Lost Venues — The Stories That Built Toronto's Music Scene
A crowdsourced project, spun out of Welcome To The Music, documenting the venues, people, and moments that shaped Toronto's musical past. Your memories will help build a book, a podcast, and a living archive.
What Is Lost Venues?
It started as one simple question Karim and Gregg would ask guests on Welcome To The Music "Do you have a story you'd like to share about a venue that no longer exists?" The answers ranged from "The best..." to "The worst..." to "I was underage when..." to "I was stading in a cow pasture in the middle of Northern Ontario after enjoying some edibles when God said to me..." We soon realized there was a real need to capture these stories and, more specifically, the stories/myths/legends of the lost venues of Toronto.
Why? Because Toronto has lost dozens of legendary rooms; from punk basements to metal bars to iconic new wave clubs that changed the culture of the city. Their stories still live in the people who played, worked, danced, sweated, and grew up in them.
Lost Venues is collecting those memories, your memories, and bringing them together into a crowdsourced book and companion podcast. This is a community archive built by the people who were there.
The Top Ten Venues (Chosen by the Community)
We asked the community (musicians, fans, industry veterans, and venue regulars), which venues mattered most. These ten rose to the top and will form the foundation of the first phase of the project:
Bonus (not really, obviously): The Dakota Tavern
How You Can Contribute
Your memories matter.
We're looking for stories, reflections, personal moments, and behind-the-scenes memories from anyone who lived Toronto's music scene; musicians, bartenders, crew, promoters, superfans, and everyone in between.
Share as little or as much as you want. You might end up quoted in the book or featured on the podcast.
Contribution Form
Contributors & Collaborators
Lost Venues is built with the help of musicians, venue owners, industry voices, historians, and fans who lived this history firsthand.
Current contributors include:
- Rob Pruess (Spoons/Honeymoon Suite)
- Trevor Hurst (Econoline Crush)
- Martha & Mark (Martha and the Muffins)
- Molly Johnson
- Danny Marks
- Dennis Papaluca
- David McPherson
(More contributors will be added as the project grows.)
The Team Behind Lost Venues
Karim Kanji
Karim Kanji has been a longtime champion of Toronto's music and cultural scene, known for amplifying local voices and stories across his digital platforms. As co-host of Welcome To The Music and Welcome, with Karim Kanji, he's interviewed artists, industry leaders, and venue insiders who helped shape the city's sound. His work with Lost Venues builds on that commitment to preserving Toronto's musical history.
Gregg Tilston
Gregg Tilston has spent decades embedded in Toronto's music community as a musician, supporter, fan, and documentarian of the music scene through Welcome To The Music. He's interviewed countless artists, venue owners, and insiders, building a deep archive of stories about how the city's music culture evolved. Lost Venues extends that work by preserving the places that shaped those stories.
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