It’s a rainy and cold winter night in Des Moines, but inside xBk, the mood is warm. Regulars shrug off raincoats and squeeze around small tables wedged between the bar and the low stage. It’s Monday night, which means Monday Night Live, a weekly, free showcase for local musicians at the 250-capacity venue in the Drake neighborhood.
xBk is known for its eclectic calendar that welcomes local talent. In January alone, the independent venue hosted an improv jam and a poetry open mic alongside local acts. On this night, Des Moines-based singer-songwriter Adam Bruce sits alongside a few fellow musicians, debuting a song he’d finished writing in the past week.
The evening has a ritual calm, softly punctuated by applause. But as Bruce warms up the room, just around the corner, a similarly sized venue has wound down — for good.
Lefty’s Live Music on University Avenue has been a fixture of the Drake neighborhood for the past decade, but its owners announced late last year that they intended to close the venue by the end of 2025. Since opening in 2014, the 350-capacity venue has been a dependable home for underground and emerging artists, particularly grunge, metal and punk bands — genres that Lefty's co-owner Erik Brown says face a particular challenge when it comes to finding paid gigs.
“It’s such an eclectic mix of stuff we do,” Brown told IPR after the venue announced its closure on Facebook last November. “We see a real gap, especially with hip-hop, with heavy metal, with garage rock — the bands that are developing. We get bands from Iowa City every week that are just playing in their mom’s basement, and it’s their first show they’ve ever done in a venue."
Lefty’s is the latest loss in Des Moines’ ever-reshaping music ecosystem. The number of indie music venues, like neighboring xBk, has fallen to just a small handful and that has narrowed the places where local artists can experiment and grow. While the reasons behind each closure have varied, the cumulative effect has been a widening gap between Des Moines' major stages and opportunities for smaller, growing bands to thrive.
A shrinking middle
When Des Moines-area band Display Case got its start, the members of the self-described "rock hard hard rock" band were playing anywhere they could. Fortunately, in 2009, their opportunities to play at local indie venues — especially those that were friendly to novice bands — were abundant.
"We were playing at Vaudeville Mews, we were playing at the House of Bricks, People's Court, Seven Flags. We had this opportunity to play at so many places, even before we knew how to really do that on a regular basis," said Dylan Medina, the band's bass player.
The band credits the owners of Lefty's, Vaudeville Mews and House of Bricks for teaching them the ins and outs of the industry.
“They were the ones that taught us how to be respectful of a venue and how to work properly," Medina said. "There's a business side to it, and you need to be professional and you need to respect where you’re at."
Slowly, the landscape began to change. People's Court closed in 2012, followed by House of Bricks in 2015. There were openings, too, like Wooly's in 2012, Lefty's in 2015 and xBk in 2019, but once the pandemic hit, the entertainment industry faced an unprecedented financial pitfall it hasn't yet fully recovered from.
“There's just a lot of young bands that I know are not really going to fit some of the rooms that are in town once we're gone."Erik Brown, former co-owner of Lefty's Live Music
Since 2020, several pillars of Des Moines’ independent music scene have disappeared. Vaudeville Mews closed during the early months of the pandemic, followed by the newer Des Moines Social Club in 2021. Another well-known venue, the Gas Lamp, shuttered in 2023 amid plans to redevelop the building it occupied. In late 2024, the future of longtime summer festival 80/35 was thrown into indefinite uncertainty after the quiet dissolution of its producer, the Greater Des Moines Music Coalition.
Together, those spaces once formed a diverse network that allowed artists and bands like Display Case to find their niche, build a reputation and even earn a steady income performing.
“I think we do fill a gap,” former Lefty's co-owner Brown said. “There's just a lot of young bands that I know are not really going to fit some of the rooms that are in town once we're gone."
There are always other opportunities to perform. Bars frequently open their doors to live bands, though local ordinances banning patrons under 21 after 9 p.m. cut down on crowds and prime-time slots. When local venue options are slim, bands like Display Case go on tour or blend easily into the underground, DIY house show scenes in the Des Moines area and Ames. But now that the indie venues in Des Moines have shrunk to primarily xBk and Locals Bar & Stage, a venue for growing bands that opened over the summer, booking has become a battleground.
"It first started happening when Gas Lamp closed — you'd have six shows a week going on at Gas Lamp, and you'd have six shows a week at Lefty’s, you'd have six shows a week at xBk," said Jordan Essy, Display Case's lead vocalist. "Now, instead of trying to compete with 15 other bands, you're competing with 50 other bands for the same night in the same slot. And that's also really stressful on the venues too, because I'm sure they want everybody to have the same fair chance, but at the same time, they kind of have to go with who’s going pull in the most money for them.”
Playing it safe
Venue operators say the financial pressures they face have intensified as entertainment budgets tighten and audiences grow more selective due to inflation pressures.
“When you're dealing with this portion of the industry, we are on the tail end of people's expendable cash,” Brown said.
Smaller venues are also competing in the same market as entertainment giants like Live Nation, which can draw large crowds for major touring acts at bigger venues in town, like the Val Air Ballroom, Wooly's and Vibrant Music Hall. For some local musicians, those dynamics make it harder to build a career on original work.
