Icehouse to Continue Serving the Community and
Performing Musicians
Icehouse "Rise-up" Event Saturday, August 3rd to Celebrate the
Community and the Club
MINNEAPOLIS, July 16,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Icehouse Music Club is excited
to announce it is committed to continuing operations and supporting
its neighborhood and artists that perform at the club. Icehouse has
restructured its business and lease agreements with new majority
ownership and executive leadership by John
Higgins. The club founder and general manager,
Brian Liebeck, will continue to be active in club operations,
and the management team is joined by JT Bates, nationally acclaimed
virtuoso session drummer, to run programming for the club.
The club employs over 30 people and brings nearly 1,000 patrons
to the venue's neighborhood every week. The club features over 400
performing acts a year, providing bands and musical artists of all
genres a place to perform and celebrate their music. A vital
organization at the heart of the community, Icehouse has prevailed
due to the outstanding support of the local community and the
musicians that have breathed soul into the club. By restructuring
the business, Icehouse has the potential to keep serving the
community for years to come.
"The Icehouse team is very excited to run to the business with
the goal to be both financially sustainable and remain one of the
most important independently owned clubs in Minneapolis," said John Higgins, CEO and President of Icehouse.
"The club industry is extremely challenging with very high
operating costs and major competition for local and national
artists. However, Icehouse deserves to be saved. It is an
extraordinary live music environment, and musicians frequently
comment that Icehouse is their favorite place to perform in
the Twin Cities. Minneapolis has a rich and deep live
performing music history. My family is passionate about Icehouse
because we love our city and this neighborhood, and we are major
supporters of the musical arts."
Higgins continued, "I am pleased to work with Brian and JT to
chart a new course to help make Icehouse better than ever. There
are no two people in the Twin
Cities who work harder than these two to support artists and
give them a state-of-the-art, safe, clean place to perform their
craft. The three of us make a great partnership forged by a
collective belief that the neighborhood needs Icehouse and the
community is better off with the club. I want to thank all the
friends, musicians, and patrons who have supported us the past few
months as we restructured the business."
The Icehouse "Rise-up" event is August
3rd. This is a special event to support Icehouse
and the community featuring three nationally recognized bands
(International Reggae All-Stars, Socaholix and Innocent) plus
DJs to spin between sets. For more information about this event and
our upcoming calendar of live shows check out
www.icehousempls.com.
About John Higgins.
Higgins is a Minneapolis-based
businessman, club owner and philanthropist. He is a Director
of Biotechne, a Twin Cities
biotechnology tools company and a Trustee of The Walker Art Center.
Mr. Higgins was an influential leader and former Trustee of the
Franklin Center, an organization serving the educational and mental
health needs of neurodiverse children and young adults located
in Golden Valley. He was a Trustee
of Colgate University and an early
investor and board member of Avero, now a leading bar and
restaurant enterprise management system. His professional career
has spanned positions as CEO and CFO of public companies
dedicated to the field of medical research and biotechnology. He
and his wife own and operate The Portage, a music club in Cable, Wisconsin.
About Brian
Liebeck. Liebeck founded Icehouse in 2012 as the
first dedicated music club on Eat Street. Icehouse was an instant
live music and gastronomic destination. Liebeck's early Icehouse
music scene grew from weekends to a wide range of nightly events,
matinees, brunch shows on Sundays and a Sunday-night dance party.
JT Bates, Polica, Marijuana Deathsquads, Sonny Knight and the Lakers, Pavielle, Secret
Stash Records, Paul Peterson,
Chastity Brown, Jeremy Messersmith, Doomtree, Erik Koskinen have all had residencies. Other
artists such as Anais Mitchell, Lake
Street Dive, Saul Williams,
Heiruspecs, Cory Wong, Francis and
the Lights, Dessa, Lizzo graced the stage at Icehouse in the early
years as well as groups from the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the
Schubert Club and the Mill City Opera.
Prior to Icehouse, Liebeck forged an early career in music
production during college and later on into IT senior management.
Having never left the music industry, he decided to put all of his
energy and skills into Icehouse.
About JT Bates. Bates grew up in a musical family that
provided an early start into sound and rhythmic exploration. He set
on the path to becoming a working musician while playing in his
father's big band as a teen. Over the years, he remained steeped in
the improvised music scene, both as a performer and presenter. In
2015, he produced and released his first solo album, "Open
Relationship" (Totally Gross National Product) and in 2021 "Not
Other Stuff". Since then he has co-produced with Pieta Brown,
David Huckfelt, St. Anthony Mann and
Micheal Rossetto. As a session
drummer, JT has appeared on Grammy record of the year
"Folklore" (Taylor Swift) as well as
the follow up "Evermore". Grammy nominated "s/t" (Bonny Light Horseman) as well as critically
acclaimed records by Bon Iver, Big Red Machine, Cassandra Jenkins, The National, Maya Hawke, Ed
Sheeran, and many others.
About Icehouse
Built in 1868 to store lake ice,
Icehouse has been transformed into a lively music club in the heart
of Minneapolis famed Eat Street.
During the late 1800s massive blocks of ice were harvested from
Cedar Lake in mid-winter to be stored and delivered to homes and
business into late summer.
Since opening in 2012, Icehouse's mission has remained the same:
provide a fun and uncompromising space for music fans and bands to
come together and do their thing. As the reputation and event
calendar grew in the early years, bigger and bigger bands took
notice of Icehouse's unique environment and uncompromising
commitment to the live experience.
Today, Icehouse is an iconic music club that operates at the
highest levels of service, sound, and ambiance in the Twin Cities. The club features over 5,000
square feet of club space with a main room for 350 guests and a
Piano Bar with seating for 50. The club is powered by the Twin Cities first-ever K Series L-
Acoustics sound system, features a unique 270 degree stage set-up
that wraps the crowd around the live shows, and has large-scale art
by numerous distinguished local artists.
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SOURCE Icehouse