Boundary Bay Brewery Turns Late Show Into Charity Benefit

Boundary Bay Brewery has made a new commitment to turn our Friday Night Late Shows into fundraising opportunities for local charities.  In 2007, our brewery began hosting weekly Late Shows that feature the best of local and regional music.  Now, the shows will be held every other week and will benefit non-profits as well as the local music scene.  Boundary has a long history of supporting community non-profits like the annual Cribbage Tournament organized to benefit the Whatcom Dispute Resolution Center and the Inauguration Party held this year to benefit the Bellingham Food Bank.  Janet Lightner, our general manager here at Boundary Bay Brewery, sees this as just another way to give back to the community.

March 6th will herald the first of these fundraising opportunities.  Our Late Show, featuring Jack Conte, will benefit Amy’s Place, a local non-profit organization that serves as a drop-in center for the homeless and struggling youth of Bellingham.  Amy’s Place provides hot meals, hygiene kits, shower passes, clean clothing, food, and referrals to other community resources. This is the only center of its kind in Whatcom County and an average of 30 youth attend each of the three days a week Amy’s Place is open.  The success of this program has been overwhelming and the organization is currently struggling to find funding to keep their doors open and continue providing a vital service to these underserved youth.  “We are applying for funding everywhere. Federal grants will be announced in the spring and money from the City of Bellingham will probably come in around April.  It’s just getting through March and the last part of February that is a really big challenge. Boundary Bay’s timing is perfect!” says Heidi Unick, program director of Amy’s Place (a program component of Old Town Christian Ministries).

Every other Friday night, a different local non-profit will be at the receiving end of the money raised by the $4 cover price for the Boundary Bay Late Show. Non-profits who need fundraising should contact Janet Lightner by filling out the comment card on the contact page of our website.

The Late Show at Boundary Bay Brewery

The Love Lights and Mt. St. Helen’s Vietnam Band take the stage Friday Night at Boundary Bay Brewery in our next installment of The Late Show.  We started the Late Show in response to so many local music venues being shut down over the last several years.  Increasingly, there have been problems with noise ordinances and the clash between the downtown area being seen as a cultural hub or an ever more gentrified place to live.  All this debate has even prompted the formation of the Bellingham Downtown Alliance of Music and Nightlife or B’Damn for short.  The organization tries to facilitate communication between music performers, music venues, and Bellingham’s government and law enforcement.  However, regardless of the steps being taken to smooth relations, the fact remains that there are fewer places than ever to hear live music in downtown Bellingham.  Boundary’s response to this situation was to formulate our Friday Night Late Show.  The brewery has a long history of live music, but in years past, it’s more often than not been of the jazz in the evening, or reggae in the garden with hula hoops variety.  Now, with The Late Show, we have a chance to up the ante and bring in louder bands, bigger rock shows.  Doors open at 10 for our late shows, giving the innocent Imperial IPA drinker or yam alechelada eater time to enjoy the vices in relative peace before all the hoopla starts!  This Friday, The Love Lights will bring their unique fusion of Indie pop music and 3 part horn section.  They liken their sound to The Beatles at Muscle Shoals Studios and Curtis Mayfield at Hittsville, USA.  Mt St Helens Vietnam Band hails from Seattle and were featured in Spin this year in the Buzzcatcher section.  Spin described their music as “…ingeniously whipsawing between tense indie raving and harmony-rich pastoralia.”