UPDATE (Thursday afternoon): Feedback has reached the end of his first round of calls. No immediate word from Ludwig Kuttner about his plans for the room, and a call to former manager/tenant Bill Baldwin ended abruptly.
However, Feedback got some details about a few shows scheduled for Gravity Lounge. According to Danny Shea of Starr Hill Presents, Monday night’s Great Lake Swimmers concert will instead take place at Outback Lodge. (Openers The Cinnamon Band should wreck on that soundsystem.) And Tift Merritt’s April 22 show with Shannon Worrell will take place at the Music Resource Center, a space that should give both songwriters the quiet reverence they deserve. Dates for both shows will remain the same.
Starr Hill Presents seems to’ve planned for the venue’s closure; other shows haven’t fared as well. I spoke briefly with Drew Palmer, the booking agent for The Rosebud Agency and the man behind blues master John Hammond’s gig for Saturday night. When asked whether Hammond would find a new venue for Saturday’s gig, Palmer said the agency was looking for other options, but that a solution "look[ed] unlikely at this point."
Has anyone purchased tickets through Gravity Lounge and received word about refunds or rescheduled dates?
UPDATE (Thursday morning): All gig posters have been pulled down from Gravity Lounge’s doors—no small task, as any regular will tell you—and replaced by a single sheet of paper that reads as follows:
"NOTICE. Effective immediately, the commercial lease to this space is terminated. Pursuant to paragraph 24.A of the lease, the landlord has re-entered and taken exclusive possession of the premises. Questions should be directed to landlord’s counsel." Image below:
This is the way that Gravity Lounge ends—not with a bang, or even an encore, but a whimper. Roughly two months after the Downtown Mall music venue’s financial problems became public, the management of Gravity Lounge seems to’ve shifted back into the hands of Ludwig Kuttner, owner of The Terraces building that is home to the venue.
Kuttner told C-VILLE in February that manager Bill Baldwin owed an estimated $200,000 in rent and investment debts for the space, a host to local musicians and touring acts since 2003. Despite the space’s financial troubles, Kuttner spoke of its importance as a community destination.
"Gravity Lounge fans and people that like to see the bands, they don’t have to worry," Kuttner said in a February interview. "There are several teams standing ready to go tomorrow.”
Just one question: What of the bands booked to perform there tonight?
The Gravity Lounge website’s homepage is currently dead, but the space’s calendar still shows the venue’s range of concerts, booked through mid-June. Shows scheduled for this weekend at Gravity Lounge include sets by former local Danny Schmidt and blues legend John Hammond; outside presenters including local radio station WNRN and Starr Hill Presents had gigs scheduled for the coming weeks.
Feedback is headed to the Mall for a closer look, and will report back tomorrow. In the meantime, who had their seats for Danny Schmidt and the Great Lake Swimmers? Has anyone received word of gig cancellations?
Moreover, will a new management team sacrifice the niche that manager Bill Baldwin carved for the space? What changes would you like to see in a new Gravity Lounge?
After public financial difficulties and a few fundraising shows, it seems that Gravity Lounge has gone to meet its maker.
