Living The Red Life - Bunker Performance Lounge Founders Reveal How to Build a Thriving Music Community

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Jeremy Berg, John Crawford, and Candace Crawford are the co-owners of the Bunker Performance Lounge and Cafe located in Stratford. This discussion delves into their collective journey and passion for creating a unique space for artists and musicians. The episode explores the evolution of the Bunker, a venue designed by musicians for musicians, and highlights how the owners have continually overcome challenges to keep the performances fresh and captivating.Listeners will gain insights into the operational aspects of running a music venue, the emphasis on live music, and the role of community in the Bunker's success. The episode's exploration of brand identity, audience engagement, and innovative programming strategies provides a roadmap for those interested in the entertainment industry. Key topics include the importance of offering a stage where musicians take center stage, and the trio's innovative programming that keeps patrons engaged—from open mic nights to specialized performances that highlight original music.Key Takeaways:The Bunker Performance Lounge emphasizes creating a space where the performance takes precedence over other activities, focusing on musicianship.The success of the Bunker lies in its ability to adapt, taking community feedback to heart and evolving its offerings, such as obtaining a liquor license to increase patronage.Running a music venue involves finding a balance between catering to audience preferences and promoting original music and talent.Effective programming that evolves throughout the week—from karaoke to the signature weekend live sessions—helps maintain engagement and consistency.The Bunker's success story is about transformation, adapting to post-COVID realities, and the trio's dedication to providing outstanding live entertainment.Connect with Jeremy Berg, John Crawford, and Candace Crawford:WebsiteInstagramFacebookConnect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter

We wanted to just provide a space for artists and musicians to be seen and heard. That's different from just your standard bar or restaurant where someone's playing in the corner. You don't really pay attention to them anyway. You kind of know they're there, but you're involved in food and conversation. But we wanted to kind of change that around and make the artist the focus. What's the priority there? Is it the service? Is it the acoustics?

Is it the music? What takes the top three of your priorities when it comes to the bunker? When we rebranded to the bunker performance lounge and cafe, we did that on purpose because the performance comes first and then the lounge comes second. So what that means is it's a space meant built by musicians for musicians. What challenges are you facing now? I'm sure it's got to be difficult to just be a brick and mortar of entertainment. Like how do you keep that momentum going? How do you keep acts fresh?

Figure out your brand. What is it you want to present to the public? But also read the public and what do they want to have presented to them? and finding that middle ground. My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week.

If you're ready to start living the Red Life, ditch the Blue Pill, take the Red Pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. Welcome back to another amazing episode of Living the Red Life for Insight Success. I am Ray Gutierrez. Today, we're going to talk about my two favorite things,

music and music venues. Joining me today, I've got John, Jeremy, and Candice. Can you guess which one's which? You're Jeremy, clearly. Yes, clearly. I'm Candice. Yeah. People confuse it all the time.

First of all, elephant in the room, you are quite the trio. You're our first trio. So there's a couple of extra mics here because I want to make sure you all sound amazing, especially running a music venue. Let's talk about this. First of all, introduce yourselves and let's go down the line. I'm Candace Crawford. I like Candace.

John Crawford. and Jeremy Berg. Right. And what do you all do? Well, we are all co-owners at the Bunker Performance Lounge in Stratford. And I mean, I guess we all kind of have our various roles. I personally am, like I said, co-owner, I guess bar manager, head bartender, janitor. Multiple roles.

But they do too. Here's the feet on the ground. You're right up? Yeah, we do most of the behind-the-scenes stuff. So again, John, co-owner, I do all the booking, which we do a lot of booking. So you might say event coordinator because there's, yeah, there's, I mean, there's music, there's stand-up comedy. There's anybody who needs some stage space. We try and facilitate.

We also do things like purchasing, pricing, serving. On the weekends, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I hear bunker. Is this legitimately a basement, a bunker? Talk about the establishment. So the bunker, the name the bunker has roots back in the 90s, no long related to what we do.

