NORTHAMPTON — Nearly two years after reopening its doors following significant renovations, Iron Horse Music Hall is now turning its attention to improving its financial stability, launching a capital campaign this week with a members-only concert by celebrated singer-songwriter Josh Ritter.
The Wednesday show will kick off a new phase in the venue’s development: the “Playing It Forward” capital campaign, which has a goal of raising $800,000 by May.
“We’re looking forward to keeping the music alive,” said Executive Director Chris Freeman.
This capital campaign follows a $1.6 million renovation that the Iron Horse began in the fall of 2023, after the Parlor Room Collective purchased the venue following a pandemic closure under its previous owner, Eric Suher. The venue reopened in May 2024, and its renovations included adding a bar, bathrooms on the main floor, more accessible space, a new greenroom, and a new sound system. A capital campaign in 2023 brought in $875,000 to help pay for the renovations.
Now, the Iron Horse is looking to raise the remainder of the $1.6 million to pay off construction debt, build up reserve funds to help with repairs and emergencies, and support free programming and ticket initiatives. Freeman summarized the effort as “helping to build the whole musical ecosystem around our venues and in our community. … We feel it’s deeply important that everybody gets a chance to be at the Iron Horse.”
“It would really give us the staying power to make this comeback really durable and allow us to really invest in our community the way that we want to,” he said.
The Playing It Forward campaign is already more than halfway to its goal, with major gift donations totaling $550,000 in what Freeman calls “the quiet phase,” which launched last summer. The Iron Horse team is hoping the community will help it raise the remaining $250,000.
As helpful as those donations have been, however, the team doesn’t want the capital campaign to be built on donations alone.
“If people just give us money and they don’t come to shows, that doesn’t work,” Freeman said. “We need everybody to experience it, to love the Iron Horse, artists to want to play it, and to really feel as though we’re both doing the work and raising the money to buttress [the venue] and give us a strong foundation so that we can thrive going forward.”
Freeman said that Ritter is a great choice for the launch event in part because of his history performing in Northampton: not only has he performed at the Iron Horse, the Academy of Music, and the Calvin Theatre, but he also released his first albums on the Northampton record label Signature Sounds. He most recently performed in the area as one of the headliners of Arcadia Folk Festival in Easthampton last August.
Reached by email Tuesday, Ritter said “Northampton and the Pioneer Valley are lucky to have some incredible venues for independent music. Places like these are locus-points for community. And in days like these, community is more important than anything else.”
Freeman said Ritter also knows the value of local venues as someone who built up his career by playing in them.
“He really embodies what we’re trying to do,” he said. “We’re trying to be an independent venue in a secondary market. We’re not New York; we’re not Boston, but it’s this amazing underdog story that a small city like this can have such an outsized role in the music scene.”
Ritter is not the only musician to have performed at the venue before stardom; Chappell Roan, Tracy Chapman, Brandi Carlile, Wynton Marsalis and Beck have all performed there, too.
“It’s an incredibly powerful thing for a small community to have a place that has both the history and the ability to move forward in this way,” Freeman said.
The venue, which will celebrate its 47th birthday later this month, will continue to play a key role in the life of downtown, Freeman said. Since becoming a nonprofit and reopening, the Iron Horse has sold 85,000 tickets for more than 400 shows, paying out $1.5 million to artists and art educators. The music hall has also grown its membership to 1,200 people and given out an additional 600 free memberships to students and low-income individuals.
“The Iron Horse is a crucial part of downtown’s economy, downtown’s morale and the fabric of our city and our community,” Freeman said.
Once the Iron Horse hits its fundraising target this spring, Freeman said the venue will throw “a big party to say, ‘We did it, and our community came together!’”
“They know that the Iron Horse is important,” he said. “They know that this is the spark, the fire, that can really help rebuild all of downtown Northampton around it and through it.”