COMMANDERS OF THE GARRISON: LEE VAN VEGHEL (LEFT) AND SHAUN BOWRING

When Shaun Bowring announced that he’d no longer be booking Sneaky Dee’s, the club he’d called a professional home for the better part of the last decade, Toronto’s indie scene resonated with a collective chorus of “Oh noes!” More than just serving as the guy who helped upstart bands get shows, Bowring had a huge hand in transforming a place that used to be best-known for late-night nachos (and next-day heartburn) into a vital nexus of the local independent music community. In a city where many live venues are frequently plagued by uncertainty — due to management changes, politics or rapid transformations — Sneaks quickly became a de facto clubhouse for indie-rockers, a place that felt, for a time, like a safe home.

Happily, Bowring had a plan. A former touring musician (he was a member of the band Technicolour Raincoats in the late ’80s and early ’90s) who ran a recording studio before settling at Sneaky Dee’s, the dude was ready to be his own boss again. He’d been quietly sacking away cash for the last couple years in the hopes of opening a solid concert space. Bowring estimates that Lee Van Veghel, co-owner of his latest project, surveyed at least 30 different spaces before stumbling upon the former Portugal Billiards, a dim and surprisingly spacious club in the hot-shit Dundas and Ossington area.

The bar was almost perfect: a space with no pillars to block sightlines, a functional stage, and two distinct parts — a cozy local hangout in the front, and a more expansive area in the back for larger events. There was only one problem.

“We needed a hose, to start,” Bowring laughs, trying to grin through his exhaustion. He’s been working feverishly through September to, as he puts it, “de-sports-bar” the joint. “The colour scheme was copper gold metallic paint and black and silver metallic paint, with a lime green ceiling and orange speckled metallic accents. There were 20 televisions! And when we found the place, the stage was literally surrounded by a fake brick motif, à la The Friendly Giant. It was such an awful macho colour scheme. For a comical couple of hours we considered keeping it, because it was so goofy.”

He pauses. “And then that notion quickly wore off.”

When The Garrison has its grand opening this week, with Sunday marking the first October show of the relocated Wavelength series (the WL dudes are billing it as a “housewarming party”), the non-sports-barred aesthetic will be in full effect. “It’s gonna look magical,” Bowring jokes.

It’s tempting to draw a parallel between what’s happening now and the position the WL crew found themselves in about seven years back, when they initially set up shop at Sneaky Dee’s for their Sunday night series, after trial runs at the El Mo and Lee’s Palace. Wavelength vet Doc Pickles says he sees similarities between the changing of the Sneaky’s guard and the much-lamented closing of Ted’s Wrecking Yard, where bands like Broken Social Scene and Constantines cut their teeth.

“We lost our venue so suddenly, and we had nowhere to put on shows, so we were forced to scramble. We thought it was an ominous sign of the gentrification of the universe,” he sighs. “We thought artists would never play anywhere again! It was a doomsday moment for about 48 hours.”

Pickles says the choice to follow Bowring to The Garrison “shook [the Wavelength organizers] out of complacency.” He and his comrades were already gearing up in anticipation of the major changes planned for February, when the long-running series shifts from a weekly event to monthly shows and special events. “But rather than plodding through the next five months and getting ever more predictable, we had to examine what we wanted to do with the series.

“Of all the Wavelength guys,” he says, “I’m the least excited about the future,” not entirely joking. When it comes to the encroachment of monoculture and gentrification on Toronto’s independent creative producers, Pickles can’t help but play Cassandra. He worries that “maybe we only have five or six more years before there’s no city left for us. It’s like playing whack-a-mole — whenever creativity rears its head and can be quantified and qualified and measured, the spark is taken out of it. It becomes static. Extermination Music Night got closest to [subverting that], but even now, places where they threw those beautiful secluded nights have been made into the Beltway bike path and outlet stores.”

Still, even Pickles is “guardedly optimistic” about the potential offered by The Garrison. As those who’ve worked with Bowring can attest, the booker-turned-proprietor is one of the good guys.

“I got into [booking shows] from the perspective of being in a band and travelling those miles and getting ripped off by promoters,” Bowring says. “It’s not that everyone’s corrupt, but there are some shady people [in the business]. I wanted to be an honest, ethical guy. I’m a music fan — a lot of promoters are — and I think that’s very important. Seriously, there’re easier ways to make money than by booking rock bands. You have to really love it to be in this.”

Nevertheless, as the launch of his new enterprise looms, Bowring isn’t without his reservations. “Let me put this in: I’m getting a little nervous about the excitement around The Garrison. I’ve been quoting John Lennon a lot: ‘I didn’t say we were bigger than Jesus!’ I mean, people from bands and stuff are gonna be working there, and I hope it’ll have a community clubhouse vibe, but don’t believe the hype, guys: it’s just a rock ’n’ roll club.”