Raccoon Motel’s Sean Moeller Reflects On The Return Of Raccoon And Live Music
The following article is part of QuadCities.com’s partnership with local music website The Echo. For more, check out theechoqc.com!
Echo: How did you get started promoting shows?
Sean Moeller: The first show ever did was in my parent’s shed – we called it the Shred – and I literally just sent a few emails to a couple bands I liked. I sent one to a band called Alistair and a band called River City High and somehow they both said yes. I don’t know that I promised them money or anything and they came and played at my farm. They kept commenting on how much the hogs smelled because we still had hogs on the farm and it just reeked like manure outside. That was my freshman year of college, I think. We got a lot of people to come to see it. I don’t even know that my parents knew I was doing it. They were home, but I don’t even know them they knew until that day that I was putting on a show in the shed. That’s probably the amateur version, but I mean that’s how it works. It is just sending emails and people saying yes. It really hasn’t changed any.
E: Is there a show or event in the Quad Cities that you are the proudest of?
S: Bon Iver at The Rust Belt, for sure.
Bon Iver at The Rust Belt
E: What do you think the special qualities of the Raccoon Motel will be?
S: No matter what venue, you make money by selling drinks. You have to sell drinks to make money at a venue to keep the lights on and to be able to put people on stage. Every band knows it. Everybody that owns a venue knows it. That’s where you make money so that you can do the thing you do.
That said, people get loud and chatty. That’s fine if you are having fun, but then there are always those shows that get marred by that person. The old Motel had a lot of charm, it was a beautiful venue, but having everything all in one room certainly made it a less-than-ideal listening room at times. There are plenty of places where people are just there to have a party. That’s fine, but I think we’ll be able to control it here just by having the bar and the venue as separate entities. You have to come out of the venue to the bar to get a drink. It’s going to cut down a lot of the noise, which I think a lot of people are really going to enjoy. I don’t think that separation is necessarily an industry standard. The idea is you sell drinks to keep things going, but I want this place to also be a listening room.
It’s not going to be so jam-packed that a show is going to feel claustrophobic, definitely not like it did before. There’s going to be a lot of ease of motion in this new venue. I think we’re going to be one of everybody’s favorite stops on tour again, which is going to be great.
To read the rest of this article, check it out on The Echo HERE.
