[Dixielandjazz] Making the Scene in NY City

[Steve Barbone]

Don't give up on this article. Terry Waldo is there at Banjo Jim's as well
as other jazzers. And check out the last 2 sentences. This is where the
music for the masses is in NYC and, I suspect, many other cities in the USA.

The one premise that I disagree with is that $40 or $50 dollars these days
is expensive. Shoot, that's like $3 or $4 dollars when I was a kid and folks
routinely spent that to hear good music.

(You know you're getting old when you remember banana splits for $0.25. Saw
one yesterday for $4.75)

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


Cheap Seats - Live Rock on a Small Bankroll

NY TIMES - By BEN SISARIO - December 14, 2007

THE name on the marquee was Air Supply, and the line went halfway down the
block. It was Saturday night at the B. B. King Blues Club & Grill on 42nd
Street in Manhattan, and I had no ticket. But I walked right in.

Snob that I am, I was not there for Air Supply. (Although, in truth, ³Lost
in Love² gets heavy play on my iPod.) I was there for the band at Lucille¹s,
a restaurant within B. B. King¹s that often has notable blues acts and
doesn¹t charge for entry. The attraction this night was neither bluesy nor
very notable: a pedestrian local covers group. But as I bobbed my head to
Bad Company and Black Crowes songs, I couldn¹t have been more pleased. I was
warm, I was being entertained and I hadn¹t paid a dime.

New York is a paradise of live music, but much of it can be discouragingly
expensive. Tickets for the major concert halls typically start at $40 or $50
and rocket upward from there. Even in clubs it¹s not unusual to pay $25 or
$30 to see a hot touring band.

But in a kind of alternate universe for the modestly compensated (and the
merely stingy) the city also has a vast network of bars and restaurants that
waive a cover charge. At most you may be asked to buy a drink, but as I
found in seven nights of budget-conscious concert hopping, waitresses and
tip jars can be avoided, if you can bear the guilt. In 27 sets at 22 rooms,
I paid a total of $30 for drinks and donations, and only $18 of that was
compulsory ‹ a few times I was just thirsty.

If you¹re lucky, you might even get that drink free. After B. B. King¹s I
went to Hill Country, a barbecue restaurant on West 26th Street where the
Doc Marshalls, a first-rate Cajun and country band, were celebrating a new
album with three rug-cutting sets. At the end of the first, at 11, two
waitresses climbed on the bar and asked for attention. It was easily gotten.
For a moment I think every man there thought the same two words: ³Coyote
Ugly.² Instead we were treated to free shots of bourbon, with a request from
one of our cowboy-hatted hostesses.

³At the count of three,² she hollered, ³I want to hear the biggest Texas
Œyee-haw¹ you can muster!²

No yee-haws or any other hoots or yawps were held back a few nights earlier
at a show by the Defibulators at the Rodeo Bar on Third Avenue, which styles
itself a honky-tonk oasis in Manhattan, with Lone Star beer, peanuts by the
basket and free country and rockabilly every night. The Defibulators, from
Brooklyn, are quintessential Rodeo Bar. Like a hoedown band from a Warner
Brothers cartoon, they played raucous and slightly surreal ³whackabilly,² as
they describe it, and featured two washboard percussionists, one in crimson
long johns, the other in a Viking helmet.

When there is no charge, you sometimes get what you pay for. An ³Old Time
Jam² at Freddy¹s Backroom in Brooklyn was too sparsely attended to live up
to the advertised hootenanny. And while I have enjoyed previous editions of
Cross Pollination, a series in which two acts perform separately and then
collaborate for a third set, an unrehearsed-sounding version of R.E.M.¹s
³Fall on Me² by Bess Rogers and That Fleeting World fell flat.

But Cross Pollination, Tuesdays at Pianos on the Lower East Side, is an
impressive feat of indie gumption. Run by two young musician-promoters, Jay
Goettelmann and Wes Verhoeve, it has been going for three and a half years,
with some big names passing through ‹ big for the indie universe anyway ‹
like Nicole Atkins, Cloud Cult and Jaymay. (I saw installment No. 169.) Its
success owes much to the central financial axiom of gratis entertainment: If
you don¹t charge, they will come and might even spend more than they would
have otherwise.

