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Posted Jun 19, 2009, 1:50 AM
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Ferris Wheel Hater
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Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 8,371
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Seems to suggest a different picture.
Quote:
When Richard's on Richards closes its doors in September, there will likely be a few tears shed in a few beers. Those holding the mugs will moan that "it's over" — Vancouver's live-music scene will never recover from losing such a legendary space.
But will they be right?
After all, the bar Richard's essentially replaced, the Town Pump, has been gone a long time, turned into the dance club Sonar (now Fabric) many moons ago. And while missed, it's not like losing the Pump led to the scene going dead silent. Not only that, but the licence for Richard's is moving to a new venue, also downtown, one that is promising live music with a capacity roughly the same size as Richard's. So, in terms of numbers of rooms, the city isn't losing one in this case.
Add to that the fact that, with the relaunch of the Biltmore, the city actually gained a room (and a great one, at that); the Rio Theatre and the Beaumont, which usually present movies and live theatre, respectively, have now started hosting a couple, if not more, concerts a month; and that not only is the Cultch reopening this month, but by 2011 it will have not just one but two additional live-performance sites operating under its umbrella, and one might argue that the city's live-music landscape is, well, more lively than it's ever been.
What's the true story? We tried to find out. Here then is an earnest but by no means exhaustive look at what venues have played their last set, what venues are poised for an encore and what venues are still jamming but maybe with some different players.
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Leave it to David Hawkes, a friendly dude who loves to talk, to get in the last word: "The truth is I'm excited for the city because four years ago when I started doing live shows at Plaza, everyone was bitching that there weren't enough mid-size venues in Vancouver and now we have a brand-new one and it's f---in' awesome!"
The mid-size venue Hawkes is referring to is, well, Venue. The 424-person capacity club that was formerly the Plaza is located at 881 Granville St. and set to open in exactly one week with a show featuring Wide Mouth Mason and the Odds.
Hawkes, the live entertainment director for the Adelphia Group and the man who will book acts for Venue, is excited because more than $1 million has been poured into its renovations — which include a new transformer, wiring, plumbing, green room, flooring and lights. Not to mention, the big island bar has been replaced.
"It was good when we had 250 people in the room and needed to look like 350, know what I mean?" says Hawkes, who's excited to have the Canadian Country Music Awards, among other events, on tap for the room,
Why the upgrade? It was twofold, says Hawkes. One was that his financial backers, the same owners of Luv-A-Fair once upon a time, simply love music. The second was the opportunity to fill a specific niche.
"More and more we started seeing that other clubs were all doing the same sort of thing. And we knew that Richard's was closing," Hawkes says. "So one of the reasons we started building the live program [at Plaza Club] so hurriedly was we were sort of feeling there was going to be a real missing factor here, which was the mid-size room.
"So let's become that."
The plan is a great one, with a couple of wrinkles. One is that some form of Richard's will resurface at the old A&B Sound location at 556 Seymour St. (Seymour's on Seymour, anyone?) Second, there is now the Biltmore, located at 395 Kingsway St.
With a capacity of 320, and a similar mandate of trying to have live music seven nights a week with a mix of both touring acts and local bands, the Biltmore might be considered Venue's stiffest competition for shows. But if there is a rivalry, it's friendly, says Aaron Schubert, the Biltmore's booking/promotions manager.
"I don't really see [Venue] as a threat to us," says Schubert. "We'll compete on shows with them and we already are. But there are plenty of touring acts and plenty of music scene for both of us. And I think it'd be pretty narrow-minded of me to feel like it has to be us or them. I think it's great for the city."
The Biltmore, with an owner who's had success in Calgary operating a similar space, reopened in January of 2008, but didn't really get rolling until last September. This month it will hold nine days of TD Canada Trust Vancouver International Jazz Festival gigs.
"I'm personally very schizophrenic when it comes to my music taste. The goal is to bring in as many varieties of music as possible. We sort of developed this reputation as a bit of a hipster-central kind of venue, which is great, I don't mind that at all. I think a lot of the great bands are coming out of that scene," says Schubert. "But we're definitely by no means aiming to go in one direction like that. We want this room to be open to any demographic; of course, 19+."