No. But, yeah, so it was originally a space that was underground. Okay. Yeah. And then that moved to above ground. And then like ownership change, like vision changes, the whole, the whole, whole business changed, but we decided to keep the name just because we thought it sounded good. Yeah.

And we did like the roots, the past roots too, because it was like the old bunker, like in the 90s was there were some like bands that actually were formed at that place. So it did have like music routes. So we, we've thought it was a cool connection. And we're actually located right around like the corner from where the old bunker was as well. Yeah. Yeah.

So why why get into a music venue? Like what inspired you to the bunker? Let's do it. Like, talk about the origin story. Yeah. You want to start on that? I can try. Yeah, so I'm actually, I'm like one of the original owners.

These guys came on just over a year later or so. And what started it was really there was nothing else around like us. We wanted to just provide a space for artists and musicians to be seen and heard that's different from just. your standard, no bar or restaurant where someone's playing in the corner and you don't really pay attention to them anyway. You kind of know they're there, but you're involved in food and conversation. But we want to kind of change that around and make the artist the focus. Okay. Yeah, my experience with live venue events would be Nashville or 6th Street on Austin, where every other bar was a blues bar or a dueling pianos, which is my personal favorite.

What do you guys usually book live acts? You mentioned comedians. What's the montage of folks that you perform there? So it's mostly solo singer-songwriter kind of things. And it could be folk, country, rock. We've had punk, we've had metal.

We've had lots of country, lots of blue, like some bluegrass bands in there. Just about everybody's been represented. But as far as like what kind of variety, it's mostly solo singer songwriters, folks that just need

to space to perform their stuff, get heard, get seen, connect with the audience. Yeah. Yeah. What's the, what's the ambience like? Is it dark and mysterious or is it bright and not mysterious? Yeah. So, I mean, it started, like before it was licensed, before Candace and I came on, the cafe vibe was very, um, an immediate sense of community.

You come in and the tables were set, you know, like so and the lighting was nice. it was bright enough to create a particular atmosphere. Big night spot off. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the stage is about 25% of the room.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a small room. It's not a big stage. It's a small room. And, but that also creates the vibe too. So when somebody is performing, they, like, your focus is immediately drawn because it's, it's such the focal point of the room. Sure. Yeah.

And you mentioned being down in Nashville. That's where some of our inspiration comes from. Oh, right on. Yeah, there's the Bluebird Cafe down there. Oh, very cool. So world famous listening room. Like, Dera mentioned how, you know, most bars, restaurants will have the performance set up in the corner and they're providing entertainment.

And that's good. That's a vibe. That's a great night out. There's lots of them. And that fulfills the need for a date night, go out and have some drinks and listen to some music. But it's less serving. for an artist to get up there and really share what they have. It's just a different thing altogether.

Sure. And we found that in Stratford, nobody had really done it yet. Nobody was really doing it. There's some other cafes that are doing similar things and shout out to them. Love what they're doing. We just wanted to take it into the license lounge route. And yeah, take it that way. Very cool.

What's the priority there? Is it the service? Is it the acoustics? Is it the music? What takes the top three of your priorities when it comes to the bunker? So that is reflected right in the name. When we rebranded, it went from the bunker cafe and recording studio. And so we stopped the recording studio side, got the liquor licensed and ramped up the live music.

And rebranded to the bunker performance lounge and cafe. And we did that on purpose because the performance comes first. And then the lounge comes second. So what that means is it's a space meant like built by musicians for musicians. Yeah. Not to say that you can't pop in and have a drink. We are a fully licensed bar coming in before and after like Stratford's a theater town. So I mean, there's lots of opportunity to come in for drinks born after the show.

Yeah. Before and after any programming that we have. We just happen to serve drinks while our programming is active. Yeah. Right on. Yeah. So how did you get involved, this whole mix? Well, John and I went for a date to the bunker, and then we met Jair and we met the other owner, and they kind of got me up on stage singing.

