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The Year Live Music Stopped
Pitchfork
12/18/2020
© Graphic by Drew Litowitz
On a cold, cloudy day near the end of 2020, I start walking toward my favorite venue. It’s an empty storefront now, with a loving tribute affixed to the door: a white poster with a cartoon drawing of a tombstone. “Vaudeville Mews: 2002-2020,” the epitaph reads. “Born to lose/Lived to win.” Flowers and two empty cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon hang from the bottom.
I literally wouldn’t be here without this place. More than a decade ago, family ties and an affordable quality of life lured me and my wife back to the area she’d grown up in and expected to leave behind for good. But Vaudeville Mews, a 230-capacity space in downtown Des Moines that had already hosted Joanna Newsom, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and an upstart Fall Out Boy, pretty much sealed the deal. Not just the venue itself, but the optimistic future it represented, one where a mid-size city better known for cornf ....

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