A van backs a trailer towards the entrance of the Somewhere Else Tavern in Greensboro, ready to disgorge another load of amps, drums and electric guitars, tools of the trade for one of the six metal bands playing here the day after Thanksgiving. From inside the club come the echoes of another band soundchecking: “Kick drum,” “snare,” “right guitar,” requests soundman Dave Kindred, followed by the sounds of said instruments reverberating past the bar and solitary pool table and into the parking lot. On their way they pass Burley Hayes, surrounded by audio and video equipment as he runs the door at the music club he’s owned and operated for nearly 30 years.
“It’s the magic that’s kept me in it,” says Hayes, as he greets another regular by name. “Original music is a hard road to travel, and it depends on family and friends to support it. Anyone can go to a cover club.” Onstage, Icarus is launching into a set of such rock and roll, having passed muster with Kindred. Things run smoothly at the Tavern; the next band, Death Proof (the name is a reference to their Christian beliefs, not the Quentin Tarantino film), is already setting up their gear next to the stage while Icarus plays, assuring a relatively seamless transition between acts, while the opener, Vaughn Street Glee Club, have already broken down their equipment and moved it out of the building.
With their short hair, polo shirts and lack of visible tattoos, Icarus have a somewhat different image than their metal brethren; put them in matching suits and you’d have the Kingsmen circa 1965. Like the Kingsmen and the generations of garage rockers that followed them, the bands at tonight’s show perch precariously on the line between teenage rebellion and boy-next-door Middle American respectability; I meet more past and future members of the US military in one night at the Tavern than I have in two years of doing sound for the downtown indie rock scene at TwoArtChicks or Solaris.
“We’ve never cared about our image,” says Icarus vocalist David Smith, when asked about the group’s appearance.
Their sound is different, too, possibly because of Smith’s previous experience as a reggae singer, or the jazz leanings of bassist Bryan Kreidler and drummer Kevin Weber, who have played together since high school.
“A lot of metal is depressing,” says guitarist Grant Feroe. “We have a very positive outlook.” The group is unanimous in their regard for the Tavern, where they played their very first show. “My mom said, ‘I’ve been there,’” says Weber, underlining the venue’s longevity.
Hayes got his start in the local music business as a teenager, cleaning up at the Blue Max, a venue in downtown Greensboro run by Bill Kennedy, owner of a string of popular local nightspots.
“The first time I heard live music, it chose my path,” says Hayes, who credits his interest in music to his family. “My mom would listen to Elvis, my father would listen to the Inkspots and George Jones and my brothers listened to everything from beach music to Ozzy Osbourne,” says Hayes.
The family owned several curb markets, and the Somewhere Else Tavern was opened on July 3, 1979 in a property they owned on Freeman Mill Road.
“I played drums at the
first Sunday Night Jam Superjam,” brags Kindred, the soundman. The
weekly jam was a long runninginstitution that ran for 586 consecutive
Sundays, beginning on the Tavern’s opening night, according to Hayes’
calculations.
“When people were in North Carolina,
they’d stop at the Tavern on Sunday night,” says Hayes. “We had Elvin
Bishop, Poison, a lot of eighties hairband members — it’s always been
an artists’ hotspot.
“We had to carry Elvin Bishop out of the
club, he got so drunk,” says Hayes. “He was shouting, ‘One more song,
one more beer!’” The Freeman Mill location helped to create early
word-ofmouth publicity for the venue, says Hayes.
“It was on
the south side of Greensboro, and kids wouldn’t tell their parents they
were going there,” he says. “It gave it an air of mystery.”
The
Tavern moved to its present home across the street from Guilford
College in 1998. Hayes was looking to get away from Freeman Mill’s
growing drug and crime problems.
“This is a good
neighborhood,” says Hayes. “Moving here was a blessing.” I don’t
remember the first show I saw at the Somewhere Else Tavern, but some
time in the early 1990s I went to down to Freeman Mill Road to see my
brother’s former band Disstemper play on a double bill with the True
Brothers, then known as True & True. It was a strange pairing:
Disstemper’s thrash metal with the retro country sounds of the brothers
— though Disstemper did do a killer version of Glen Campbell’s
“Rhinestone Cowboy.”
“There’s no difference in musicians,” says Hayes when I bring up his genre-bending billing practices. “It all interconnects.
“Besides, how are you going to put someone with the True Brothers?” says Hayes. “Who’s going to match them?”
“I couldn’t find a circus so I came to work here,” jokes Kindred, who began doing sound at the Tavern in 1994. “I’m the only one who’ll put up with him,” shouts Burley, interrupting our interview.
