"A high-energy, fisheye-lens live concert photograph taken from the stage, looking out into a packed, enthusiastic crowd at Crowbar. In the center foreground, a musician is dynamically playing a white electric guitar or bass. The dense audience is pressed right up against the stage, with dozens of attendees cheering, smiling, and raising their hands in the air. In the bottom left foreground, an attendee wearing a backward white baseball cap looks up toward the performer. The dark, intimate venue is illuminated by bright overhead stage lights, capturing the intense, lively atmosphere of a punk or indie rock show. — Indie Night Tampa at Crowbar in Ybor City, Florida on May 27, 20227. Credit: c/o Indie Night Live

The five years after coronavirus shut down nightclubs across the globe came with a lot of lessons, especially for Andres Hernandez. Together with his bandmates in the Tampa band Rohna, the 28-year-old bassist built a giant community around a simple concept: indie-rock.

Since its formation in 2021, Indie Night has become a national brand, staging 60 concerts across the U.S., including close to a dozen at Crowbar. This weekend, the series hosts back-to-back shows at the legendary Ybor City venue, which will shutter before the fall following 20 years in the historic district.

But just how did Indie Night become so popular?

Hernandez told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that his teenage bands played Tarpon Springs venues like the Neptune Lounge and then Transitions Art Gallery at the Skatepark of Tampa. Like old-school promoters from those days, he and the Indie Night team are fixtures outside shows, handing out fliers, but they’re also carefully curating the lineups for a scene that was craving togetherness after COVID.

“We filled a gap,” he said, noting that marketing and curation has to all come together to make it work. “We want to bring in people that maybe wouldn’t necessarily know about a local show like this.”

Now, Tampa Indie Night features the loyalest of followings. Both of this weekend’s gigs—like the ones before them—sold out well before doors open.

The shows on Friday and Saturday are both headlined by Rohna, playing different sets each night, Hernandez said. Indigo Lane, Mossheads, and Peace Cult are on the bill for night one, with Cozy In the Black, Nowincolor and Jupiter Bloom helping close the weekend out. The bands color their catalogs with emo, punk, grunge, new wave, and ‘90s-era alternative sounds—but all are, by nature, rock projects.

A direct-flash promotional photograph of the five members of the band Rohna posing together indoors. They are arranged in a staggered, tight grouping—with two members crouching in the front, two seated in the middle, and one standing in the back—against a backdrop of bright, shiny blue curtains. The band members are looking directly at the camera and are dressed in casual indie-rock attire, including a grey vest over a white t-shirt, a solid black t-shirt, a light pink short-sleeve shirt, a dark patterned button-down, and a striped t-shirt. The bright flash lighting casts crisp shadows on the blue curtains behind them. — Rohna Credit: c/o Indie Night Live

Hernandez told CL that the hallmark of an Indie Night band is a high-energy set and that he does draw the line when a band’s sound teeters too far into a subgenre (there are other homegrown concert series dedicated to emo, hardcore, and EBM). To help curate lineups and break out of algorithmic echo chambers, he reads music publications, listens to college radio, and actually tries to checkout to the bands mentioned in TikTok reels highlighting underrated bands.

His personal sweet-spot is the blend of garage and surf-rock, but Hernandez added that Indie Night—where the audience ranges in age from 18 to 28 years old—is for a generation that grew up on bands like Two Door Cinema Club and even Title Fight or Turnover. Anecdotally, the crowds definitely fall under the “alternative” umbrella, but range from tattooed and pierced concert goers to college normies alike.

“What I’ve noticed, is that it’s a cool demographic of that age group, the people that are definitely music fans and concertgoers,” he added. “I’ll see them at big shows, then eventually at local shows as they kind of discover more.”

The bands on Indie Night bills are small, but as Hernandez points out the biggest bands started in rooms like Crowbar. “This is a chance to discover new music,” he noted.

Tom DeGeorge, co-founder and owner of Crowbar, said he’s been impressed with how Hernandez and bandmates have figured out the business side of being a musician.

“I think it’s phenomenal,” DeGeorge, 52, told CL. “Bands can’t necessarily replace a manager or agent, but if you understand your business, then you are sustainable.”

Indie Night will soon have to find a new home after Crowbar shuts down. Being able to sell out two nights in a row might put them in a position to book at The Ritz, New World Tampa’s music hall, or even Ybor City’s emergent Zodiac nightclub. But the beauty of Crowbar, which holds about 300 people, is that Indie Night bands tend to eventually grow into the room without Hernandez’s help.

“Without another Crowbar or sort of small room like that, it’s tough for them to take what they’ve learned, take the audience that they’ve gained from an Indie Night and run with it,” he added. “For Indie Night, we’ll keep growing it and ideally looking to do a bigger room and just kind of raise the bar for ourselves.”

For now, he’s looking forward to running it back two more times, for the final time at 1812 N 17th St. where Indie Night has cultivated what is one of the most welcoming rooms in local music. That warm reception that’s become a feature of the night comes from the fact that there are always people at Indie Night who just haven’t been to many concerts.

“People are just genuinely excited. And when there is that sense of a welcomeness and sense of just excitement behind it, I think people tend to just be really nice at those shows,” he said. Having bands hanging out with the crowds goes a long way too.

“We’re having those very open conversations with people and just kind of talking to friends and fans and seeing how all these people end up mingling together,” he said. “I think it just turns into a really positive environment.”

It’s a notion that Hernandez hopes carries on even after the show ends.

“I think that the community and the ethos, the culture that Crowbar has instilled and that Indie Night has has been able to carry on through all of our shows—I want people to know that it really it goes way further than just the venue,” he said. “That sense of community, and that sense of taking care of one another at shows—that goes into day to day life.