And yeah, so we started going out for open mics, and then it was the possibility that they might close. So we knew we had to kind of come on board and keep it going. Why the closure? Why? Let's talk prequel. What was going on? Why this closure? Was it COVID? Was the rock and roll finally die? Like, what happened here? No, so it was, we opened just post-COVID. So we started out as just a cafe. We weren't licensed. And then it, people, we would get people in all the time that said, oh, wow, we really love the space. This is a really cool spot. Wish you had alcohol. And then quite frankly, they would leave and most likely never really. return for that reason apparently alcohol is important in life so um we kind of we kind of had to step back and say okay if this is really going to work we need to we need to make a shift right um it was at that time that my my co-owners at the time they didn't want to go down the the lounge and like liquor license route um it just wasn't something they were able to do for for various reasons and it kind of just left me and i was like well what am i going to do now right

If I'm going to do this, I don't think I can do this myself. I'm going to need some help. And then these guys, you know, came on and John said he always wanted to own a bar. I said, oh, okay. That's the dream, isn't it? You turn 40 by a bar. Yeah, you're already two years ahead of me. I was up 42.

I'm like, oh, I want a bar. I want a nightclub. You want a partner up? I don't pitch. So talk about the performance. It's you talk about, it's no longer about a ban in a corner and you're just kind of going on your business. It's not just a frequency, a noise, background noise. This is centerpiece.

I'm sure you've got a spotlight. Yeah, you do the whole spotlight gag where you look that way in the spotlight. That's right. It's crushed with a clown joke. So what do people feel here? Like when you go see an artist, you're there to for an emotion. And you said it's a small, it's a big stage, small room. So there's intimacy.

there's obviously a connection and I'm sure the artist is like right there and there's obviously a moment there. Can you talk about what is happening about it's festing here? Is it joy? Is it folks buying more drinks? Like what is happening?

What's the energy like there? What surprised us, actually one of the inspirations to really model it after a listening room was the natural attentiveness that people gave the performances. As soon as somebody gets up there and starts to do their thing, singing, playing guitar, whatever it happens to be.

People in the room just hush down, get quiet, and focus on the stage. We don't ask them to. We don't know. Yeah. It's not something we advertise. But I think it's just, that tells us that we're filling a need in the marketplace for what people want to go experience. Absolutely.

Yeah. Do you find a lot of folks pulling out their cell phones there or is it too small? Yeah. They do, but not. Not so much. To Zoom scroll. Right. They'll pull them out because they're like shocked at what's going on on stage.

A happening. Yeah. Yeah. Like they can like this artist like, oh my gosh. They're doing so well or oftentimes it's, um, who's in the, in the audience is just friends and family. Sure. And fans, right?

So they, they're proud. They want to, you know, get their pictures and video and, and, and, and posted on Facebook. And we, we see a lot of people's, um, like Facebook profiles ended up turning, uh, over to like pictures of them on. stage at the bunker because they're getting that like recognition of like hey I've performed somewhere. Absolutely. Right? Yeah, yeah. That's that's something we we take very a lot of pride in in our studios. I like to refer to them as showrooms. Like we want folks to come here and film

their content, their product, their other episodes or whatever it may be. But I also want them to feel like wow, I'm a brand within a brand and every time you pull out your phone, Rudy's designed it in a way where everywhere is branding, everywhere's content. So I lead to my question. how do you lean, do you lean towards folks just kind of like using their soul sucking device? Or do you like encourage that? Because you mentioned Facebook and folks are having happening as a moment and they're advertising. How do you keep the intimate, how do you keep the venue intimate, but also not like everyone's friend? You know what I mean?

Like how do you keep it personal and quiet without flashing everywhere on Facebook? I just think there's a social understanding when you get there. I mean, oftentimes the loudest person in the room is. Jer. That's true. We have to like behind the bar. Behind the bar. Yeah, yeah. Somebody will be playing a song.

