Iconic Nicollet Ave Music Club Has Been Reorganized with New Capital and Leadership

Icehouse to Continue Serving the Community and Performing Musicians

Icehouse “Rise-up” Event Saturday, August 3^rd to Celebrate the Community and the Club

MINNEAPOLIS, July 16, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Icehouse Music Club is excited to announce it is committed to continuing operations and supporting its neighborhood and artists that perform at the club. Icehouse has restructured its business and lease agreements with new majority ownership and executive leadership by John Higgins. The club founder and general manager, Brian Liebeck, will continue to be active in club operations, and the management team is joined by JT Bates, nationally acclaimed virtuoso session drummer, to run programming for the club.

The club employs over 30 people and brings nearly 1,000 patrons to the venue’s neighborhood every week. The club features over 400 performing acts a year, providing bands and musical artists of all genres a place to perform and celebrate their music. A vital organization at the heart of the community, Icehouse has prevailed due to the outstanding support of the local community and the musicians that have breathed soul into the club. By restructuring the business, Icehouse has the potential to keep serving the community for years to come.

“The Icehouse team is very excited to run to the business with the goal to be both financially sustainable and remain one of the most important independently owned clubs in Minneapolis,” said John Higgins, CEO and President of Icehouse. “The club industry is extremely challenging with very high operating costs and major competition for local and national artists. However, Icehouse deserves to be saved. It is an extraordinary live music environment, and musicians frequently comment that Icehouse is their favorite place to perform in the Twin Cities. Minneapolis has a rich and deep live performing music history. My family is passionate about Icehouse because we love our city and this neighborhood, and we are major supporters of the musical arts.” 

Higgins continued, “I am pleased to work with Brian and JT to chart a new course to help make Icehouse better than ever. There are no two people in the Twin Cities who work harder than these two to support artists and give them a state-of-the-art, safe, clean place to perform their craft. The three of us make a great partnership forged by a collective belief that the neighborhood needs Icehouse and the community is better off with the club. I want to thank all the friends, musicians, and patrons who have supported us the past few months as we restructured the business.” 

The Icehouse “Rise-up” event is August 3^rd. This is a special event to support Icehouse and the community featuring three nationally recognized bands (International Reggae All-Stars, Socaholix and Innocent) plus DJs to spin between sets. For more information about this event and our upcoming calendar of live shows check out www.icehousempls.com.

About John Higgins. Higgins is a Minneapolis-based businessman, club owner and philanthropist. He is a Director of Biotechne, a Twin Cities biotechnology tools company and a Trustee of The Walker Art Center. Mr. Higgins was an influential leader and former Trustee of the Franklin Center, an organization serving the educational and mental health needs of neurodiverse children and young adults located in Golden Valley. He was a Trustee of Colgate University and an early investor and board member of Avero, now a leading bar and restaurant enterprise management system. His professional career has spanned positions as CEO and CFO of public companies dedicated to the field of medical research and biotechnology. He and his wife own and operate The Portage, a music club in Cable, Wisconsin.

About Brian Liebeck. Liebeck founded Icehouse in 2012 as the first dedicated music club on Eat Street. Icehouse was an instant live music and gastronomic destination. Liebeck’s early Icehouse music scene grew from weekends to a wide range of nightly events, matinees, brunch shows on Sundays and a Sunday-night dance party. JT Bates, Polica, Marijuana Deathsquads, Sonny Knight and the Lakers, Pavielle, Secret Stash Records, Paul Peterson, Chastity Brown, Jeremy Messersmith, Doomtree, Erik Koskinen have all had residencies. Other artists such as Anais Mitchell, Lake Street Dive, Saul Williams, Heiruspecs, Cory Wong, Francis and the Lights, Dessa, Lizzo graced the stage at Icehouse in the early years as well as groups from the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Schubert Club and the Mill City Opera.
Prior to Icehouse, Liebeck forged an early career in music production during college and later on into IT senior management. Having never left the music industry, he decided to put all of his energy and skills into Icehouse.

About JT Bates. Bates grew up in a musical family that provided an early start into sound and rhythmic exploration. He set on the path to becoming a working musician while playing in his father’s big band as a teen. Over the years, he remained steeped in the improvised music scene, both as a performer and presenter. In 2015, he produced and released his first solo album, “Open Relationship” (Totally Gross National Product) and in 2021 “Not Other Stuff”. Since then he has co-produced with Pieta Brown, David Huckfelt, St. Anthony Mann and Micheal Rossetto. As a session drummer, JT has appeared on Grammy record of the year “Folklore” (Taylor Swift) as well as the follow up “Evermore”. Grammy nominated “s/t” (Bonny Light Horseman) as well as critically acclaimed records by Bon Iver, Big Red Machine, Cassandra Jenkins, The National, Maya Hawke, Ed Sheeran, and many others.

About Icehouse
Built in 1868 to store lake ice, Icehouse has been transformed into a lively music club in the heart of Minneapolis famed Eat Street. During the late 1800s massive blocks of ice were harvested from Cedar Lake in mid-winter to be stored and delivered to homes and business into late summer.

Since opening in 2012, Icehouse’s mission has remained the same: provide a fun and uncompromising space for music fans and bands to come together and do their thing. As the reputation and event calendar grew in the early years, bigger and bigger bands took notice of Icehouse’s unique environment and uncompromising commitment to the live experience.

Today, Icehouse is an iconic music club that operates at the highest levels of service, sound, and ambiance in the Twin Cities. The club features over 5,000 square feet of club space with a main room for 350 guests and a Piano Bar with seating for 50. The club is powered by the Twin Cities first-ever K Series L- Acoustics sound system, features a unique 270 degree stage set-up that wraps the crowd around the live shows, and has large-scale art by numerous distinguished local artists. 

SOURCE Icehouse