The Sound Museum’s latest chapter isn’t a new rehearsal space, or even a new location – it’s boots on the ground action.
The longtime rehearsal space and studio business has re-emerged with a new non-profit organization called One Voice, spearheaded by co-owners Katherine and Bill “Des” Desmond. “IT SHOULDN’T BE IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE A LIVING IN MUSIC,” a note on the Sound Museum’s new website reads, like a succinct mission statement about helping musicians survive — and thrive — in Greater Boston.
The title of the Desmonds’ non-profit says it all: One Voice aims to meld the needs of area creatives into a single, unified voice that spans cities, genres, and identities. Katherine Desmond says she started working on the idea two years ago, as rising living and rent costs around town became more apparent.
“It was a culmination of reality staring me in the face, that the cost of commercial real estate — to actually be able to afford it as a rehearsal business — was becoming more and more difficult,” she tells Vanyaland.
Now, in 2023, the Desmonds and their tenants are feeling the repercussions of those same real estate trends, as they are forced to vacate the Sound Museum’s home on North Beacon Street in Brighton before the new owner of the building – a life sciences company called IQHQ – demolishes it. As we reported in 2022, IQHQ initially promised to find a suitable replacement for the Sound Museum before the demolition. IQHQ’s proposition never came to fruition; instead, Sound Museum tenants must pack up before the end of this month to make way for IQHQ’s new building. Some will relocate to a temporary “swing space” run by The Record Co. and secured by the city of Boston and the ArtStayHere Coalition. Others will have to find a different solution, or might not find a solution at all.
The Desmonds know their situation unfortunately isn’t unique. The Charlestown Rehearsal Studios on Terminal Street are also in danger of shuttering. The building’s owner RJ Kelly (an investment, development, and management company) has yet to confirm the news, and Vanyaland has been unsuccessful in reaching the owners for comment. However, many tenants report they’ve heard whispers about vacating the building later this year, allegedly so their current rehearsal spaces can be flipped into self-storage units.
“We find ourselves in this place now where, not only are we leaving a building, but a bunch of other places are, too,” Desmond says. “It’s not just that rehearsal place’s tenants, and this rehearsal place’s tenants. This should be a single community, a single voice. That’s why I call it One Voice.”
To create that unified vision, Desmond plans to use a variety of methods for keeping an open line of communication with different musical sub-communities, using newsletters, Zoom meetings, online polls, and social media to gather information about what artists are struggling with, or which resources they’re lacking. She also hopes to assemble a diverse board of directors that can work with municipalities when approaching these issues.
Outside of involvement from the city and state, grants might seem like an obvious option for rallying more financial support for musicians, but Desmond says that organized financial support for the more mainstream genres is few and far between.
“There really aren’t any endowments, or funds, or grants for rock and roll,” she notes. “If you look at some of the larger organizations that fund music and creative arts, [there are] plenty for classical, plenty for jazz, plenty for ballet, plenty for cultural music, klezmer, wherever country you’re from, you can probably get a grant.”
Support for rock, pop, hip-hop, and similar genres, on the other hand, is surprisingly absent. In an effort to help bridge the gap, Desmond has already started to seek out legacy-level musicians and private donors who may be willing to chip in, and hopes to host regular fundraising events to rally support.
“I’m creating opportunities for the philanthropic community that have shown interest in perpetuating this art, this part of musical arts,” she adds. “I’m bringing them together with these artists so that they meet them, and they hear them, and they get it.”
At the core of Desmond’s mission is the fact that she “gets it” just as much as any other musician in town, because she is one of them. Over her decades-long career in music, she’s witnessed artistic careers become less and less sustainable, culminating in Boston’s sudden, sharp decrease in independent venues and rehearsal spaces.
“When I was younger and my band gigged a lot more, it was no problem for me to ask for 2500 bucks to play on a club on Lansdowne Street and get paid,” Desmond recalls. “I want musicians to be able to make a living being musicians. Any other person, if you spend 40 to 60 hours a week on your craft for 10 years and you still can’t make a living, [then] there’s something broken here. Especially when this is an industry that people spend millions and millions and millions of dollars on supporting.”
One Voice is here to help bring that to light.
“If everybody spends a little bit of time putting a little bit of time into drafting their message as an individual, collectively, that’s very powerful. I want to create a platform for those people. I am already a platform, I have been my whole life because I am one of them. When they’re hurting, I’m hurting.”