The Woman Who Books the Shows

Photo — Saturday, 8:15 PM · the living room on Emma Ave

The first show Mara ever booked had four bands and maybe eleven people, most of them in the bands. She moved her own couch into the hallway to make room and spent the night worried the neighbors would call someone. They didn't. The bands played. Somebody left a thank-you note under a coffee mug.

Six years on, the shows still happen in rooms that weren't built for them. She has a binder. She has a rotating list of houses and garages and one actual basement with good ceilings. She has a rule about ending by eleven, mostly kept. What she doesn't have is a reason she'd put into a sentence, beyond the fact that nobody else was doing it and the bands needed somewhere to play.

By the time we left, the couch was back in its place and the room looked like a living room again. That's the part most people never see — the load-out, the sweeping, the chairs going back where they belong. Mara does it every time, usually last, usually alone.