THE PREMIER: SMALL TOWN VENUE WITH A BIG CITY SOUND
Nestled in the ever-developing city of Hickory, one may stumble across a gray brick building labeled “The Premier.” Immediately it invokes curiosity; there’s nothing else around that’s remotely similar to its style. One simple search will tell you it’s a concert venue. In truth, it’s much more than that. I sat down with the owner, Josh Goodfellow, to discuss what it’s all about.
The man himself: Josh Goodfellow.
Back To The Beginning
What inspired you to start the Premier?
“I have wanted to have a concert venue for.. a long time. Not really sure what it was that made me want to do that but I’ve always loved music, I’ve always been around it, I’ve played it, I’ve had the production company… I would say it’s hard to say what really drove me to want to do that but.. it really, overall, is a passion for music and production in general.”
When Josh first acquired the Premier, it was nothing more than a run-down warehouse he used to operate his production company, Codex.
A Codex trailer being loaded for an upcoming production.
“I mean, I’ve been in this building since 2012. When I was first in this building.. I was also in it with squirrels and all kinds of things because there were holes in the wall, there was no heating or air, it had roughly one working bathroom, no hot water. It was in rough shape. But it was a secure building I could run the company out of.”
As his business grew, he began to realize he could make his dream a reality by using some of the extra space in the warehouse to start The Premier.
“Once I grew the company to a size where I felt like I was starting to plateau.. that I was about the size I wanted to be… that’s when I ended up taking the risk and started dumping some money into this [The Premier], which was actually in 2019.
However, there was an almost instantaneous setback he faced while beginning his work on The Premier.
“All of the sudden Covid happened. So, my production company was 95% down. I just had to start borrowing tons of money to make all these payments… and I still haven’t payed off some of those things. I was one of the industries that didn’t get help. They [Save Our Stages] helped venues; I didn’t have a venue at the time. We’re such a small demographic… a lot of smaller people don’t do it anymore and a lot of the bigger people were kind of too big to fail. And I was kind of in between, and I was too stubborn to fail”
Through all the struggle, Josh began to adapt to his situation and make the best out of it with his “No Contact Series,” a collection of live concerts held and streamed in the un-renovated Premier. Each show was a small production, consisting of a staff of only three to four people that worked with the bands. These shows were the Premier’s way of helping artists and production teams during the pandemic, as all donations were split between bands and the production crew.
Around this time he met some people from Bristol Rhythm and Roots and began to work on a production contract with them that allowed him to work 13 stages that year which helped fund some much needed upgrades and renovations to The Premier.
Black River Rebels performing at the Premier- 3/13/26.
Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution
The renovations practically turned the Premier into a new building, inside and out. With additions like outdoor seating and a full bar, the building is a perfect social area to hang out in-between or during sets.
The Premier’s indoor bar seating.
Of course, renovations also included brand new lightning and PA, which the Premier is in no way short on.
Production wise, shows at the premier go neck and neck with many venues in larger cities like Charlotte and Asheville. Unlike many pubs and clubs in the area, the Premier has a full lighting and sound rig closer of something to the Fillmore than your average smaller venue.
“IT IS DEFINITELY OVERKILL…BUT NOT IN A TACKY WAY (laughs)… IT’S OVERKILL IN A WAY THAT I ALSO OWN A PRODUCTION COMPANY”
An overview of the front of house PA and lighting rig.
What kind of equipment is The Premier using?
“In the production company I’m a Harman house. Basically that’s going to be Crown, JBL, Soundcraft… the only thing not under Harman in the venue is lighting.
Below is a small gallery of some of the equipment at The Premier along with descriptions.
ALL MY HOMIES HATE TICKETMASTER
I decided to look ahead and ask what his plans for the future of The Premier are. He told me once The Premier can develop processes to make things like ticket and bar wait times dwindle even further, and once more organization is developed in general, he’ll be more comfortable booking larger acts.
“I mean, you know, there's just things that we need to kind of get right and once some of those are in place and I feel really comfortable, then I feel better about putting, you know, a larger act that's gonna cost us a lot more…if we can service that bar and and make sure that everybody that came had a good time and didn't feel like they were just standing in line the whole time… then, I feel comfortable with doing that.”
The Premier’s bar, stocked and show ready.
While talking about the future of the Premier, I wanted to see where Josh’s head was with the concert industry as a whole. Where he saw the concert industry heading in the coming years with ticket sales and pricing becoming more complicated and expensive.
“You’ve got Live Nation and Ticketmaster all under the same umbrella, and they control the market. There’s not a way to get away from that. It’s not that they’ve destroyed what’s happening [the concert industry,] they’ve just made something that works really well for them. And I don’t blame them for it, but they’ve made it where it’s too easy for people to scam their system to be able to get bulk tickets… it’s too easy for stuff like that to happen. Then resales happen… it’s gotten to the point where ticket prices aren’t going to the band anymore. They’re going to the scalpers.”
This is a sentiment many people share. The way Ticketmaster and Live Nation are set up really has really hurt artists. Many fans can’t afford to see their favorite bands because a lot of tickets are just stagnant being held by one person at an insane upcharge. If these tickets don’t sell, they either get wasted or end up being refunded. This means less concession sales for the venue, less merch sales for the band, and an emptier crowd that’s missing a lot of fans who can’t afford current ticket prices.
