Flint Local 432

Over the years, the Local has hosted a who’s who of punk rock royalty, and produced some of its own. Every era has its share of nights to remember, shows where those who were there remember it forever. That love goes both ways, as many of those bands go on to spread the word about the Local and keep the club packed with great out of town talent alongside the homegrown favorites.

Scott McCloud of Girls Against Boys, Soulside, New Wet Kojak, and Paramount Styles has fond memories of Flint Local 432 as a trusted stop on tour for Soulside in the late 1980s. In the late 1980s, finding safe, reputable places to play was not easy for punk bands.

“Back then, there was a lot of skinhead violence at shows, especially in the Midwest, for some reason. Detroit did not seem like a good place for us to play. I got Joel’s contact information from Ian [MacKaye of Minor Threat and Fugazi],” he explains.

Soulside quickly discovered that the Local was a welcoming place for them. “At that time, the punk circuit was dotted with smaller cities like Kenosha, Wisconsin or Manhattan, Kansas. We didn’t know much about Flint before our first show, but we immediately recognized we’d found a place we liked playing. The Local drew a more youthful, super enthusiastic crowd. There was a focus on the fun of the music rather than punk skinhead posturing,” he says.

Soulside played the Local several times between 1987 and 1989. “We knew we could expect a good crowd each time, which always seemed like a homegrown thing. Flint seemed like the kind of place that could foster a local punk scene because, especially back then, having a safe, cool venue to play was essential to the whole music scene. I always knew when organizing a show with Joel was that his passion for the Local also meant that we were going to play somewhere where people would care, that it would be fair. After the first time, it was always a priority show for us. We weren’t going to miss the Local and Flint,” he says.

Marc Jacob Hudson got his start in the Flint music scene in 1985, attending shows in the basement of the Capitol Theatre. “It was’t called the Local 432 yet, but the spirit was certainly there,” he says. “I continued going to shows through all its iterations, and played shows at most of them.”

Hudson was in the legendary early 1990s band Power on Hold, who were blending hip hop and rock before Rage Against the Machine was all over 1990s radio and MTV. “Right away it felt like both a social safe haven and a wild new frontier. In my high school years, the shows were a place to be away from the judgement and otherness that I found in other areas of my life, around a group of people that seemed to share a need for the same thing,” he says.

Hudson’s career as a producer and engineer took off. He has worked with some of the most acclaimed bands in punk and hardcore, including Against Me!, Cursive, Taking Back Sunday, and Sunny Day Real Estate, working as studio producer at his space Rancho Recordo, or doing sound at live shows. Even with this level of success, he remains committed to the Flint scene.

𝐵𝑒𝑡𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑛𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑓𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑐𝑎𝑚𝑝𝑎𝑖𝑔𝑛 𝑤𝑒’𝑟𝑒 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑐𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑙𝑘𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑜 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑚𝑎𝑑𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐿𝑜𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠. 𝑇𝑜𝑑𝑎𝑦 𝑤𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑐𝑘 𝑖𝑛 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝐿𝑖𝑠𝑎 𝐸𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑡𝑡, 𝑤ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑚𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑝𝑜𝑖𝑠𝑒 𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑟𝑢𝑛 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑤𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑎 𝑑𝑟𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟’𝑠 𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑒!

Lisa Essett made her first visit to the Local at age fourteen. “I had no idea there was a space to see live music in Flint. It blew my mind, and was I ever thankful to have found it,” she says. From that first show came new friends, shared experiences, and a sense of community. “For a biracial kid from Grand Blanc, I really needed that.” By sixteen, she was working the door at shows. “I was so excited about that. At sixteen, it was the first time someone trusted me with something like that,” she recalls. It was only the beginning for Essett. “Soon after, Joel and Wade gave me other jobs to do. This laid the groundwork for me to start booking my own shows and working with bands in numerous capacities,” she explains. “I took the skills I learned at the Local and applied them to my work in social media and marketing. To build career skills from skills I learned at the Local as a teenager, that’s truly something, not to mention the lifelong friends I made back then.” Essett also went on to serve on the Board of Directors for the club.

Essett sums it up like this: “My career would be so different without punk rock, Joel, and the Local. I will rep for them always.”