Ice machines. Yeah, the espresso machine turns on or you've got to grab some ice and it's kind of like, oh no, we should maybe bar some of ours. What is your real, real transparent opinion about mixologists? Real transparent. I live in the Bay for 10 years. Moodie.

Yeah. I've been in a pirate ship, the cove, and it's just like unmarked, just a red line. You walk and it's like three stories of a pirate ship. Yeah. It's all mixologist. I won't say where, but it's in the bay. Yeah. For sure.

And that's kind of like what I'm talking about. Like, you don't see a lot of folks that are going, oh, my God. It's low lit. You kind of can't see what's in front of you. But again, it's not a place where people are performing. This is more of like a quiet, intimate, dungeon-y, like, where the freaks come out, I guess. I don't know. than myself. So,

well, how is the tribe? I'm sure you all have a staff, or is it just you all three? Like, what's the staff like? What's the, what's the crew like? For a long time, it was just the three of us. Hell yeah. Yeah, we've had I know the feeling. Yeah. I mean, we've mixed in a couple staff here.

We actually have a couple, two right now that very recently that we brought on. Are you churning out bodies? Are you just like throwing bodies? Are you throwing bodies at problems? Like, how are you staffing, like, how do you go through your onboarding here? Well, I mean, there's, I mean, yeah, the three of us really run the entire thing,

uh, except for one very special shout out, our sound guy, Nevin. Without him, we, we could not do what we do. Yeah. Some engineers also moody. Yeah. Just had to see that. Better. But they can't, yeah, they can't be your friend.

I'm like, you're not doing your job. So, but like, yeah, you know, five days a week, um, we kind of run the place, uh, you're front and back. when we need a sound guide. Nevin's there who's got us. And that's almost, almost enough to cover everything. Almost.

At that point, we just kind of, you know, we're spending so many plates and we kind of wonder like, okay, which one are we going to drop this week, right? So,

and you just take turns, right? We develop systems to make things run a little smoother. Last summer, we decided, yeah, it's time to bite the bullet and try hiring an employee. So we did that and worked out really well.

Yeah. Yeah, and it was seasonal, so that was good. And then this year we've taken on two. So we've got a spare or an extra trained bartender and then a server. I was just going to say, how do you hire someone that's good at everything? Because it sounds like you need a little bit of everything, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The thing is, and we're learning this as we go, like being owners, how can you best spend your time to grow the business? And although we want to have first point of contact and make sure people have the best experience, that is one of the things we feel we can outsource to the right people. Sure. While we go and develop other parts of the business, which cannot be outsourced by other people. No. So, yeah, you just do it when there's time or when there's need and go from there.

Yeah. What challenges are you facing now? I'm sure it's got to be difficult to just be a brick and mortar of entertainment. Like, how do you keep that momentum going? How do you keep acts fresh? How do you promote? And the reason why I'm asking is because I'm going to own a club one day and I'd like to learn. Because how do you keep it fresh?

Like, how do you just turn out, oh, well, this works. Let's just do it again and again? No, you got to keep it fresh and creative. Like, how do you keep the momentum? Yeah. It's a little bit, I mean, figure out your brand. What does it you want to present to the public? But also read the public and what do they?

want to have presented to them and finding that middle ground. And I think that's that's a good way to go. As far as keeping it fresh, just read the room. What do people after? Yeah. Ah, I was going to ask, do you, do you kind of provide entertainment for a public that doesn't know what they like or do they know exactly what they like and you're providing that entertainment for them?

This is a wide variety. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like our programming, to go through the bunker programming, we're open five days a week. Tuesday, behind the scenes, we don't advertise it this way, but we skill up throughout the week. Got it. So we want to make sure that we're accessible to everybody, like for everybody.

