Stalwart downtown Orlando music venue Soundbar on Wednesday announced that the space's doors will be closing effective today, bringing to an end an eclectic calendar of live music programming that jumped genres effortlessly.
An afternoon post on the @soundbar.orl Instagram account broke the (very) bad news to followers.
"It comes with deep sadness that we must announce Soundbar is closing its doors today," read the post. "After a long legal battle with our landlord since covid struck, we feel it's best for us to move on."
The post went into some details describing the Soundbar staff's conflict with a landlord they describe as negligent regarding maintenance issues with the building: "For a while now the condition fo the room has been embarrassing to say the least. As tenants we have done as much as we can to fix issues and keep the building up to code, despite that being the landlords responsibility."
Soundbar opened for business in early 2018, taking over the Backbooth space. The bill of fare was eclectic, taking in everything from dance nights, hardcore shows, metal ragers, young hip-hop stars, local showcases, EDM and even death-match style wrestling. It seemed that there was a line to get into Soundbar nearly every night, pre-pandemic.
Even now, Soundbar had a slate of big-name shows set for December, including Nothing on Dec. 10, Show Me the Body on Dec. 14 and Capstan on Dec. 16 — among many others. Show promoters are scrambling now to move these to other Orlando venues, so the dates won't have to be canceled.
There was a bit of hopefulness at the end of the post though, as Soundbar's owners described actively working towards opening a "bigger, better, cleaner location," one that would "give everyone the venue we all deserve."
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