“Multiple times every show we get chargebacks because something’s a stolen card, but it’s going through Ticket Web, which is owned by Ticketmaster and Live Nation, and they vet it and they say it’s fine. But when we get the charge back, we’ve already settled with the band so we’re the ones that have to pay it and lose that money. And we’ve already paid it out, so we’ve lost twice. It’s one of those things that’s like, how can you not vet it better than that?”
When Josh has brought this up to his Ticket Web rep, he’s just told he needs to vet sales better. The problem with this though is that Ticket Web takes fees to cover this vetting and it’s really just not possible for a venue owner to set aside time and check hundreds of ticket charges. All of this just leads back to the unstable system Live Nation has created that scalpers are free to take advantage of .
Talking about the future, as well as the problems surrounding the Premier and concert industry in general opened up a whole other can of worms about the challenges he’s faced throughout his journey. What are some challenges you’ve faced while building The Premier and as a venue owner in general? How have you overcome them?
“I feel the premier is overlooked by a lot of people because most people that have been here go ‘I had no clue it was like this.’”
And it’s true. Hickory is growing into a bigger city and is evolving everyday, but it hasn’t yet reached the size where people would expect a venue. Most live music in the area will still be found at bars, restaurants, or downtown events. It’s easy to assume The Premier is similar to everything else you’d see in the area production wise.
“It’s hard to make an independent venue work… I don’t have corporate sponsors, I don’t have that kind of stuff to be able to make us known by everybody. I think that too often, there's a.. there's a side of people feeling that if it's something local, it's not as good as from out of town. And that's a weird thing. You know, I would say one of the biggest losses for this community was the fact that the hum isn’t continuing and doing stuff, because I wanted even more music to happen. If there's options and there's good quality stuff happening, people are less likely to go, ‘oh, I want to see good music. I'm going to go to Asheville or I'm going to go to Charlotte...’ “
People just don’t assume good music can be found in a smaller city, it’s so easy to get wrapped up in seeing big headline tours in cities near you. But, it’s important to remember many of these huge acts began in cities like Hickory, and many of these larger acts have even performed in Hickory in the past such as: Sierra Ferrell, Lake Street Dive, and Eddie 9V (all at the Sails Original Music Series downtown).
Flow Tribe: A New Orleans based funk band performing at the Hickory Sails Original Music Series- 5/15/26.
Josh also gave me insight into the way some have viewed his business over the years. He mentioned people from his past have asked him if he’s “still playing with speakers?” He doesn’t believe a lot of people view production as a real career.
A lot of them are surprised when he tells them he was doing production at the very shows they’ve gone to.
“The amount of people that did not think a business like mine would ever work is… staggering.”
When I asked how he dealt with all the challenges and opposition he’s faced, he joked:
“I just think I’m insane… No, it’s one of those things where I hit kind of small goals and know kind of what I want to be able to get to. Once I get to that, I push to the next thing and push to the next thing.”
The Man. The Myth. The Legend.
For the last few questions I wanted to get a little more personal and ask Josh about his favorite parts of the Premier, and any ideas he may have to further establish the Premier in the Hickory community.
What is the best thing about what you do here at The Premier?
“Giving a place for people to have an amazing connection with a band in a much more intimate setting than what they would normally be able to.”
I think Josh summed up this aspect of the business perfectly. The Premier is an experience rare to find with venues today. It’s a place where you can be close to the stage and sometimes meet the artists themselves. Whether it be Steve-O fist bumping fans waiting in line or Paul Gilbert chatting it up with everyone before his show, you just don’t see a connection like that at a lot of venues.
What can a venue like this do to connect with the community?
“I would love to have, ya know, some sort of street team and some volunteers. I’d like to start a thing where we get some people to help us on big shows, get people in, and then they get paid with a free show… A street team that goes out and talks about this place and are our hype men… I think too often, so many of the people that come through here and enjoy it aren’t from here. So, they go back to their own city and talk about… I don’t think we’ve made a big enough splash in Hickory, and I don’t think we’ll be able to without having some larger acts.”
While Josh didn’t give me an exact time of when he’d like to start this, the Premier has already taken steps in the community focused direction with weekly corn hole tournaments and the occasional open mic night, so it’s only up from here.
What bands have you been most excited to have here?
“I had Sponge, Jimmy’s Chicken Shack, that’s my kind of jam. That’s the stuff I grew up listening to, and grew up loving, and they came and crushed it… I was excited the first time we had Afroman, because that’s just fun… I enjoy when Dirty Grass Soul comes through here. They’re just great guys. They come out of Shelby, and they crush it.”
“I DON’T KNOW HOW TO GET ACROSS HOW MUCH OF A GEM THIS IS IN THIS CITY. IT’S NOT SOMETHING YOU’D EXPECT TO FIND HERE AND MAYBE THAT’S WHY PEOPLE DON’T REALLY BELIEVE IT IS HERE.”
The Premier is truly something special for a city like Hickory to have. It’s keeping live music relevant in a city that struggles to build a music scene, and it brings fans together like few other venues do. If there’s anything someone should get out of this article it’s this: support live music and support the Premier by checking out a show, you won’t regret it.
Check out their website for up-to-date events at https://www.hickorypremier.com/
and follow them on Instagram @hickorypremier