Before Tanner Montague started booking bands, he was in one. The experience led him to open Green Room, his own music venue in Uptown, in 2023, and it has since become the center of gravity for a scene of up-and-coming local musicians, with a stacked calendar of shows each month. “There’s a lot of legendary clubs in town, and they are the same way they’ve been for the last 30 years,” he says. “I wanted to create a cool, sexy, different, exciting room that we haven’t seen in this town.” As president of the Minnesota chapter of the National Independent Venue Association, he’ll shine the spotlight on Minneapolis when the fifth annual conference comes to the city in July, welcoming some 1,500 music industry professionals.