So we open up and we have our karaoke night, which is fair game, right? Come on in, you want to be a star on stage. You know, come sing your heart out. Wednesdays is our open mic night, which is a long-running tradition. That's been going since the day the bunker opened. That's we've got Candace and I out. That's what gets lots of ours. out. Yeah. So that's where you can be just a new performer starting out, maybe doing your first

song on stage or your season performer and you just want to do something on a Wednesday night, right? Like you could get anything. Um, Thursdays were traditionally another open mic night that was carried over from the cafe days. We're working on replacing that, um, with other stuff. Um, so we've got, right now we have like a monthly poetry night. Again, people looking for a stage. Who knew there'd be audience for poetry. Right. Sure. But it's a listening room.

We're like, that makes so much sense. Yeah. Bring it on Vial Night is another thing we just recently launched, again, for music lovers. Not that it's like, you know, part of the skill up, but it's definitely what people in the area like. And the other two, we're still leaving open as like wildcards right now for touring

artists and people who want specific dates or things like that. Fridays and Saturdays are our signature nights. That's when most people go out. So Friday, we call it Friday night sessions. So we book a different artist every hour on the hour, eight, nine, and ten o'clock. Yeah. Yeah. And then two out of those three should be at least, would be original sets.

So I ask an artist, or maybe they reach out and say, I'd like to play at the buck road, do I got to do? I said, well, do you have an original set? Like, you have 10 to 12 songs that you could do that you've written and can perform. And if it's yes, normally we'll say, we'll come out on an open mic. Maybe we'll have a listen first. Sure. Or if you have something to send us, we can kind of check it out.

And I trust that, you know, your other live performances are going to sound like the one you're going to give us. Yeah. And yeah, so most people, I just say, yeah, come on. Like, you know, you can kind of have an ear for it. And that's what gets most people on the stage is the Fridays. We might start at the night, 8 o'clock with some covers just to sort of get people in up the street. Like we put a speaker out on the street to let people know we're here. For sure. And bring people in and then the last two sets again, uh, originals. Um, and then the last

Friday of the month, uh, building on that, we do a songwriter series. So we're going to do all originals for the night, but we're going to do in a national style writers round. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's a very new thing for Canada. Like, um, there's other places doing it. Like we're not reinventing the wheel or to see in what works. Um, and then trying it out here, right? And it seems to go over really well. People think that's really cool. You can sit down and listen to three different artists, do their thing, kind of one after the other, riff on each other, tell different stories.

And oftentimes it's three artists that have never met before. And we're able to help introduce them to each other. And they can network. And we've actually seen other artists now are hosting their own writers rounds in other cities after having participated in ours for a few because they realize like, oh my gosh, this is a vibe. Yeah. Let's keep this going.

And the Saturdays is our Saturday night live. So it's all that means, it's a ticketed night. Cool. We want to put value on the music or the music won't be valued, right? You can't just always have free music or else people come in and they devalue it. They'll talk over it. And it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, he's here. They're always there.

They're always playing it, right? Whatever. But when it comes to a listening room, especially when that's set up for the artists, you have to put a value on it because they're valuable. Yeah. Right? That's phenomenal, like you said that because you're absolutely right. I was going to hit you up with things are going to be okay.

You know, there hasn't been a new bright iPhone in quite a while. There hasn't been a new social media in quite a while. I feel like folks are going to start putting their phones down. Even with the now, oh, AI is going to take over everything. Well, not quite. I think it's really going to give artists a new way of expressing themselves. Sure, you'll be able to write a song in a couple of minutes as opposed to a couple of days or months or years. But you have to kind of change your perspective of what music is nowadays.

