Live-music venues worth the trip in Columbus, Ohio

PromoWest’s Arena District room, which its own page calls the first indoor and outdoor concert venue in America, with a reversible stage serving a 2,200-capacity indoor hall and a 5,200-capacity outdoor amphitheater across more than 110 events a year.

Downtown arena that opened in September 2000 on the site of the old Ohio State Penitentiary with back-to-back sold-out Tim McGraw and Faith Hill shows, home ice for the Blue Jackets between touring concerts.

Keith-Albee vaudeville house, designed in the spirit of Versailles, that opened on November 8, 1926 with acoustics tuned for unamplified performers and is now CAPA’s 2,695-seat stage adjacent to the LeVeque Tower.

Ohio State’s campus arena, which hosted its first concert on November 8, 1998, a sold-out Neil Diamond show, bills itself Home of the Buckeyes and Arena to the stars, and hosts a wide variety of concerts, family shows and touring productions around basketball and hockey.

Rock hall on the Ohio State campus, built in 1923 as a movie theatre, run as the Agora Ballroom from 1970 and reopened by PromoWest in 1984, a 1,700-capacity room whose own page claims the title of longest continually running rock club in the country.

Downtown concert hall inside an 1898 First Baptist church that keeps its massive stained glass, reopened in 2006 as the Bar of Modern Art and renamed The Bluestone in 2010, with five spaces spread over three levels.

North-side concert club ten minutes from downtown that bills itself as Columbus, Ohio’s finest entertainment venue where everyone is treated like royalty, an 850-capacity, multi-tiered facility with a full menu and free patrolled parking.

PromoWest’s small room above The Basement and beside KEMBA Live!, hung with wall-to-wall posters and memorabilia from thirty years of the company’s shows, with a large patio and a name its page reads two ways, Artist and Repertoire or Art and Rock.

North campus bar opened in 2011 by local musician Marcy Mays and run by Columbus musicians and artists, a bar whose about page says it has hosted up-and-coming local, regional and national acts alongside staple dance parties.

A Columbus bar that its own meta description bills as a punk and dive bar, with a kitchen and a site built around an embedded Google Calendar of dated shows.

A cocktail and jazz lounge, 21 and over, whose own page says live jazz is featured nightly in two seated, ticketed sets with an early Friday and Saturday Power Hour before the main act.

Music hall and kitchen with two distinct spaces, the Music Hall Stage and Charlie’s Stage, that its site pairs with inspired cocktails and a curated menu for the best of food, drink and memorable music, plus free Happening Hour shows and I Like It Like That, a spot inside serving small plates, pizza and its own concoctions.

A Columbus venue whose own site sorts its shows into local acts and national tours, with a venue page that says additional information is coming soon.

Bar and music venue established in 2014 whose about page describes a natural-cut wooden bar, twenty craft taps leaning toward Ohio breweries, a 32-channel sound system with on-stage monitor mixes and a staff entirely involved in the local music scene, and which says it is all for helping smaller, growing bands on tour.

Music venue whose site bills it as Music, Art, Food, Vibes, with a street team to join and a homepage that asks whether you are interested in performing.

Tavern open daily into the small hours that its homepage says has proudly hosted local, regional and national acts since 2009, with its shows booked and ticketed through Woodlands Productions, the company behind five Columbus rooms.