“And I’m the only one who’ll put up with you,” replies Kindred.
Like
any eccentric rock venue, the Tavern has attracted its own collection
of eccentric and creative characters, beginning with King Zippy, the
official Somewhere Else Tavern dog. Zippy is the son of Elvis, who was
the house dog when I went to the Disstemper/ True Brothers show. Elvis,
in turn, was descended from Sir Maximillian, who held the position when
the original location opened.
“Music soothes the savage
beast,” says Hayes. “The dog soothes the humans. He’s the third eye.”
In a cramped booth beside the stage, Tony Thomas is checking the images
on a bank of video screens. The Tavern videotapes the shows and gives a
DVD to bands that pull in at least 20 people.
“We’re starting to document the Tavern,” says Hayes about the videos. “Eventually I want to put them in a time vault.”
“Burley
and I talked,” says Thomas, explaining how the idea for videotaping the
bands came about. “We’ve spent about $15,000 on equipment, and I spent
two weeks setting up the cameras.” There are 10 cameras above and
around the stage, and Thomas, who used to run sound at Hartley’s House
of Rock in High Point, can edit videos on the spot. “I’ve known Burley
for fourteen years,” he says. “He’s like a brother from another mother.”
Death
Proof has finished their set and 3 Quarters Dead has taken the stage.
Before they step down, however, Death Proof issues a cattle call
challenge for a new lead vocalist.
“Our vocalist is leaving at
the end of the year,” announces guitarist Luke DeMoss. “If anyone
thinks that they can do what he does as good as he does or better, let
us know.” “We don’t want someone who sounds just like Josh [Smith],”
DeMoss explains later in the parking lot. “We just need a good lead
singer.” Smith, it turns out, is trading the stage for the pulpit and
going into full-time ministering.
“So we’re not mad at him for
a leaving,” says DeMoss. “Well, maybe just a little,” jokes drummer
Matt Hufferson. The Greensboro-based band formed in March, and this was
their third show at the Tavern.
“Our influences are Pantera and White Zombie, but we’re a Christian band,” says DeMoss. “We’re trying to create a Panterastyle Christian band.” Regardless of their spiritual leanings, the Tavern has become a major venue in Greensboro for bands playing metal or “dark” rock, according to Rya Storm, publisher of the online “dark” music magazine Luna Kiss, who frequently books multi-band shows at the Tavern.
“The challenges that I’ve had so far mostly tie into distance,” says Storm in an e-mail interview. “I think the closest active bands are located in or around Charlotte. That part of scene here has somewhat suffered since there hasn’t been a regular ‘goth/industrial’ night at the local clubs in quite a while. The bands that are around now either haven’t been here in Greensboro before, or not often enough, so that makes the promoting end a little difficult. It takes a lot of work to get your name out there and to catch someone’s attention enough to come out for a band they aren’t familiar with. “SWET has been the most open venue for original bands. Burley is very friendly and you don’t have to jump hoops to get your band in. The price, location and the fact that most, if not all, shows are for all ages helps as well.” Britt Arndt, whose band Waiting to Bleed will play the Tavern on Dec. 27, remembers one show in particular.
“Well, one night we had a show with Forever Remains and four other bands, all of which canceled the night of the show,” says Arndt.
“It was also a holiday weekend so both bands were expecting not so good of a turnout, but by 10:30 there were 60 people there just for the two of us, from Greensboro, Winston- Salem, Danville and other surrounding areas, and it turned out to be a hell of a night.”
The crowd tends to ebb and flow with the bands, as one group’s friends and followers leave and another one’s shuffle in, but it thickens as the night moves on. Burley keeps track of the number of patrons each group draws on a clipboard by the door, but most here tonight appear to be in it for the long haul. Burley’s in it for the duration as well. He once also owned a clothing store and band rehearsal space on Lee Street, but closed it after a severe illness.
“I made a decision to work on my health instead of work all the time,” he says. The Tavern isn’t going anywhere, however. “I used to stress all the time: Will I be able to pay for the beer? Will I be able to pay the electric bill? But one day I just quit stressing,” says Hayes. “We live from month to month just like everyone else does. “We’re just going to keep on doing what we’re doing,” he says. “Simplicity is the key to life.”
3 Quarters Dead’s latest CD is called Between Angles and Demons. I’m
not quite sure if this is possibly an overt reference to members’
Christian beliefs or another example of heavy metal’s fascination with
religious metaphor and mythology in general. These bands aren’t exactly
your father’s Christians, as I hear quite a few words that were never
uttered in any church that my mother dragged me to as a wee lad. But
why should only Satan’s minions get to use all the spicy terms anyway?
