|
READ MORE ON GRAVITY • Views from the stage |
I first heard about Gravity Lounge’s financial troubles two days after manager Bill Baldwin e-mailed a two-page S.O.S. to “friend[s]” of the local concert venue and asked that they help bail the space out of debt. A few days later, Baldwin confirmed the existence of the e-mail and its contents, expressed a bit of surprise that I hadn’t already received it, then sent me a copy.
In the e-mail, sent on Wednesday, January 29—at 11:59pm, no less, a final hour plea—Baldwin asked friends and fans of the concert hall for donations to pay off $200,000 in debt stemming from rent and investments to salvage the space.
“By the time we were able to open the doors, there was no money left from our start-up capital,” wrote Baldwin. “Revenues started trickling in very slowly, and have improved overall, but our income has never consistently kept up with our expenses.”
Baldwin noted that the debt averaged a $100 loss per event, and then suggested that the space might not survive much longer. “Our growing arrears have hit a tipping point, and we are faced with closure—within a few days,” he wrote.
The first comment to reach c-ville.com arrived shortly after I broke the story of Baldwin’s e-mail, in a caps-locked cry. “WE MUST SAVE GRAVITY! It’s the only legitimate music venue left in town,” wrote one reader. But then public response went a little screwy—not unlike the track record at the venue, in truth.
Comments arrived a bit more quickly, split evenly into two camps—those that heralded Gravity Lounge and Baldwin as important musical tastemakers in the community, and those that left music alone and blasted the space for everything from having a “creepy vibe” to lacking the sort of business tactics that might’ve staved off a $200,000 debt. In fact, the two points aren’t mutually exclusive; many commenters latched onto both.
“I love the Gravity Lounge and attend many shows there but found it a strange way to appeal for money,” one person wrote. “He needs to reexamine his business plan and bring in some investors.”
“I’m a great lover of live music and a big fan of making money…[but I] can say with relative certainty that Gravity Lounge is a classic case of mismanagement and a broken business plan,” wrote another. “There is minimal promotion for the place. It’s messy and disorganized. No one knows what food they have and what they don’t. And a comment like ‘a $100 loss per concert’ is ridiculous.”
Ludwig Kuttner—owner of The Terraces building that houses Gravity Lounge—returned a call a few days later and suggested to me that he finds the loss to be just as ridiculous. According to Kuttner, the $200,000 debt is a combination of rent payments and investment money that Kuttner provided for Baldwin.
“We have advised him on many things: how he should change his attitude, how he should try to run this thing a little more customer-friendly, and a little better from a business point of view,” said Kuttner. He also called the space “great for the community,” and added “That’s why we have been patient.”
“We have hooked him up with a lot of people—many, many people [who] tried to advise him what to do. And he says, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ [and] does the opposite.”
Different sides of the same record
According to Kuttner, the two men negotiated for roughly two weeks about the management of the space after Kuttner’s initial request for $200,000 to cover expenses. “I made him a very fair proposal where I said, ‘O.K., you continue to do the music’—he gets good bands there,” said Kuttner. “And I said, ‘We run the business.’”
Now, it seems as though communication has broken down. Kuttner claims that a lawyer representing Baldwin contacted him with conditions for business discussions, a gesture he likened to a slap in the face.
(While Kuttner spoke on the record, he said that he was in Europe during our conversations and did not have access to the document. The lawyer that Kuttner identified as representing Baldwin, Marshall Slayton, would not confirm or deny that he represented Baldwin, and simply responded, “I have no comment.”)
I asked Kuttner whether Baldwin had a counter-proposal to simply booking the space and yielding his role as manager.
“He wants to continue to run it!” Kuttner replied. “He wants to continue this disaster!”
Leaving the future aside, Baldwin may need a plan to salvage what is left of Gravity Lounge’s present. The simple act of hosting live music events, compounded over five years, put Gravity 200 grand in the can, yet the space continues to host gigs even now. If the $100-loss-per-show formula holds true, then Gravity Lounge stood to lose more than $1,500 between Baldwin’s e-mail S.O.S. and this story’s publication.
