Another One Bites the Dust

Broadway Kansas City, until earlier this year The Broadway Jazz Club, has been sold. The space will become a Scandinavian restaurant (their website is here). The new owners tell The Pitch (here) that they see their concept as a destination. Presumably, it will be a destination without live music. The sale does not include the sound system or piano.

Tentative plans are for Clint Ashlock’s wonderful New Jazz Order Big Band, which had established itself as a Tuesday Broadway favorite, to relocate to the Green Lady Lounge’s downstairs Orion Room early in November on Wednesdays from 7 to 9 p.m., leading into Ken Lovern’s weekly OJT gig upstairs at 9:00. Recordings scheduled yet for this year of the good music/bad comedy radio program 12th Street Jump will supplant New Jazz Order in the Orion Room on two upcoming Wednesdays, including November 18th for a show featuring Kevin Mahogany.

It’s been six years since I tried – and failed – to open a jazz club in Kansas City (the recession interfered). In researching a plan at the time, I found two successful business models employed by other jazz clubs: Turn the audience twice a night or also open during the day. Either can generate a revenue stream sufficient to pay rent and investors.

The two-shows-a-night model is used by clubs in larger cities, such as the Village Vanguard or Blue Note in New York, or Jazz Alley in Seattle. Jardine’s practiced it on weekends. But Kansas City’s jazz audience clearly isn’t large enough for that model to succeed here nightly.

A friend was among the group that bought Milton’s from Milton Morris’ niece decades ago. He told me that the iconic Kansas City jazz bar was essentially a break-even business. But it wouldn’t have been even that without the lushes who wandered in off a then-grittier Main Street throughout the day.

More than once, as I sat among a crowded but quite settled in weekend audience, I wondered how The Broadway Jazz Club was surviving. Listeners were enjoying outstanding jazz. But they weren’t leaving. The room wasn’t turning over. How could Broadway afford to pay performers what Jardine’s paid yet sell half as many dinners? How were they making financial ends meet?

Turns out, as initial investor and eventual owner Jim Pollock revealed in a timeline six weeks ago (here), they weren’t. They never did. This club wanted, initially anyway, to be the next Jardine’s. But there was never an apparent effort to turn the room on weekend nights as Jardine’s did. It’s not a new notion. Milton Morris boasted of a 1930s New Year’s Eve when he paid police to “raid” his  jazz club and clear it for a fresh crowd (though that’s probably going a bit further than The Broadway Jazz Club needed).

More, this was the wrong neighborhood for the next Jardine’s. My blog post about being attacked by youths with a gun on my fifth visit certainly didn’t help. But approaching 3600 Broadway from the south after dark, visitors drive past a Sprint store with steel bars covering its windows. There’s a rougher, uneasy midtown quality to this neighborhood, unlike Jardine’s just-north-of-the-Plaza, look-you-can-see-Nichols-Fountain-from-here location. This part of town, in 2015, works for eclectic restaurants, like the nearby Hamburger Mary’s. Kansas City will support a dinner jazz club. But not here.

Broadway's demise follows the closing of Take Five Coffee + Bar. Take Five embraced the revenue-throughout-the-day business model, but in a pricey Johnson County development that never developed except, at the end, for another coffee shop in a nearby sporting goods store.

Yet, there is a jazz club success story in our midst: The Green Lady Lounge. With a bar hugging the length of one wall designed to serve a large number of customers quickly, a 3 a.m. license (a rarity in the Crossroads district), an inviting and classic environment, and a simple and direct marketing message of jazz and drinks seven nights a week, owner John Scott has tripled revenues since opening his second stage downstairs.

Green Lady Lounge is a variation of the turn-the-crowd model, with the later license, no cover charge and that long bar facilitating volume business. It’s proof that a smartly conceived and operated jazz business can indeed succeed in Kansas City.

It’s probably best that I didn’t start a jazz club six years ago. While I was working with experienced consultants and remain convinced that I’d targeted a solid location, my lack of service industry experience, in the end, would have likely doomed the venture. Small businesses die every day. But had I tried and failed, the business would have ended because of me, because of my lack of club smarts and acumen, because I wasn’t sufficiently savvy.

It would not have died because it featured jazz. In Kansas City, run right, a jazz business will succeed.

Want to Buy a Jazz Club?

An ad has been prepared for Craigslist that begins with this:

“Kansas City bar and restaurant for sale. Great design and ambiance. Located in 100-year old historic building where jazz great Charlie Parker once played.”

Broadway Kansas City, which opened two years ago as The Broadway Jazz Club, is for sale. Owner Jim Pollock plans to keep the club operating for at least another two to three months with a reduced schedule, including the New Jazz Order Big Band on Tuesday nights, shows on Fridays and maybe a few other nights each month. The menu will shift to cold plates exclusively.

How did it come to this? Pollock prepared a timeline history of the beleaguered club. Here it is.

