 S36 2022 | DDC 781.6409771--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021057641

Microcosm Publishing is Portland’s most diversified publishing house and distributor with a focus on the colorful, authentic, and empowering. Our books and zines have put your power in your hands since 1996, equipping readers to make positive changes in their lives and in the world around them. Microcosm emphasizes skill-building, showing hidden histories, and fostering creativity through challenging conventional publishing wisdom with books and bookettes about DIY skills, food, bicycling, gender, self-care, and social justice. What was once a distro and record label was started by Joe Biel in his bedroom and has become among the oldest independent publishing houses in Portland, OR. We are a politically moderate, centrist publisher in a world that has inched to the right for the past 80 years.

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Photo by Ken Blaze

CONTENTS

The Future Is Past, The Past Is Future: Introduction

Cast of Characters

The Beginning (1994-1995)

Liftoff (1995-1997)

And Then … (1997-1998)

In Bloom (1998-2000)

The End (2001)

Speak In Tongues Has Escaped to the Future

Acknowledgements

Publisher’s Note

THE FUTURE IS PAST, THE PAST IS FUTURE

Introduction

It came and went like a dream, as all good things do. Speak In Tongues, the institution, existed as a small DIY arts space on the west side of Cleveland from October 7, 1994, until New Year’s Eve 2001. It meant something different to every person who passed through its walls, but at its core Speak In Tongues was a place capable of tapping into the creative impulses of a generation. One could never be sure what the next show would bring, but the baseline ethos (wild abandon, free expression, politically inclined self-awareness) was ever present. This is an increasingly uncommon thing in America—an institution capable of sticking to its principles, even for a short period of time—and the story of how Speak In Tongues came to be (and how it got away) is an important reminder of what’s possible when a group of people come together with a few wild ideas and some spare time.

Nowadays, with the right eyes, on a streetlight-stunned night, the brick building at 4311 Lorain Avenue can prompt a surge of memories for those who know. It was here, for seven fast years, where a loose-knit collective of independently minded artists, musicians, goof balls, seekers, and performers of all stripes gathered to create a space for themselves—and for anyone else who stumbled through the door. You can see them now: hanging out on the front steps, sepia-toned; ambling around the back lot, asking questions about the show that night and, maybe, the boundless meaning of life; and, there, inside, dancing and swaying and loudly proclaiming that it’s all happening right now. They are celebrating the very fact that they’re here at all, here to build and create and transform their surroundings to reflect who they are. These visions come and go. The show winds down. If these moments never ended, it wouldn’t count for much—would it? The ending of a story is what makes the entire thing precious.

This is a story about how we tell stories.

With a different set of eyes, eyes less attuned to the magic of the past, the building on Lorain Avenue is as of this writing home to a sandwich joint and a wax studio and a bunch of apartments. These things hold their own place in the great narrative of the post-industrial Rust Belt city, sure, but this is a distinct era now—something apart from the world that created Speak In Tongues and the world that Speak In Tongues created. Cleveland, like all of us in a way, has moved on. Speak In Tongues, the institution, is no more.

The idea, on the other hand …

Artistic expression has a certain time-travel quality to it, an ineffable ability to conjure memories of love and dreams of unknowable fate. Don’t get me wrong: This is not about visiting the building or the sandwich place or the salon, nor is it about recreating something lost to time. I’m talking, rather, about how we might access the idea of Speak In Tongues. It’s right there! Right in front of us. We can still reach out and tap into it.

Dave Petrovich was the guy who got this thing started back in the fall of 1994. He and his friend, the late Shelby Bell, were looking for a space to host events and parties and art shows and performances—whatever might come to mind. The plan grew out of a local arts zine that Petrovich and his roommate, Rob Sabetto, were working on at the time. This was a pre-internet epoch, of course, an age of photocopies and word-of-mouth excitement. Bell worked at the Kinko’s in downtown Cleveland, which Petrovich frequented for late-night photocopy work. This part of the origin story is important, as it speaks to the milieu of something resembling mid-nineties social media. The point was always to share the creative work, whether that be in print form or in a physical space like a music venue. The concept of social media wouldn’t show up and go berserk for another fifteen-ish years, but the intent has always been there in our artistic reach. The