Baltimore's 8x10 sold to new owners, closing avoided

Baltimore’s 8x10 will not go dark after all. The Federal Hill concert club at 10 East Cross Street has been sold to Rising Sun Presents, a Philadelphia-based live music company, in partnership with Baltimore musician Cris Jacobs and building owner Dave Rather, keeping one of the city’s most familiar independent stages in play after months of uncertainty.

The new owners said the 43-year-old venue will close for the summer and is targeting an October 2026 grand reopening. Before then, the building is set for upgrades that include changes to food and beverage service, signage and the membership program, along with other operational adjustments. Jeremy Rusen will lead improvement work over the summer before taking over as general manager.

For Baltimore’s live-music ecosystem, the deal matters because the 8x10 is not easily replaced. The club opened in April 1983 and has long been a compact, working room with a full bar, concert stage, standing-room floor, balcony and basement level. The venue’s owners, Abigail Janssens and Brian Shupe, took it over in 2005 and ran it for 21 years, a tenure that ended with a January announcement that the club would close June 30 if no buyer emerged. The property had been offered for sale or lease for the first time in 25 years.

The 8x10 has hosted artists including Billy Joel, Phish, Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the Cross Street site has been part of Baltimore live music for decades. WBAL-TV 11 News reported that the location has hosted live music for 50 years, while the current 8x10 operation has been a fixture since April 1983. That history gives the sale more weight than a simple change of ownership: it preserves a room where local bands, touring acts and the people who work sound, bartending and door shifts all depend on a steady calendar.

The new ownership also carries a strong Baltimore connection. Baltimore Magazine noted that Jacobs holds the unofficial record for most shows played on the 8x10 stage, making the handoff feel rooted in the city’s own music scene rather than an outside buyout. Rising Sun Presents said it was founded in 2022 from the teams behind Ardmore Music Hall, Point Entertainment and Bonfire Entertainment, and one report said the company produced about 1,700 live music events across 25 stages in 2025. For a city that has lost too many independent rooms already, keeping the 8x10 alive is the difference between a nostalgia story and a working future.