A History of Live Music in Buffalo

Buffalo’s live music history runs through a musicians’ union on Broadway, the clubs of Allentown, a downtown arena and a church saved from demolition. It includes jazz musicians building their own institution under segregation, local bands finding an audience in small rooms, and hometown concerts that became records people still play.

The city produced Rick James, Ani DiFranco and the Goo Goo Dolls. Their careers took very different directions, but each belongs to a history that starts well before a national breakthrough. Buffalo had places to play, musicians to learn from and audiences willing to come back.

Black musicians build a home on Broadway

In 1917, Black musicians in Buffalo formed American Federation of Musicians Local 533 after being excluded from the city’s all-white Local 43. The following year, members established the social organization that became the Colored Musicians Club.

After several moves, the club settled at 145 Broadway in 1934. Union meetings took place downstairs. Upstairs provided space to rehearse, play and socialize. For working musicians facing discrimination, the building offered professional support as well as somewhere to spend time after a job.

Touring jazz musicians also found their way there. Duke Ellington was among the major figures associated with the club’s history, bringing Buffalo’s players into contact with musicians travelling the national circuit. Those encounters happened within an institution local musicians had built and maintained themselves.

The two segregated unions merged in 1969, but the separately owned Colored Musicians Club survived. Its importance reaches beyond a list of famous visitors. The rehearsal space, professional relationships and ownership of the building were all part of how Black musical life sustained itself in Buffalo.

A concert hall designed around the sound

Kleinhans Music Hall opened on October 12, 1940, with a performance by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. A bequest from Edward and Mary Seaton Kleinhans, supplemented by Public Works Administration funding, made the hall possible.

Eliel and Eero Saarinen worked with local architects F. J. and W. A. Kidd on the design. The curved auditorium and carefully considered acoustics gave Buffalo a room built specifically for musical performance. The building received National Historic Landmark status in 1989.

Alongside the clubs where musicians gathered and worked, Kleinhans Music Hall established a different kind of permanence: a substantial civic investment in hearing live music well.

The Aud becomes part of concert history

On May 9, 1977, the Grateful Dead played Buffalo’s War Memorial Auditorium. The concert came one night after the band’s celebrated Cornell appearance, but Buffalo had a set of its own worth following.

The opening moved directly from “Help on the Way” into “Slipknot!” and “Franklin’s Tower.” Later, “Estimated Prophet” led into “The Other One,” with “Not Fade Away” and “Comes a Time” further along in the second set. It was an evening built around extended sequences, with songs opening into one another.

The performance eventually appeared in the May 1977: Get Shown the Light collection. For listeners tracing that tour, the Aud remains a specific stop with a recording to explore, rather than simply another date on an old itinerary.

Buffalo’s place in funk

Born in Buffalo in 1948, Rick James brought a different musical vocabulary to the city’s national reputation. His career combined funk rhythm with rock guitar and an appetite for theatrical performance.

By the late 1970s, he had assembled the Stone City Band. His 1978 debut, Come Get It!, delivered “You and I” and “Mary Jane.” Street Songs followed in 1981 with “Give It to Me Baby” and “Super Freak.”

Small clubs, loud bands and an open mic

The Continental became one of Buffalo’s defining punk and new wave clubs. It belonged to the underground circuit where bands could develop an identity before anyone outside the city knew their names.

The early Goo Goo Dolls were part of that world. A 1988 newspaper interview described low-paying appearances at the Continental, a useful corrective to remembering the band only through its later radio hits. The route to a large audience started with local bookings and the ordinary difficulties of keeping a young band going.

Over on Allen Street, Nietzsche’s became another enduring part of the scene. The venue dates its history to 1982 and has hosted local musicians alongside regional and national touring acts.

Much of its songwriting history is tied to Michael Meldrum. He ran a longstanding open mic, taught guitar, organized tribute concerts and helped bring musicians to Buffalo. Ani DiFranco credited him as an early and significant influence.

A hometown concert in a downpour

On July 4, 2004, the Goo Goo Dolls returned for a concert outside Buffalo City Hall. By then, songs such as “Name,” “Slide” and “Iris” had carried them far beyond the local club circuit.

Torrential rain became part of the show. The performance was released later that year as Live in Buffalo, preserving a homecoming with the city itself in the frame.

Old buildings find another musical life

Some of Buffalo’s concert history is also a history of buildings being put back to work.

Town Ballroom occupies a building associated with the Town Casino during the mid-twentieth century. Promoters Artie Kwitchoff and Donny Kutzbach restored its role as a live music venue in 2005, connecting an older entertainment address with a new generation of touring shows.

The transformation of Babeville required a longer fight. The former Delaware Asbury Methodist Church had deteriorated and faced demolition. Scot Fisher launched Citizens to Save the Asbury Church in 1996. In 1999, he and Ani DiFranco proposed buying the building for a concert venue and offices for Righteous Babe Records, the independent label she founded in 1990.

Years of restoration followed. In September 2007, DiFranco inaugurated Asbury Hall with two sold-out concerts. The smaller Ninth Ward also opened in the basement.

Elsewhere, a neighborhood bar developed into a destination for live music. Dwane and Denise Hall opened Sportsmen’s Tavern in 1985. Its gradual evolution into a room associated with roots music, blues and rock followed a different path from a large restoration project, adding another kind of venue to Buffalo’s musical life.

Where the history meets the next show

Buffalo’s live music history leaves plenty to follow on foot and on record. There are performances to revisit, local artists to discover and rooms whose past becomes more interesting once you know what happened inside them.

For a night out now, explore the CouchLot guides to Town Ballroom, Asbury Hall at Babeville, Sportsmen’s Tavern and Buffalo Iron Works. Each offers another entry point into a city whose musical history is still being made in front of an audience.