“When you ask people's music tastes, they want to go see a cover band, they want to see what's comfortable, what's safe, what's familiar,” said Madison Ray, a longtime xBk employee and leading man of local band The Finesse. “Even if they don't know the band, they want to know the music. And that's normal and natural, that totally makes sense, but I think that is sometimes frustrating to a lot of our creatives.”
Dave Montgomery, a guitarist for Des Moines reggae-rock band Some Friends, has been playing in the local scene for 25 years. He’s watched cover bands and tribute acts thrive while original music struggles to draw crowds.
“If it were up to me, I’d never have to play a Taylor Swift song,” he joked. “But that’s what people want to hear sometimes, so that’s what I do, you know?”
The 'Live Nation effect'
As the number of locally owned venues in Des Moines has shrunk since 2020, global entertainment company Live Nation has only expanded its influence over central Iowa's mid-sized and larger venues. The Beverly Hills-based company owns Ticketmaster and controls a significant share of the national live events market.
In November 2023, the 3,300-capacity Vibrant Music Hall in Waukee became Iowa's first Live Nation-owned venue.
Just two months prior, the company had also finalized a majority stake in local promotions company First Fleet Concerts, owned by founder Sam Summers, whose portfolio includes Wooly’s, Val Air and the rapidly expanding Hinterland Music Festival, among others. Hairball, The Last Dinner Party and Magnolia Park are just some of the acts scheduled across First Fleet venues in 2026.
For fans, the benefits are clear.
“Now you get to see the shows you’ve always wanted to see,” Ray said. His band made its debut at Wooly's on Dec. 20, 2025, as an opener for a holiday concert. “Artists that wouldn’t normally come to Des Moines are stopping here. From that standpoint, Live Nation really changes the game.”
“Artists that wouldn’t normally come to Des Moines are stopping here. From that standpoint, Live Nation really changes the game.”Madison Ray, xBk employee and frontman of The Finesse
The last time Display Case played Val Air was right before it shut down for a major renovation in December 2022, shortly after Summers purchased the property. The band says that despite ownership changes over the years at various mid-sized venues, they still feel a strong sense of local advocacy from those producers.
“We're all music lovers, and it's done nothing but brought great bands through here — and not only national acts are coming through, but big, international acts are coming through for the Vibrant Music Hall, and that's really cool, because usually, Des Moines is the flyover," Essy, with Display Case, said.
He said those big acts also bring unique opportunities to small bands and artists to gain visibility. With more eyes on Des Moines in general, opening for a big touring act can be the chance of a lifetime. In 2024, Des Moines-based musician Andrew Hoyt was called in at the last minute to open for AJR at the city's biggest venue, the Casey's Center, to a crowd of thousands.
"Maybe one day you'll see us up there," Essy said.
Still, for independent operators, Live Nation’s scale presents a challenge. The company can bundle entire tours across its venues and easily win over fans with major familiar acts. Ray pointed out that it can also weather losses that could otherwise sink smaller businesses in times of economic struggle.
“They’ve got the benefit of being too big to fail,” Ray said. “They can limp along for a while, while the rest of us are hemorrhaging money.”
In May 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Live Nation and Ticketmaster, alleging that the companies operated an illegal monopoly over live events. Live Nation has denied the allegations, arguing the lawsuit won’t lower ticket prices or benefit consumers.
Regardless of the lawsuit’s outcome, local advocates worry about what happens when fewer independent spaces remain.
“The mom-and-pop, DIY and independent spaces bring something unique to the culture we’re building here,” Ray said. “If those spaces get snuffed out, then I think we’re really in trouble.”
A cycle of optimism
Despite it all, few people embedded in the indie music scene believe Des Moines’ live, local music culture is doomed.
"There is such a wealth of talent here," Brown said. “I don't think it ended with any of the closures of Gas Lamp or Vaudeville [Mews] or Lefty's. Those are just phases of life, and there's too much talent here. It will figure itself out."
Brown has been in the local scene long enough to recall its rotating periods of highs and lows. Before the Gas Lamp, there was Blues on Grand in the same building, which shut down in 2010. Before Lefty's, that location was home to Hairy Mary's Punk Rock Tavern, though it's unclear if the building will continue to be used as a music venue in the future.
“I’m just going to have to let Des Moines do what Des Moines does,” Brown said. “It always finds a way to do it again.”
Already, new efforts are emerging. Venues like Locals have sprung up to welcome and mentor growing bands, and event series such as the Temple Theater's Made in the Midwest are highlighting local artists.
For Ray, it isn’t realistic to choose sides. The key, he says, is finding the balance.
“I think for any thriving creative scene, in any city, really, it's about having options,” he said. “If this isn't your thing, can you go find something else that's your thing? If you don't like the honky-tonk, can you go down to the other spot that plays metal music, or can you go to the other spot that’s the punk club?”
Though, after years of progress followed by several setbacks, Ray admits the cycle can feel exhausting.
“It seems like we're stuck in the same phase since I moved back here in 2009. We make the progress, and then we lose the venues, or we make the progress — and we lose 80/35. We’re constantly in this pendulum swing of two steps forward, two steps back,” he said. “But I'm hopeful that there's something around the corner or on the horizon that will give us that extra push to get to the next step. I don't know what that looks like, but I'm hoping that it's there."
