Downstage at Vera

In addition to the well-known Vera Poppodium and its Main Hall, Vera also has a nice basement café with great programming at the same address. You can have a beer here until the early hours.

From the 1990s onwards, Downstage programming evolved into an integral part of VERA's offering. Iconic names that once took the stage of the legendary Kelderbar include Motorpsycho, Sebadoh, Dead Moon, Grandaddy, Karate, The Robocop Kraus, The Weakerthans, The Dismemberment Plan, Cosmic Psychos and DeFacto (the band of Omar and Cedric from At The Drive-In and Mars Volta). Although the offer was and is mainly aimed at local and national acts, bands such as Bettie Serveert, LPG, Audiotransparent, Feverdream, Voicst, The Apers, Human Alert, zZz, Green Hornet, Jimmy Barock, We vs. Death and Face Tomorrow take the Downstage stage.

Meindert Talma describes his first performance at Downstage in a humorous way in his book 'Kelderkoorts'.

The Kelderbar showed its true colors, especially during punk and hardcore shows: this is where 'ceiling crawling' was invented! Anyone who has a video of this, please contact us!