Boston's Rockwood Music Hall abruptly shuts down

Boston concert venue Rockwood Music Hall announced it has permanently shut down as of May 1.

"As a business that depends on bar sales to survive, unfortunately we were not generating enough to make operating sustainable. Thank you for all your support," a post on the venue's website reads.

The announcement came as a surprise to ticket holders as well as artists who were booked to play the venue in the coming days and months. 

Adam Greenberg learned the news in an email from the venue earlier this week. He worked as a talent buyer at Rockwood through the start of April, booking artists to play at the venue, which he hoped would become a hub for local acts for years to come.

”I saw plenty of sold-out shows. Plenty of shows there with 100-plus,” Greenberg said. “But there were probably way too many shows with 20 or less people in the room, and that did not do us any good at all.”

The relatively small, 120-person capacity Rockwood is located near Fenway Park, a district already saturated with established and new concert venues with both the 2,200-capacity House of Blues and the 5,000-capacity MGM Music Hall within a short walk.

Rockwood Music Hall's opening in Boston in the summer of 2023 marked an expansion for the company. The original Rockwood Music Hall in New York City opened in 2005 and featured up-and-comers (at the time) such as Lady Gaga, Sara Bareilles and more.

The company has had several public financial woes. Last year, owner Kenneth Rockwood enlisted Bareilles to headline a fundraising effort to benefit Rockwood. The NYC venue used to run three acts simultaneously, but in recent months closed one of its stages.

New York State listed Kenneth Rockwood as one of its top 250 tax delinquents in April, owing a total of $979,601.52 collectively as an individual and as a person responsible for several LLCs, including the Rockwood Music Corporation.

In Boston, several acts who performed at Rockwood complained to Greenberg after not receiving payment in the agreed upon time frame — typically 15 business days, according to Greenberg, who said he didn't handle the finances for the venue.

“I would get way too many emails about artists who were still owed money,” he said. “The emails just kept coming in — the calls and text messages and DMs. Just a lot of disgruntled artists and rightfully so.”

Greenberg cites these disagreements between artists and management as one of his reasons for leaving the venue several weeks ago. He said he was unaware of Rockwood bringing on any other bookers after his departure.

Artists booked for upcoming shows were left scrambling to find replacement venues, including singer Jen Kearney, Boston online magazine Vanyaland first shared. "This came about very suddenly," she wrote in her Instagram post.

Kearney, who was slated to perform at the venue on May 30, shared an image of what appears to be an email from someone named Ken, presumably owner Ken Rockwood, that reads: “Rockwood Music Hall is closing as of May 1. Wish I could do something to change this but unfortunately at this point this is the case[.] This means we have to cancel any shows from May 1 forward. Sorry for this inconvenience.”

Ticket purchasers will be “refunded automatically within 7 business days,” according to the website’s announcement.

“When you saw a show there, you knew it was a special place,” said Greenberg. “I was looking at the shows that were booked through the summer and the rest of the year, and it was hard not to get excited about the future. I really thought it was going to succeed.”

WBUR reached out to Rockwood Music Hall for comment but had not received a response at the time of publication.