The band is probably the most overtly theatrical group on the bill,
with singer Jason Sain dressed in an elaborate jacket festooned with
buckles and straps. The Tavern’s elaborate lighting rig adds to the
sense of drama, as Sain strikes a tortured pose amidst the clouds of
chemical fog. While the band schedule on the Tavern’s MySpace page
would seem to cement its present reputation as a punk/metal/hardcore
haven, the music has varied over the years with the rise and fall of
different musical styles in the Gate City. Oddly enough, even though it
sits directly across the street, none of the Guilford College-connected
musicians I know has ever mentioned playing the Tavern, a testament
perhaps to Greensboro’s highly factionalized music scenes.
“Bands
get into cliques and don’t think of the big picture,” says Hayes. “We
do all genres of music. “When we first started we had a lot of blues,
Southern rock, a little bit of everything,” says Hayes. “We started the
all-original format in the early nineties, because it seemed like it
needed help. It’s always been the underdog.”
He reels off a
list of classic early ’90s Greensboro bands: Misplaced Aggression,
Geezer Lake, Toxic Popsicle, all of whom played the Tavern in their
heyday.
“The Imani Reggae Band is one of my favorites,” says
Kindred. “We had a lot of really good ska bands.” Several times this
evening I’ve reflected upon a strange paradox: I would probably not be
writing an article about the Tavern were it not for a fateful encounter
that occurred in this very room almost 13 years ago. My then-band
Sugercoma was playing that night, and a couple of Greensboro political
activists were lured in by the tagline on our flyer: “An art band for
the working class,” apparently thinking we had some sort of overtly
Marxist agenda (We didn’t; we were power pop in the mold of
then-popular bands like No Doubt. I just thought it sounded clever.) A
conversation with one of them would lead me
to volunteer with a local progressive monthly, and through a series of strange coincidences and connections, into a career as a fulltime journalist. Who says rock n’ roll can’t change your life?
The
singer from Bloodline Severed, another Christian band, pulls a member
of the audience onstage and encourages the crowd to show some him some
love. “Just like Jesus, he’s making a sacrifice for people he doesn’t
even know,” says Corey Weaver, in reference to the man’s upcoming
military deployment to Afghanistan.
The
last band tonight is a Light Divided. The only band on the bill I’d
seen before, they’re also the only one with a female singer.
“A
lot of our fanbase is out of the Tavern and the Soundvent [in
Thomasville],” says guitarist Eric Humiston in a pre-show interview.
“The Tavern plays a big part in the scene. Any band based in
Greensboro, Winston-Salem or High Point has played here.” A Light
Divided came together in July 2007 when guitarist James Lewis and
singer Jaycee Clark from Graveyard Heart joined forces with Adam Smith,
then playing drums in Travesty.
“Adam was just hanging out at
the Graveyard Heart practice space and he mentioned jamming together,”
says Lewis. “I like Jaycee as a singer and frontperson so I asked her
to come with me when we formed a Light Divided.”
Humiston and
bassist Mike Underwood joined the band last fall. Ironically, neither
of the two former members of Porno Red realized that the other had
contacted A Light Divided looking for a position.
“I felt I
could bring more to the music than the other bass player,” says
Underwood. “It was cool how it all fell together,” says Humiston.
“Our
goal is to make music we’d be fans of if we weren’t in the band,” says
Smith. Clark writes most of the lyrics and the rest of the band writes
the music. Lewis says his biggest songwriting influence is Johnny Cash,
reminding me of Disstemper’s secret Glen Campbell obsession.
“I was really pissed off when I wrote the lyrics for our first CD [This year’s Before the Fall],” says Clark. “I’d just been in a car accident.”
While
the band lists their influences as Killswitch Engaged, Flyleaf and the
Deftones, I hear more old-school influences in their 45 minute set, at
least to my raised-on-Iron- Maiden ears. I’m not a regular imbiber of
new metal, but even after five hours of nearcontinuous exposure, I’m
not bored. Metal rises or falls on its visceral power and the bands’
bond with their audience, and I find it easy to lose myself in the
all-encompassing roar. With its walls lined with vintage guitars and
memories, Hayes hopes to create a non-profit foundation to keep the
Tavern going after he’s gone. “This club is about the music, not the
dollar bill,” says Hayes. “It’s like a kid comes to the club for two
years, and then he comes up and asks if he can play and you find out
he’s an artist. Everybody is somebody here; it’s not about being a
star. “I’m very fortunate that God has given me the keys to the
spaceship.”
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