Joel Treadway is the founder and sole operator of Cringe. Credit: Emma Dawson | Lantern Reporter
Cataloging the events of over 200 venues, Cringe.com has had Columbus’ live events covered for almost 30 years.
Cringe is a website centered on a regularly updated calendar of live events happening in Columbus-area venues. The events listed are largely music-oriented and are updated every Sunday to include what’s happening for the next four weeks, according to the website. On any given day, there could be as many as 45 events across Columbus.
“The main focus is venues with live music regularly,” Joel Treadway, the founder and sole operator of Cringe, said. “For the most part if it’s within [I-]270, I’ll list it.”
Cringe began as a continuation of Treadway’s work during his time studying at Ohio State in the late ‘80s. He developed an interest in sharing the music happenings of the campus area with the public, he said. Treadway graduated from Ohio State in 1990 with a degree in engineering physics.
“I was actually at OSU helping programming concerts and such through what’s OUAB now,” Treadway said. “When I stopped working for those organizations, I just continued posting shows I was interested in, and over time, it grew to pretty much anything in the OSU area.”
In Cringe’s early years, Treadway said many people in the Columbus area would submit their reviews, articles and events for upload on the website. From the get-go, Treadway encouraged contributors not to worry about coming across as professional.
“‘Nominate whatever you want, and write your own review and just put those in there.’ Some were really kind of silly, and that was the intent,” Treadway said. “I don’t want to be all serious, it’s called ‘Cringe’ after all.”
External submissions have dwindled in the last decade, Treadway said, and he primarily focuses on keeping the calendar listing up to date. This is no small task between the approximate 421 venues featured on Cringe’s venue page and Treadway’s full-time position as a senior application developer at Insight. Currently, the website averages 9,000 visits per month and has been trending higher since “the COVID-19 slump,” Treadway said.
“It’s basically just me scouring where these places list their shows and copying and pasting it, then cleaning it up,” Treadway said. “It’s pretty much a six or so hour day on Sundays for me. It’s another workday.”
James Whitehouse, lead vocalist of Columbus-based band Poison Door, said he has been an avid user of Cringe for over 10 years. Cringe has become so integral to the local music scene, Whitehouse said he can’t even remember where he first heard of it.
“If you are going to shows and a part of the scene long enough, you end up hearing about it,” Whitehouse said. “The funny thing is they don’t advertise or anything like that, so it’s all word of mouth. I think that’s part of the beauty of it.”
Other websites that have focused on the local arts scene, such as Columbus Underground or Columbus Alive, have either left smaller venues in the shadows or shut down entirely, Whitehouse said. This makes Cringe one of the most comprehensive and reliable lists of Columbus events, he said.
“It is a very pure and to-the-point web-based resource in an age where a lot of independent websites have been gobbled up by larger media companies,” Whitehouse said. “It doesn’t rely on advertisement. It is a DIY thing for a very DIY community.”
After all these years, Treadway said he continues to update Cringe largely due to his passion for music and supporting the local Columbus scene.
“I’ve always liked local artists and local music in general,” Treadway said. “They’re the ones who need the outlet. You don’t need to hear about the big show at Nationwide. It’s more about, there’s these little pockets of ‘These guys are in my backyard.’”
A musician himself, Whitehouse said there is a comfort in knowing there is at least one reliable source for showgoers to use as a guide to the local music scene. However, the lack of options for event calendars that include smaller venues in Columbus, is a “point of failure.”
“If Joel stops or can’t continue doing it, it would really leave a gap,” Whitehouse said. “For people to know what’s going on at Café Bourbon Street, and Dirty Dungarees, and Double Happiness and smaller venues, we need something like Cringe.”
