At Czar, a new (and early) weekly showcase for bands

Do Kansas City venues offer sufficient opportunity for new acts to get noticed? Yes, generally. It’s fairly easy for a halfway decent act to book a show somewhere. But it can be difficult for an unconnected band to gain traction with local music fans.

What if there was a weekly showcase, an early one — so folks with kids and nine-to-five jobs could get home at a reasonable hour — with a steady, curated flow of underexposed acts? Such is the thinking behind the somewhat unfortunately named Indie Hit Makers, which debuts Wednesday at Czar from 6 to 9 p.m.

“It’s a chance for bands to build a following outside of their usual crowd,” says Mike Borgia, who’s organizing Indie Hit Makers. “Our emphasis is on music with depth but also commercial viability.”

Borgia, a musician who for years played in what he calls the “vegan hardcore East Coast scene,” recently moved to Kansas City from New York, where he says he held a similar event at an art gallery and performance space called Culture Fix. “I’d always had a good time when my bands toured through [Kansas City] and always felt like there was a lot of talent here. It’s more challenging to book than in New York, but it’s been exciting already, trying to find new bands to play.” Lined up so far for Wednesday: folk-pop duo the Clementines and singer-songwriter Nicolette Paige.

No jazz acts are in the lineup. Borgia says he’s open to “rock, pop, indie, alternative, rockabilly — mostly around the rock genre.” Acts play only 30-minute sets. “We’re keeping the performance time down to a minimum because we want to give people who come in the option to hear something new but not overwhelm them by having to sit through a long set they might not be enjoying,” he says.

“Basically, the goal is to give people a reason to pop into Czar on Wednesdays — it’s free — and have them walking away saying, ‘Wow, that was a pretty good band.’ “