While the music industry isn’t in a particularly celebratory mood right now, two of Bend’s most notable music venues celebrate anniversary milestones this year. GO! Magazine caught up with founder and owner Derek Sitter of Volcanic Theatre Pub, which marked eight years in February, and Marney Smith, director of Les Schwab Amphitheater, which turns 20 this summer.

Volcanic Theatre Pub

While Volcanic Theatre Pub also is known for hosting film and theater events, music dominated its schedule in recent years. Owner Derek Sitter helped build an audience in Bend for a wide array of musicians and bands, including Kitchen Dwellers, Diego’s Umbrella, The Beths, That 1 Guy, Ballroom Thieves, JD Simo and countless others. The venue also brought in well-known acts such as The Mother Hips and The Rev. Horton Heat, and offered a proving ground for local artists of all genres.

That is harder to do with limited capacity, which has been the norm during the pandemic — when things have been allowed to open.

“The industry is built on sellouts,” Sitter said. “We are in a position where we do a lot of sold-out shows, but we are in a position where we can curate new music. I love doing that: bands you’ve never heard of, but promise you you’re going to love it, and then after the third or fourth time they’re a sellout. But we’re in a position where we can take the risk and say, ‘OK, if we only have 150 people in the room, that’s cool — in fact, that’s really good.’ We can do that. But a lot of these places, because of their overhead, they rely on sellouts because they have in bigger cities niche markets.”

Volcanic’s last major show was Ballroom Thieves in early March 2020. The venue reopened briefly last year for some socially distant local shows but has been closed since October.

Deschutes County will move to the moderate risk category this week, allowing entertainment venues to open at 50% capacity or 100 people, whichever is fewer. Sitter is waiting to reopen until the vaccines become more widely available, and doesn’t anticipate touring acts coming through again until September at the earliest.

But the pandemic has brought positive change to the venue. Sitter improved the venue to meet COVID restrictions, including contact-less ticketing. He also soundproofed the stage and plans to also use it as a sound stage for filming movies and artist performances. The latter, which he’s dubbed VTP Sessions, will feature live streams of local musicians playing four songs at VTP.

“When you get to go see a band at Volcanic, the experience is so intimate you cannot replace that virtually; it’s impossible,” Sitter said. “However, what’s going to happen with the industry — because they have discovered that there is money to be made for them by streaming. And the quality of both the visual and audio components of livestreaming has gotten so good that well, if you’re at limited capacity and you have 100 people at your venue, but if you’ve got an additional thousand watching virtually who paid an admission price to get a code, well, you’re going to make more money than you did when you were just live.”

Sitter also hopes to slow down once things go back to normal, whenever that might be. He came close to selling Volcanic before the pandemic hit, and while the venue is no longer listed, he still hopes to sell the business post-pandemic to focus on acting, filmmaking and traveling.

“My daughter will be entering high school next year, and I don’t foresee me being here in Bend once she graduates,” Sitter said. “With all the acting and film work that I’m going to be doing in the next few years, I’m going to be putting a lot of energy into that, so it’s probably going go back on the market at some point for sure. … I don’t think it’s going to be in the next year, but when things start looking better I’ll probably put it back on the market and then (make) sure it’s going to the right person.”

Les Schwab Amphitheater

On Oct. 3, 2019, Robert Plant & The Sensational Space Shifters ripped through a set of new material and reimagined Led Zeppelin classics at Les Schwab Amphitheater.

Since then, the city’s largest outdoor music venue, which opened in 2001, has been silent. Director Marney Smith is hopeful for a 2021 season after 2020’s was scrapped due to COVID-19.

Some of the acts scheduled to play last year have rescheduled dates announced for this summer, including Rebelution with Steel Pulse, The Green, Keznamdi and DJ Mackle (Aug. 12); Primus and Battles (Aug. 18); Dave Matthews Band (Sept. 8); and Luke Bryan with Morgan Wallen and Runaway June (Sept. 30 and Oct. 1). But no new shows have been announced for 2021 yet.

“We truly felt like we’d come back from the holiday break — from Christmas and New Year’s — and that the landscape would have a different shape and color, and we’d be able to more easily navigate it,” Smith said. “And I think everybody was pretty disillusioned to find out that, no, nobody else feels any wiser at this point in time. It really has been hopeful news, the forecasted availability of vaccines. I know that Oregon is very different from Montana and Texas and Florida and Mississippi and the states that have reopened. But being where we are geographically and not being the first to reopen has given us a bit of an advantage because we can see how it’s happening in other places.”

The venue began long-planned construction work in December, including building a new stage and working on accessibility improvements. The new stage will be larger with a height of 62 feet and an additional 1,840 square feet of space, according to a Bulletin article published in December. Smith hopes that front-of-house construction will be complete before next year’s season.

Since opening, the venue has changed the landscape of Bend’s music scene, helping the city become a touring hub for larger acts that may not have thought of playing Central Oregon before. Perhaps most notably, Dave Matthews Band debuted at the venue in 2014, leading to future shows from Phish, Widespread Panic and more.

“In the past our bookers, when they’re talking with the agents and trying to convince them to program a date at our venue,” Smith said, “they’re looking at a map of Oregon and wonder why on earth they would stop here instead of Portland, Eugene, Medford or skipping Oregon entirely. But once we were able to get an artist to come play here and they realized that, ‘Oh, people are actually going to buy tickets for this show here and we can make money and oh my gosh, this is right on the river; it’s spectacular. Next time let’s bring my family; I want to spend some time in this community.’ The hardest thing has been for us to convince artists not to come back every single year.”

That hasn’t worked with Michael Franti, who has been a fixture at the venue for a decade (2020 would have been his 11th year in a row at Les Schwab Amphitheater).

Other favorites for Smith over the years include Ringo Star, the aforementioned Plant and The Breeders. She’s also particularly proud of the venue’s Take Note initiative, which since 2014 has spearheaded greening efforts at the venue including eliminating single-use plastics and reducing waste.

“It’s being used as an example of how to do things at other venues,” she said. “So we’re working on ways to expand that this year and beyond. How do we take it to the next step?”