And especially ones that will dig the stag heads hanging on the walls.
As for Richard's, consultant Bob Burrows confirms its demise, rumoured for three years, is a certainty. The developers who had planned to build on that block before the market crashed have revived their intentions. And, no, even as the guy who's booked shows there since 1993, Burrows won't shed a tear when Richard's is gone. He's been doing this live-music thing longer than anyone else, you see, having at one time run the Town Pump for 14 years. He also disagrees with every single other person interviewed for this story that the city has a shortage of live-music venues.
"I'm surprised to hear that everyone thinks there's not enough rooms. That just blows my mind," Burrows says. "There's plenty of rooms. I don't think it's ever been better."
He explains further: "I say people have short memories. This thing runs in waves — it ebbs and flows. When I went to the Town Pump, everyone told me no one's going to go down there and play. But eventually it became the place to play because the music scene grew and there were enough bands to fill it.
"But I remember, I guess it was August of 1996, I couldn't find a damn thing to book in there. I mean, it was scary. And it got worse and worse and I said, 'Screw this. I don't want to do this any more.'"
Over the next decade, Burrows said Richard's experienced that same cycle of bounty and famine and now bounty again a few years ago.
"One of the things that I was most impressed with was, for the first time in 10 or more years, there were local bands that could draw people. Because all through those other times, from the time the Pump started to die until then, there was nothing here that would draw flies," Burrows says. "Now, there's some acts that people want to go see and that's crucial in the live-music business."
Burrows is referring to such home-grown success stories as Black Mountain, Hey Ocean! and Mother Mother — bands that can sell out mid-size rooms even on a weeknight.
As for the new club on Seymour Street, Burrows said we'd just have to wait and see what exactly the owners are planning there.
- - -
Quickly, in other news:
• Local, heavier acts are the primary focus of the Bourbon, 50 W. Cordova St., under new ownership for the past 2-1/2 years. "I think the Bourbon has been pigeonholed a bit as a heavy rock bar," says managing partner Paul Roberts. "But that's also the nature of the beast, too. We're supporting a lot of local acts and that's what Vancouver acts are all about, in a way, that heavier rock." The Bourbon will host CFOX's Seeds competition again this year.
• The Yale, 1300 Granville St., Vancouver's grassroots music champion, will have to shut down at some point. "The Yale is not closing. However, the Yale is slated to, at some point in the future, we don't know when, undergo a heritage restoration. When it does happen, in a year, or two, or three, it would be a temporary closure of six to 12 months," says Stella Panagiotidis, marketing manager.
• The Vancouver East Cultural Centre is slated to reopen its historical theatre in the next month, four months behind schedule. With its cozy Vancity Cultural Lab already operating on what used to be the parking lot, the Cultch also recently finalized a deal to operate the York Theatre, 639 Commercial Dr., as a third venue once renovations are complete. "For some of the organizations doing smaller recitals and concerts I think it's going to be incredible," says Heather
Redfern, Cultch executive director.
• Staying in East Vancouver, the Rio Theatre, 1660 E. Broadway, has already held concerts by out-of-towner Kathleen Edwards and locals Bend Sinister. Why? "Because we are a cinema for first-run feature films, there are only so many blockbuster films that you want to have. Maybe six or seven throughout the whole year. So that leaves a lot of spaces in between where we can get creative [with programming]," says GM Corinne Lea, who was also part of the ownership group who purchased the theatre just over a year ago.
• The Railway Club, 579 Dunsmuir St., the city's alt-country/indie rock hub, will keep chugging along under new management.
"I negotiated out the lease," says operator/booker Steve Silman. "So we had five years left on it and now we have 15. And that was something that was really important to keep the place here for a long, long time."
• The latest venue to pop up on our radar is the Rickshaw, 254 E. Hastings St. Not to oversimplify this, but if live music can attract fans half a block from Main and Hastings, the scene has to be fairly robust, doesn't it?
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Source
http://www.theprovince.com/City+alive+with+sound+music/1707431/story.html
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