As 2020 dawned, Jay Harris started to think that The Concourse just might make it.
Two years earlier, he had taken a chance on the hopes that Knoxville’s live-music patrons – particularly those with an affinity for EDM – would support a scrappy, mid-sized venue in a part of town that doesn’t get a lot of foot traffic and isn’t the easiest to get to by vehicle. Others had made a go of it over the years, but no matter how hard they marketed the shows, one club after another wound up shutting down.
The Electric Ballroom, The Valarium, Blackstock, The International … The main building in the complex that houses the venue has seen a lot of places come and go over the years, but with the right team in place exhibiting a never-say-die attitude and willing to hustle until they were often besieged by exhaustion, it seemed that 2020 would be a good one for The Concourse.
“Being an independent venue, especially one of our size, we’re not a neighborhood bar,” Harris told BLANK Newspaper recently. “A 500-capacity room is an event space, and it’s been a constant struggle since we opened. Even in the old days with the other venues [located next door to the smaller Concourse], they were never properly financially backed. And for us, it’s always been month-to-month and hand-to-mouth.
“The thing about it was, this past December and into January and February were the best months I had ever seen here. We were turning a corner, and it was just looking so promising. Attendance was fantastic, and the shows were good, and people knew who we were. We were getting caught up on things.”
And then the novel coronavirus came to East Tennessee, and all of that forward momentum crashed into an immoveable bulkhead of non-essential business closures, stay-at-home orders and social-distancing measures. Now Harris and his employees are left with an independent rock club that hasn’t seen a guest since the third weekend in March but still has bills to pay – and no firm date on the horizon of when it again might be able to sell tickets, serve drinks and host shows.
“The first weekend, when stuff started getting a little dicey, we had a couple of artists postpone, and we just thought, ‘Hopefully this won’t be that bad, and it’ll be over soon,’” he said. “We thought we could fill in with some local shows and take some nights off, but within two or three days, a couple of other artists postponed or wanted to reschedule. Then, by the end of the weekend, it was very obvious that nothing was happening any time soon.
“Over the course of two weeks, the calendar just dried up. We had a couple of artists who wanted to play, no matter what, but we were on the fence about that. Our position was, ‘If you want to do your show, contractually you can, but it’s going to be rough.’ But within a few days, that wasn’t even an option anymore when the governor closed non-essential businesses like ours.”
And so began a waiting game that’s still going on. One of the benefits of Harris’ experiences is his ability to survive: He knows a thing or two about perseverance in the face of adversity, learned on the job at The International. When that venue closed, he took a gamble on The Concourse, and in carving out a niche in the Knoxville entertainment scene, he found a loyal cadre of patrons and a dedicated group of employees that includes, among others, bar manager Jo Wilde-Rowland and Meghan O’Connor, director of operations.
“The staff is more of a family than co-workers, and we don’t have a high turnover rate because we’ve all been here a while,” O’Connor said. “We all have a shared love of live music and believe in what this venue stands for, and we all know that Jay and the rest of us are fighting for this place to continue and succeed. It’s just love – everybody just loves each other so much, and when one of us is a little down, somebody else will step up and support them.”
Those may sound like treacly platitudes, but consider this: Wilde-Rowland got married in mid-March, just as the pandemic was ratcheting up. She and her then-fiancé were supposed to tie the knot in Lake Tahoe, but by that point, COVID-19 made it impossible. Box-office manager Alec Cunningham, however, had a radical suggestion.
“She mentioned, ‘Why don’t we just throw your wedding here?’” Wilde-Rowland said. “We had a show scheduled for Friday the 20th, but the artist had canceled, and that Saturday, we were already supposed to be in Tahoe.
“So I was like, ‘That’s a really good idea,’ and that took me from being very upset to being very excited. I called my fiancé, and he loved it, and so we took that week, went to stores and bought decorations. Several staff members came in to help and do sound, and everyone really pulled together.”
“I actually gave her a way,” Harris added. “Those are the kinds of bonds we have here.”
And they extend beyond the immediate Concourse family. Dr. Chuck Williams, who owns the building, waived April’s rent – “a huge help,” Harris said, that left the business in decent shape heading into May. In addition, Harris was able to secure some funding through one of the Small Business Administration’s emergency COVID-19 loans, but the club’s future is far from secure.
“We’ve got to pay bills, and we’ve got bills that are really overdue,” he said. “Right now, it’s a matter of trying to bootstrap it until the end of the month, and hopefully we’ll be able to open next month. The things that I’m concerned about right now are those bills that are due now: KUB, the ticketing stuff, the concert bills.
“The hard part is that when we do get to open back up, for a company like us without a big financial backer, we can only spend pennies and dimes on marketing. We’ve got to let people know what’s happening and get folks up to speed, but we don’t have a lot of money to do that. And then there are other costs, like restocking. We had to get rid of beer and liquor before they expired, and before we can reopen, we’ll need to restock all of that.”
And then there’s the dilemma of how to even go about scheduling shows in an industry that has ground to a halt. Many of the shows originally scheduled for the spring will be rescheduled for the fall, but those logistics are complex ones to navigate. And then there are coronavirus precautions that will undoubtedly be a part of everyday life for the foreseeable future: limitations on venue capacity and other measures that will make doing business a challenge, to say the least.
“We just want people to be understanding because once we do reopen, there are going to be things we have to do to protect people’s health and safety,” Harris said. “We want to be up to full capacity, but only when it’s legal and when it’s the right time to do so.”
So what can fans do? Patreon (www.patreon.com/theconcourse/) is a good place to start; for as little as $2 per month, patrons can support the business, and other donor levels come with additional perks. There’s a specific COVID-19 fund that helps out, as well, but the most important thing: Be ready to support the business when the doors open back up.
“Buy a ticket, come to a show, spend money at the bar,” Harris said. “Share our events and help us get the word out, and if there are any artists that want to put on a show and donate their time to play for free, that would be wonderful. I hate the idea of putting on a fundraiser because the business itself is supposed to be a fundraiser. We don’t really ever expect or like artists to play for free because the whole point of this place is for us to pay the artists.”
But sometimes we all need a little help from our friends – and Harris and his establishment have been a friend to many over the years, as well as a valuable part of the Knoxville music scene.
“This place is kind of an institution because it’s been a venue for so many years now, and we don’t want that to change,” he said. “But we have to do something to raise money, and if that’s what it takes, then that’s what we’ll do.”
