Columbia — If you frequent Five Points businesses like Drip Coffee or Bluetile Skateboards, you might have seen a handful of mysterious free concert tickets by the register. Each one is dated and marked for free entry, but what’s the catch?
There is no catch — the ticket provides free entry into the show at New Brookland Tavern on the evening of the date on the ticket.
The show dates include local bands and touring acts, and do not correlate to the popularity of the artists on the bill. According to New Brookland’s recent Instagram post, the ticket giveaway is simply “to encourage folks to try new things” and perhaps venture outside of their musical comfort zone.
Carlin Thompson, who manages the all-ages venue on Harden Street, said his hope is to see people take advantage of the opportunity to access music that they may not typically be inclined to pay for. College kids and people new to town who cannot afford to drop $10-20 to see a band play on a Friday night can grab a ticket or two and think of it as a blind date, or they can look at the show calendar on New Brookland Tavern’s website or app to see if there is a show date that appeals to them.
The free tickets placed at Drip have been moving fast, and Thompson said he intends to top them up at least once a week.
At Bluetile, owner David Toole hopes to see people get excited about trying new things, but he observed that the culture around shows in Columbia tends to be a last-minute ordeal. Hopefully having a few free tickets around will encourage people to plan ahead and actively prepare for a night of musical revelry — though not everyone has to go home to feed the cats after work on a Friday, some of us do benefit from planning ahead.
Historically, New Brookland has been labeled as a metal venue, but over the past five years this reputation has expanded greatly — Thompson hopes to keep booking bands that draw crowds with diverse musical interests.
But in order to maintain genre diversity in the booking schedule and attract a variety of bands to the area, it is important for Columbia’s music-loving community to support their friends as well as show up to cheer for out of town acts, try something new and build an active community around the venue.
