The Challenge of All-Ages

It's Tough To Be A Rock N Roll Kid

All ages all the time at our two The Warning show, above Brighton Music Hall and below Big Night Live, both in Boston. Can you find Little Bean in the pictures?

The kid and I are learning that it’s not easy being a young music fan following up and coming or local bands.

Not because of the cost of smaller sized shows. They are usually pretty cheap.

Not because of lack of fan service or back stage access. Our experience has been that the bands have been thrilled to devote some one on one time with young fans.

The challenge, mostly, has been that she’s ten. There’s a whole lot of either city or state, or sometimes venue, rules when it comes to places that also sell booze, or have shows at night. Or in some case, shadier venues may have already had some kind of run in with underage concert-goers and aren’t taking any chances.

Bottom line, finding all-ages shows has been tricky.

We’ve had a lot of luck in Boston. Places like Brighton Music Hall or Big Night Live are absolutely open to the young’ins.

Our absolute favorite small venue is Portland House of Music. We’ve seen a few shows there now, and they love kids in the audience. We’ve even become friends with the floor manager, Amber, who will go around and talk to the kids and keep an eye on the crowds around them. Good for business obviously.

Here’s why this all came up. Plush is going on tour this summer and have already announced a bunch of stops, two of them being close to us. One, in fact, very close and a very famous and popular NH rock joint. Let’s just say it’s near the ocean.

And we can’t go because they are strictly 21+.

In fact, the nearest venue we CAN attend that’s been announced so far is in Liverpool, NY. (Shout out to Sharkey’s for writing back to me to let me know that all ages are welcome and they looked forward to seeing us! Five hours away, though. We’ll go if we have to, darn it!)

Anyway, as you can imagine, this frustrates Little Bean to no end. In part, because her friends go see Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo and there’s no age limit there. I did remind her that there was no age limit to our upcoming AC/DC show and that stadium shows are different from tiny clubs. She’s not buying it though.

And so we’ll just keep watching and keeping a list of favorite places and figuring out how to keep her fed with her favorite music. One show at a time.