When contacted last week, Baldwin told C-VILLE that he is “negotiating to be able to honor all of those dates” that remain on Gravity’s website—gigs by folk legends like David Mallett and locals like blues innovator Corey Harris, not to mention shows booked by Starr Hill Presents, like the psych-rock act Dr. Dog and Grammy-nominated songwriter Tift Merritt—through May 28. (“GL better not go belly up. I already bought my Tift Merritt ticket,” one reader commented.)
In his original e-mail, Baldwin wrote that he “can only promise to keep doing what I have been doing—presenting outstanding events that likely would not happen elsewhere in our market,” although, by his admission, presenting events put the room further into debt to begin with. When I asked whether Gravity would consider booking new events, Baldwin answered, “Within the time frame of the already existing gigs, yes.”
On a long enough time line, a herd of brilliant musicians might make up the difference. Possibly. At the moment, however, Baldwin’s efforts seem irrelevant, because they seem to be the same efforts that put him out $200,000 in the first place.
Every song, all the time
Gravity’s financial troubles aren’t simply about cold, hard business—Baldwin listens and books music with a fan’s commitment and passion. To me, it seems as if that’s part of the problem.
When Starr Hill Music Hall shut its doors in 2007, it had a safety net in place—a Coran Capshaw-initiated partnership with Satellite Ballroom nearly a year in the making, a spot to transfer most of the music hall’s gigs to. When Satellite Ballroom lost its lease to CVS, booking agent Danny Shea—whose efforts and risks earned him a reputation similar to Baldwin’s, in some respects—kept his unique voice alive through a job with Starr Hill Presents. Neither venue overbooked itself frequently, and both presumably had financial padding from Capshaw, if they needed it.
Without a space to work in, Bill Baldwin doesn’t have much save for the name “Gravity Lounge” and a certain knack for a three-tiered attack on music events: listen large, listen local, listen often. It’s the program that proved him a solid booking agent; it’s also the same thing that suggests he might be a less savvy businessman.
The first year of music at Gravity Lounge was modest and hyper-local in focus, and catered to a niche that most other spaces in town didn’t serve; Gravity hosted local musicians like Paul Curreri and Devon Sproule, a twice-monthly gig by Jan Smith, shows by Jeff Romano and Andy Waldeck—all musicians who remain loyal to the space to this day.
Yet the space quickly committed itself to a schedule more rigorous than nearly any other venue in town. After a May gig by Curreri, Romano and Andy Friedman and a trio of June concerts, Gravity offered its first full month of music—12 concerts in July 2003. By January 2004, only six months after Gravity Lounge opened, the number bloated to 28 gigs, including the occasional couple of shows hosted on a single night.
What’s more, Baldwin attracted many acts that played at other local music venues. “If you’re playing once a week in Charlottesville at any restaurant where people can see you for free, and then you play Gravity Lounge and you charge money, no one’s going to come and see you at Gravity Lounge,” said local guitarist Jay Pun, a regular Gravity performer. “When you play a place that’s established, like Gravity Lounge or Satellite Ballroom or Starr Hill, you need to make sure that you don’t oversaturate.” [For more reactions from local musicians, see sidebar.]
If saturation is one problem, then ambition is another. While some accounts may differ, 2005 seems to me like the year that Gravity Lounge began to frequently attract out-of-town musicians who secured gigs at the Downtown Mall venue as part of regional or national tours. Among the artists that Gravity Lounge brought in 2005 were Patty Larkin (who performed there a total of four times), Leon Russell (scheduled three times, made it twice) and indie rockers Akron/Family.
And Gravity’s drawing power arguably increased over time. Baldwin showed an incredible commitment to bringing in buzz musicians like Drag City recording artist Bill Callahan and Righteous Babe Records songwriter Anaïs Mitchell, both of whom performed at the venue twice.
He also brought legends of folk, jazz and rock, from local Jesse Winchester to Peter Case. (One incredulous commenter noted that only six people attended Case’s gig, “a day prior to attending the Grammys as a nominee.”) Before her death, Odetta—the folk musician honored by the Library of Congress as a “Living Legend” in 2003—performed at Gravity Lounge in January 2004. On a Monday night, no less.
But a high profile performer doesn’t always nab the expected dollars or audience. Baldwin specified in his original e-mail that not every gig hosted by Gravity Lounge lost money, but adds that he imagines “most of you receiving this e-mail have attended at least one event that lost way more than $100.”