unfortunately, and fortunately, depending on how you're speaking. My point of that whole AI ramble is folks like you are the anti-AI, where it's like you value the music and the original product so much that you actually have a brick and mortar, a venue where people can feel the actual music performed

by a human being. And so, of course, the overlords, robot overlords take over. Yeah. But you have this price of admissions. It's like, we're not just a venue. We're not just a performance area, but the bunker, but no, we're an area where human beings can be human

and still feel art and express themselves. So congratulations, I think you're all going to be just fine. Let's talk about your episode. Legacy makers. Your legacy makers. Congratulations. What are we going to learn about about all y'all on legacy makers? Well, I guess you'll

learn some of our background. You'll learn how we, the crazy journey that brought us to basically where we are today. A? Yeah, the highs and lows of running a business and kind of figuring it out as you go along. And Willie is first-time adventure for all of us. So we'll kind of go through all of that.

Do you feel a little different now that you've had all these microphones and cameras on you? You're like just talking about yourselves? You feel a little more? A little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, one of the things, so like we started out with you and you were asking us to give the, to say, like, why I am a,

legacy maker because of this, right? And then we did that at the end again. And my answer was still similar, but a little, but different, and I won't give too much away, but after I put it out, like, I don't know, I felt a little emotional in a way. It's like, wow, like, I really did, like, do this.

I really did, like, leave my old life behind. Yeah. Yeah. Start, move to a city that I didn't know and start a business. I didn't know how to run. So it's like, yeah. And now we're still here. So.

Yeah. Yeah. What happened? Very cool. So what's next? What's the big plan? What's the bunker two look like? Yeah.

Good question. I mean, if we could change anything or evolve to any, any next picture, it would probably be, we'd love to have a bigger room. Mm-hmm. without losing the intimacy, of course. Yeah. We did just start another sort of small side venture with a mobile bar. So the bunker, the performance sound is under the corporation,

the bunker entertainment incorporated. So we thought, hmm, that's interesting. You know, why stick to a brick and mortar building with the room so small, we need to serve more people. So let's get a mobile bar and we can bring the party to you, right? For sure. Yeah. So, yeah, now we have a.

the bunker bar where we can come and serve corporate functions, weddings, anything like that. Jeremy can bring us excellent, excellent cocktails on site. And of course, we could arrange for entertainment. Somebody's looking for live music, you know, like why be confined to just the lounge, right? Music and drinks. It's universal. Right on. Maybe live streams, hosting live stream events, maybe a couple of things.

Yeah, yeah, at least we started live streaming a little bit. We might get back into it. I really love the format of like the talk show. Oh, for sure. That's our, our wind down at the end of the night. Like, it'll be like one, two in the morning. And of course, they're all on YouTube now. So we'll come home and, you know, visit with the dog and have some water and,

and throw on like Stephen Colbert or like, whatever, right? And I dry peat. Yeah. Yeah. Poor guy. But I love the format. And I thought, man, wouldn't that be cool if it's a bunker. Like, we have the stage.

It'd be really neat to have a live studio audience and do some, like, local interviews and have some live music. I'm more of a variety show. Yeah. I'm like, hmm, the pieces are like. Red Live or Legacy Maker's podcast. Yeah, I kind of know what you're talking about. Well, guys, that was such a great, amazing conversation. I'm so eager to learn more from your episode.

I'm rooting for you. I love, love, love, love the live music experience. There is so much more for you guys. I'm so excited for you all. Thank you so much for your. time and energy. And I sure as I hope you enjoyed sitting on this very cramped lip tonight. Is there anything else you like to say right before we wrap up? Any plugs? Any hellos? We shout outs. Just a shout out to everybody at the bunker who helps make our room work.

Yeah. Nevin on sound. Bruce for open mics. Geez. You start naming people, huh? I know, I know. There's so many people. All the performers that come out, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, everybody who comes out to view live music and consume their content live, thank you, thank you. And of course, if there's anybody who wants to sponsor an artist on stage, please reach out. We'd love some help, getting more talent on stage. And yeah, we'd love to hear from you. Yeah.

That concludes yet another amazing episode of Living the Red Light podcast. For Insight Success, I am Ray Gutierrez.