If there were harsh words to be spoken about the renovated Jefferson Theater, Coran Capshaw’s would-be crown jewel among Downtown Mall music venues, then last Friday’s capacity crowd largely managed to mute them. Among the opening night crowd—three bands, employees of Capshaw’s Starr Hill Presents, an overstocked bar staff and enough Western Albemarle High School grads to play yearbook bingo—the shared sentiment was one of a music-doused city’s entitlement. This, it was agreed all evening, is precisely what Charlottesville needed.
|
Sons in the ’son? Three-and-a-half years after closing its doors, the Jefferson Theater opened ’em again to a sold-out crowd and a three-band show capped by local act Sons of Bill. |
Needed so badly, in fact, that the sheer wallop of the 97-year-old theater’s reopening seemed of a scale so immense that a few small “I”s and “T”s could do without their dots and crosses for a night. So what if the men’s room needed a stall door and paper towels? If there was some chatter about a slight register mishap? If, according to The Corner’s Brad Savage, opening act Peyton Tochterman’s name was misspelled on the evening’s commemorative t-shirt? We quit the Jefferson cold turkey in 2006. Was it likely that anyone would, after a three-and-a-half year withdrawal, scoff at the first taste?
No, but the first sips were tentative ones. One balcony filled slowly, and the first groups of listeners stuck mainly to the edges of the room’s graded wooden floors while Tochterman and accordion player Matty Metcalfe roamed down Bruce Springsteen’s E Street with tunes from Tochterman’s new Sam Wilson-produced EP. The folks that suddenly materialized for Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit’s follow-up set missed one of Tochterman’s most muscular, confident performances; then again, much of the Isbell crowd seemed dead set on the former Drive-By Trucker alone, and hung on every mudslick riff during his too-long set. (He threw a few of us strugglers a bone with a cover of Big Star’s “When My Baby’s Beside Me.”)
Want to pack your own 750-person concert hall to the rafters? Book Sons of Bill, who—based on the number of ticket-seekers turned away—likely would’ve sold out the opening night on their own. But the three Wilson brothers, bassist Seth Green and recently reacquired drummer Todd Wellons all seemed thrilled to split the “hey hey heys” of Tom Petty’s “Rebels” with Isbell. Wellons, the band’s original drummer, grinned through each measured drum fill, ecstatic to be back behind the SOB kit. And the three-part bro-ternal harmonies that opened “Lighthouse” proved that the Jefferson’s soundsystem is capable of delivering sonic nuance, provided a band can muster it.
During Isbell’s set, I moved upstairs to the balcony, where I shared old Jefferson Theater stories with Quentin “Q*Black” Walker of the Illville Crew and avoided the 400 Unit’s 400 most ferocious fans on the floor. But balcony time was short-lived, namely because the best view in the house is to be had from a load of different spots across the floor. The same subtle grade and staggered seats that makes the balcony at, say, The Paramount Theater a good spot makes the floor at the Jefferson a more pleasant position than the upper levels. I’m partial to front-row balcony spots, myself, but those were nabbed early; SOB namesake Bill Wilson could be spotted standing and singing along at the front during his sons’ set.
Maybe the bar chatter will change the dynamic of the room on a show-by-show basis, but complaining about bar noise at a Sons of Bill gig is like complaining about violence during The Wrestler. Folks weren’t necessarily directed to the Jefferson’s behind-your-back floor-level bar, and it didn’t fill to the point of disrupting the show; the venue’s main bar stayed busy without invoking the wrath of listeners. Will the Jefferson witness a conflict as contentious as the great Cat Power-versus-Satellite Ballroom Bar Crowd of 2005?
Not yet. And, if so, it’s one more small “T” to cross at a venue that has the backing to correct just about any issue that might pop up. On opening night, however, the crowd at the Jefferson Theater showed little more than an open-armed, open-eared embrace for a venue it felt entitled to, and fortunate to have.
