Hey Rick. At this point if you can’t accomplish what you’re going for with template tags (as detailed at https://theeventscalendar.com/support/documentation ), it’s likely that the best route would be to just create a “Venues” page manually and list them that way.
We have had requests for a venue page that just shows all the venues as you’ve mentioned here, and are looking to work that into the 2.1 release that is coming sometime in the fall. Apologies there isn’t more I can offer in the short-term, though.
Please let me know if you have any other questions or need anything else here.