There’s a new general manager at the helm of D.C.’s iconic music venue, 9:30 Club. I.M.P, the parent company of the club that also operates the Lincoln Theatre, the Anthem and Merriweather Post Pavilion, just promoted Angie Chamberland to the role.

Chamberland, who is one of several women to lead 9:30 Club since the 1980s, started at the venue in 2015 as door staff and most recently served as night manager. She’s taking over the GM job from Ed Stack, who served in the role for 20 years and will be moving to a new position at I.M.P managing production across all of the company’s venues. Stack started at 9:30 Club in 1995 as a pizzamaker and door staff.

Chamberland recently spoke with DCist/WAMU about the job, her plans for 9:30 Club and the state of the live music industry. The conversation below has edited for length and clarity.

Leading the 9:30 Club seems like a dream job to a lot of people out there who love live music. Tell us how you got your start at the venue.

Well, it is absolutely a dream job. I had been a small time promoter and worked with some local bands in New Haven when I was living up in Connecticut, then I moved down to D.C. and worked in other industries for a little bit. I had friends who were in the touring industry and everyone pointed me back to the 9:30 Club as the place to go work because it was so well regarded in the live music world in general. So I applied and decided to start working as a door staffer, welcoming in patrons. From there, I just took on new jobs and took every opportunity to learn something new or get involved in something more, and eventually led to this path as the GM.

This really is a challenging time to take over leadership of a music venue. Given the pandemic, how are you thinking about keeping concertgoers safe right now?

Well, I think the whole music industry, the whole live event industry, is going through the same thing right now in terms of figuring out how to reboot from being shuttered for so long, which was difficult for everybody and not everyone made it through. But right now, shows are selling out, people are buying tickets, attendance rates are up. So we’re keeping an eye on what public health experts are saying, keeping an eye on how everything is going, how everyone is feeling and just making decisions based on the ever-changing climate of what we feel is safe to do and what people feel comfortable doing. But more and more, it seems that people are comfortable coming out, celebrating the return of live music and taking the steps that they feel is best for them.

Many people, I’m sure, are still uncertain if they’re comfortable being in a space with a crowd. Have you noticed a change in the environment at 9:30 since the club reopened in September?

A lot of people, once they show up to a concert, have done a lot of the work of figuring out what they are and are not comfortable with. We see some people still wearing masks, we see some people not wearing masks. But the concerts do feel like concerts. I think there’s this wash of relief from everybody of, ‘Oh, I wasn’t sure if I was going to get to do this ever again.’ And I think more and more we’re seeing that immediate rush of, ‘Oh, thank goodness, I miss this so much and I’m so happy to be here.’ And whatever steps each individual person feels that they need to take, that being vaccinations or wearing masks or a combination of both in order to get there, I think it’s great for that to pay off for them once they get to experience that joy once again. And I think that’s what we’ve all needed is experiencing that excitement and that joy in that community feeling of of live music.

From your end, how about booking artists? Are artists touring any less than they used to be? 

I feel like every artist is on tour right now, so we have seen a absolute flood of shows coming on. It took a little bit for everyone to get started in the fall. And I think in January there was a little bit of rescheduling going on because of the omicron variant, but certainly everyone is hungry to be out in the road. And I think we’re seeing more shows than ever, if anything else. And I’m seeing shows sell out more than ever before as well. So it sounds like everyone is just very eager to make up for that lost time.

I.M.P., the parent company of the 9:30 Club, is opening another venue right next door meant to emulate the club’s original smaller spot on F Street. What’s the latest on that?

There’s no update just yet. It’s going to happen, it’s going to be right next to the club and it’s going to replicate sort of the the old 9:30 Club. That’s the news we have for now. But I can tell you that everyone’s very, very excited about adding another venue to our portfolio. We are excited to bring back something that’s going to have that smaller venue feel, like a lot of shows that we used to have at our sister venue, U Street Music Hall, which unfortunately did not make it through the pandemic.

What shows coming up  are you particularly excited about?

So many! The wonderful part about the 9:30 Club is we have such a full roster of such a wide variety of acts coming through. But right off the cuff, a couple of my absolute can’t-miss shows coming up are going to be Turnstile, which is coming through in May. That is a semi-local band that has a whole lot of energy. Ibeyi, which is one of my favorite discoveries from from working in the 9:30 Club, is coming through later this fall. They are an Afro-French Cuban band made up of two twin sisters that have absolutely incredible music, incredible presence and have been one of those acts that I might have missed had I not been magically working that show that they happened to play at the at the club some years ago.