Pittsburgh is losing another independent music venue.
The Original Pittsburgh Winery announced Friday it will close for good Aug. 15. The venue, which opened in 2011 as Pittsburgh Winery, made its own wine and hosted mostly local singer-songwriters, bands, stand-up comedy and more on two stages in the Strip District.
Tim Gaber, who co-owned the business with fellow musician Anthony Jardine, blamed changes in audience habits.
Joey Spehar
/
For 90.5 WESA
A band performs at the Original Pittsburgh Winery.
“People aren’t spending how they used to pre-COVID,” he said. “It’s not the same business that it used to be.”
Adam Valen, director of marketing for Pittsburgh-based promoter Drusky Entertainment, said the Original Pittsburgh Winery stood out for being owned and heavily staffed by artists.
“There’s something that felt super special about it,” he said.
Gaber, the bassist in Pittsburgh indie band the Buzz Poets, and Jardine launched Pittsburgh Winery in its current location and did well enough that they began an expansion in 2019. During renovations, they moved to a temporary location nearby.
By the time the venue returned to its renovated original space, in 2024, they had renamed it the Original Pittsburgh Winery to distinguish it from City Winery Pittsburgh, the local incarnation of a national chain of music and dining venues that opened in the Strip in 2023.
The remade space had much greater capacity, with room for 300 in its Cellar and an 80-capacity venue upstairs.
By then, though, Gaber said, audience habits had changed, and attendance never really recovered.
“I think people just felt richer” in pre-COVID times, he said. He said the city’s 5% amusement tax, which adds a few dollars to the cost of every ticket, hurt, too.
Closure is “a fate that far too many independent music venues across the country are currently contending with,” Gaber and Jardine said Friday in a post on Instagram.
While live-music giant Live Nation reported record global attendance last year, and big touring acts such as Coldplay, Beyonce, and Kendrick Lamar & SZA continue packing arenas and stadiums, small independent venues have indeed often struggled.
Just 24% of independent venues in Pennsylvania reported they turned a profit in 2024, according to a report from the National Independent Venues Association.
In Pittsburgh, a number of venues have closed in the years since just before the pandemic, including Howlers, in Bloomfield; Hambones, in Lawrenceville; and The Bridge, in East Liberty. South Side staple Club Café, which closed briefly before re-opening in 2025 under new ownership, recently resorted to a GoFundMe campaign to stay in business.
Valen called the closure of the Original Pittsburgh Winery “a blow to the community.”
“It really just tears into the culture and economic fabric of what makes Pittsburgh Pittsburgh,” he said.
Gaber urged fans to support venues, especially those that host local music, which he characterized as incubators for the talent of the future.
Among the final shows at Original Pittsburgh Winery are classic-rock cover band The Cause, The Buzz Poets and the duo Soulful Femme, along with a songwriters’ showcase and evenings of stand-up.