New Faces Night feat.

The Read

By the week of Christmas most of the city's music has turned into programming — carols, tributes, residencies, tradition. New Faces Night is the opposite of all that: a handful of writers with new material and no seasonal obligation whatsoever. If you have hit your annual limit on “O Holy Night,” this is the exit. The Basement holds maybe a hundred people and hides nothing. Seven o'clock, home early, and cheap enough that a mediocre set costs you nothing but the walk. December's audiences are thinner and more forgiving, which usually makes the writers braver about playing the unfinished thing.

The Room

The Basement

1604 8th Ave S

The smaller, original Basement — a low-ceiling room under what used to be Grimey's on 8th Avenue, where songwriter, roots, and rock bills feel thirty feet from the stage.