³It just makes more economic sense,² said Mr. Goettelmann, a St. Louis
transplant. ³It¹s better for the audience. The artists frequently make more
money in the tip jar than they would after the venue has taken a cut, and
we¹ve taken a cut. We frequently make more with our percentage off the bar
than we would after we take our cut off a ticket. And the bar is making more
off the bar.²

Establishments that don¹t charge at the door are dotted throughout the city,
but the Lower East Side is the capital. Within two blocks of Pianos ‹ which
usually has paid shows in its main space but free events upstairs ‹ there
are 10 or so such bars. Expand the radius a bit and you have dozens of
choices. The Living Room is the Bottom Line of this sphere, packing in four
or five singer-songwriters a night. With a similar average of sweaty rock
bands, Arlene¹s Grocery is the no-cover CBGB.

Wandering from gig to gig I was repeatedly reminded of the embarrassment of
musical riches in New York available literally for nothing. At the 55 Bar, a
Prohibition-era sliver in Greenwich Village, Julie Hardy, a breezy young
jazz singer, announced that she had written lyrics to a Wayne Shorter song.
Then she added, ³Wayne Shorter approved my lyrics,² and began ³Song of the
Iris.² 

One frigid night on Avenue C I was too early for a set by Eli Degibri at the
cozy Louis 649, so I ducked into Banjo Jim¹s across the street. There Terry
Waldo, a pianist and historian who studied with Eubie Blake, was presiding
over a leisurely ragtime musicale.

That night my wallet never left my pocket. But it¹s not always so easy, and
no cover doesn¹t necessarily mean free. Many clubs, like the Living Room and
the nearby Rockwood Music Hall, have a one-drink minimum per set, and even
at places that never charge a cover, like the Lakeside Lounge on Avenue B,
musicians often pass the hat. They all deserve to make a living of course.

A few lessons learned: First, the more crowded the club, the easier it is to
hide from the wait staff. This was evident at an early set at the Zinc Bar
on West Houston Street, where I was the third person present, after the
bartender and the performer: no way to avoid buying a drink there. Second,
sitting at a table is the international sign of willingness to order. And
third, waitresses will not forget if you promise to get something later.

For any veteran concertgoer tired of the familiar club circuit, seeking out
free shows can be like rediscovering live music in New York. One of the best
performances I saw was an appearance at the East Village record store Other
Music by Tinariwen, an African guitar band that put the tightly packed crowd
into a wonderful state somewhere between trance and dance. (A video of that
show will be posted on Dec. 28 on the store¹s Web site, othermusic.com.)
Sound Fix, an indie record store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, also has a live
series ‹ free of course ‹ in a spacious bar in the back.

The strangest location of all, though, I almost missed. I spotted a listing
for Joel Frahm, a saxophonist whose records I like but whom I¹d never seen,
at an unfamiliar place, ³The Salon at Arthur¹s IP,² on East 13th Street.
Clutching the address, I wandered up and down 13th Street and was about to
give up when I noticed a jazz trio playing in the window of Arthur¹s
Invitations and Prints, a stationery shop.

Turns out it wasn¹t Mr. Frahm, who has been playing there once a month for
the last year or so but couldn¹t make it that night. Filling in was John
Ellis, another saxophonist, and as I wandered the sales floor, pretending to
browse through the Christmas cards and wrapping papers, I enjoyed 20 minutes
of surprisingly intimate music.

Speaking by telephone this week, as he prepared for his regular
Tuesday-night show at the Bar Next Door on Macdougal Street in Greenwich
Village (cover charge: $8), Mr. Frahm ‹ who has recorded with Brad Mehldau
and played at places far more illustrious than Arthur¹s ‹ explained the
benefits of the engagement. Each musician gets $100; it¹s a relaxed
atmosphere; and it¹s early enough that he can easily fit in another show the
same night, he said.

³And if you¹re a jazz musician in New York City,² he added, ³a gig¹s a gig.²

But for a fan, it¹s just a little sweeter when it¹s free.