I’ve never seen the man’s books, but I bet he’s right; I would estimate my personal Gravity Lounge “Full gig/Empty gig” ratio is roughly 1:1. Last year, I dropped by Gravity for the first of a two-gig evening by Bonnie “Prince” Billy, né Will Oldham—easily one of the gigs I most anticipated, if not most enjoyed. The admission line sprawled from Gravity Lounge’s door to the middle of the Downtown Mall. And while Oldham’s concert was a gig booked by Starr Hill Presents, the evening must’ve fared well for Baldwin; both sets sold out.
And then there were the other nights. I watched folk-rocker Gary Jules perform to a crowd of roughly half a dozen listeners last March and left convinced that I saw a great gig that I wouldn’t see elsewhere in town. I was equally certain that Baldwin ate a handful of green on the show.
“When he’s eaten it, most of the time it’s because he took a risk for one reason or another,” said Paul Curreri, who performed one of the first gigs at Gravity Lounge. “He continues to take those risks. And it’s really amazing that he didn’t just start filling the joint with 100 percent boneheads who have a higher batting average—‘the sure thing.’ And I think that’s what everybody appreciates about the place.”
“I had my CD release there for my solo album, and there were definitely over 250 people there,” said Sons of Bill guitarist Sam Wilson, who opened for a sold-out Alejandro Escovedo show recently at Gravity. “I played with Carleigh Nesbit for her CD release party and, again, it was over 200 people, a really good crowd.” But he mentions later that “there’ve probably been some bigger shows with less of a turnout.”
No one disputes Baldwin’s skill or voracity as a booking agent, and I won’t either—the man unquestionably knows music. But by most accounts—and implied by Baldwin’s comments—his model for presenting music sounds completely unsustainable.
“I opened for a band one time and there was probably less than 30 people there, you know?” Wilson asked. “If you’re going to have a successful business on your own, you’re either going to need some outside funding, or…” He stops. “I don’t know.”
Who’s watching the music?
Then again, maybe Baldwin and Gravity Lounge didn’t need to imagine a new way to support a music venue. Kuttner stated that the rent he charges Baldwin is “like $4 or $5 dollars a foot.”
“It’s a third of market rent,” estimated Kuttner. “And then he falls behind.”
When I asked Kuttner why negotiations for payment came up with Baldwin now, he replied, “It has been going on for years. There’s nothing ‘now.’ I have told him, ‘You can’t do that,’ and he just keeps doing it, and it gets worse.
“I told him there’s a deadline for it, it just can’t go on forever—it has been going on now for years,” he repeated.
According to Baldwin’s e-mail, the future of Gravity Lounge involves the same booking efforts in a nonprofit space, something he described as “probably the only way such a venture is viable into the future.”
“There’s a group of people working on it,” he replied when I followed up with him about a new business plan, but suggested that plans were not quite developed enough to talk about yet.
Kuttner, however, still sees the venue as a feasible commercial venue. “I think the Gravity Lounge will go on…just in a different name, and will be run professionally,” he said.
“I think it could be a great hang-out place, which Charlottesville needs for some of the other venues closed—the need now is even bigger,” he elaborated. “So the Gravity Lounge fans and people that like to see the bands, they don’t have to worry. There are several teams standing ready to go tomorrow.”
For now, what’s a music fan to do? Pocket your change, or throw what you’ve got at a venture that, to put it modestly, reads like a sizable financial risk?
And maybe, this time, being a fan has nothing to do with it. Bill Baldwin may be one of the city’s biggest fans, but he admits that the space lost money on gigs that he booked.
And while I don’t doubt that Baldwin’s musical selections are capable of generating huge, profitable crowds, I do have doubts that any music venue in the city is capable of doing so all the time. And if the numbers and losses Baldwin included in his e-mail—a $100 loss per gig, a $200,000 sum—are accurate, then perhaps they’re indicative of a need for the sort of switch Kuttner suggests—Gravity Lounge can only survive as a performance space if someone new takes the reins.
Imagine two jukeboxes on opposite sides of a room. One is cracked plastic and is almost guaranteed to break down, but is stocked with classics. The other is slick glass and neon lights, runs like a charm, but you know nothing about the music inside of it. If you could only save one, which would it be?
