Live music, food from YouTube phenom

• Sugarshack Sessions, a popular YouTube channel featuring live music performances, has opened a new concert venue and restaurant in Bonita Springs, Florida.
• The venue, called Sugarshack Downtown, features live music seven days a week, ranging from free shows to ticketed events with bigger-name acts.
• In addition to live music, Sugarshack Downtown offers a full menu focused on healthier options, including fresh bread and homemade pizza dough.

For years, music fans have been watching the Sugarshack Sessions’ laid-back concerts on YouTube. Now they can see some of those bands in real life, too, thanks to the web phenomenon’s new concert venue/restaurant in downtown Bonita Springs.

Sugarshack Downtown opened in January near Riverside Park.

“We’ve always dreamt about having a venue,” Sugarshack co-founder Eddie Kopp said in January. “The whole goal, the whole time, was to make a name for ourselves in the music industry and become a household name. And it’s starting to feel a lot more real.”

Bands play Sugarshack Downtown’s outdoor stage seven days a week. Most shows are free, but some of the bigger touring acts are ticketed events.

Sugarshack Sessions, a YouTube phenomenon

The hit YouTube channel Sugarshack Sessions started in 2014 with five friends who loved music and just wanted to shoot videos of cool bands. They filmed those shows on the lush back deck of a small Bonita Springs house nicknamed the Sugarshack.

Since then, more than 300 local, regional and touring musical acts have performed on that back deck surrounded by palm trees, string lights and tiki torches.

The biggies have been largely reggae and reggae-rock acts, including SOJA, Big Mountain, Rebelution and Fortunate Youth (that band’s performance of “Burn One” has scored 17 million views so far). But they’ve also filmed folk, acoustic, indie, hip-hop and other genres — more than 2,000 concert videos posted since Sugarshack started in 2014.

Sugarshack’s first venue: Guitars, bars and gnome mascot Gnomeo

Sugarshack Downtown was developed around an existing, 1943 building — a former transmission shop at the intersection of Childers Street and Old 41 Road.

That shop has been transformed into a bar and gift shop filled with photos of the friends who started Sugarshack Sessions, a bar, a merch shop and colorful statues of Sugarshack’s gnome mascot, Gnomeo.

Walk through the building’s doors, though, and you’ll find the real attraction at Sugarshack Downtown: A courtyard with oak trees springing from the pavers, donated guitars hanging everywhere, an outdoor bar and a concert stage where the Sugarshack guys host live bands every day — plus major touring acts once or twice a month.

The venue boasts a high-end sound system and 263 seats — about three quarters of which are under covered pavilions, including the large one in front of the concert stage.

The Sugarshack menu

Sugarshack Downtown is more than just a concert venue, though. It’s also a restaurant with a full menu from Chef Gus Chaves, formerly of Naples’ 360 Market.

Expect lots of pizza, wraps, fresh burgers and more. They’re offering a healthier option for Southwest Florida diners, said general manager/business partner Gary Rudd in January. That includes bread made fresh every day and their own homemade pizza dough.

“We’ve got incredible food — seed-oil free,” Rudd said. “We are not gonna cook in that crappy canola oil, vegetable oil that’s killing America. We’re going to be using beef tallow, avocado oil, clarified butter — you know, back to the old roots of whole foods.”

More about Sugarshack Downtown

Sugarshack Downtown is at 27421 Old 41 Road, Bonita Springs. Learn more at sugarshackdowntown.com, facebook.com/sugarshackdowntown or instagram.com/sugarshack_downtown.

Charles Runnells is an arts and entertainment reporter for The News-Press and the Naples Daily News. To reach him, call 239-335-0368 or emailcrunnells@gannett.com. Follow or message him on social media: Facebook (facebook.com/charles.runnells.7) and Instagram (@crunnells1).