The Life and Times of The Broadway Jazz Club

Honoring Charlie
May 2013 – My nephew, Neil Pollock, calls from Kansas City to see if my wife and I would be interested in becoming minor partners in a jazz club which would feature Cajun food and Kansas City jazz, both favorites of my deceased brother, Charlie. We encourage the idea.

The Pitch
June 2013 – Neil arrives in Washington, DC and presents a prospectus and business plan for a club named Jardine’s.  Other partners in the venture include a former manager of Jardine’s and friend of Neil’s with food service background.  Our CPA reviews the figures and deems them reasonable. We agree to become 30% investors.

Opening Pains
July - November 2013 – The Jardine’s name is under proprietary ownership, so we must register a new name, The Broadway Jazz Club.  Design modifications and decor at 3601 Broadway suffer delays and false starts as one contractor or another botch the job. Instead of opening in August, renovations continue until the end of November and require more money than initially forecast.

The Dew is Off the Rose
December 2013 – The club’s opening week is quite successful – as it should be given the thousands spent on a publicist – but staff bickering seems to set in immediately and New Year’s Eve unmasks the fact that the kitchen and wait staff have not had an appropriate shake-down period. Things have not improved by Valentine’s Day.

Uncle, Can You Spare a Dollar
From the beginning, it was obvious that estimates of operating costs had been low. A myriad of state and local assessments, taxes, utilities and fees had either not been foreseen because of lack of due diligence, the fact that no records existed from the previous tenant, or just plain oversight. The minority partners soon became the only source of additional funds. Our ownership percentage began to grow monthly.

Inventory Uncontrol
In addition to spiraling infrastructure and overhead costs, inventory costs for food and alcohol were out of control. The bar followed no regimen, internal controls did not exist, there was no manual of operation for staff members or management. But two or three groups of very capable musicians were paid each night, the music was good, and there was a party going on.

Shareholders Report
May 2014 – My wife and I came out to Kansas City to assess the situation. Even without prior business experience, we could identify glaring faults in operations, highlighted by the fact that a daily accounts ledger had never been kept. If it had been, the confusion that marked management level considerations between what were club funds and what were personal expenses, at least, would have been recorded.

Baptism by Fire
June 2014 – The club’s general manager refusal to respond to a lengthy report and set of recommendations generated by our May visit led to his release. Margaret and I came to Kansas City to support our nephew in running the club. Little did we know it would be a four month stay, resulting in our learning more about supper club management than we ever wanted to know, becoming majority owners of The Broadway Jazz Club, falling in love with the music and its performers, uncovering an embezzlement scheme perpetrated by our payroll company, trying to enforce internal controls and bring inventory and revenue in line, and taking remedial steps to train and realign staff in an effort to shore up a dwindling clientele base.

Better to Sell
October 2014 – Believing we had righted the ship, we returned to Washington, DC.  Things at the club deteriorated rapidly and by November we were back, this time for six months. The idea was to sell the club and transition to new owners as 2015 opened. Consultants convinced us, however, that one cannot sell a club that is closed. So we invested yet more money to keep it open, turn over the staff, do new training and present a fresh, vibrant look to the Kansas City jazz audience in 2015. Despite these efforts, and the accommodating cooperation of our landlord, the catch-22 problems of the supper club model lingered on: Restaurants and bars make their money on customer turnover while jazz club patrons come to sip, nibble and listen for the entire evening. Without generating income, the club cannot adequately compensate its talent, so it begins to cut corners, hiring trios instead of quintets. In a city where good jazz musicians play at several venues nightly, a particular musician’s draw is affected by the number of nights he or she performs each week.

Let’s Try a New Model
June 2015 – From the beginning our business plan and liquor license were predicated on supporting our entertainment costs either through the sale of food or by charging a cover (or by a combination of the two). After a year and a half of tweaking the model, we decided to try a new model, seeking to cover entertainment costs through bar sales, re-branding the club accordingly and appealing to a different demographic as a result.

And the Conclusion Is?
August 2015 – The Broadway is still for sale, and several entities continue to consider purchase. In some cases, those interested will remodel the premises and begin a different business. Other interests will keep the location identified with the Kansas City music scene. From our perspective, we would like to see the locale continue to be associated with the marvelous musical traditions and local performers we have come to know in Kansas City. There are other permutations and combinations that might even keep us associated with the club, of which we are now the sole owners.

Pianist Max Groove is among those interested in the venue. His vision: An urban club open from 11 a.m. to 1:30 a.m. with a refreshed menu.

You will not meet a nicer or more generous couple than Jim and Margaret Pollock. Jim says he is striving to keep the club “a supporter of Kansas City music” and to see the location contribute to “the development of midtown as an arts and entertainment district.” But he concedes that “the club has never made money. It will be a bargain basement sale.”

Clay Jenkins with the Steve Lambert Quartet at The Broadway Kansas City

I was dubious again. I was wrong again.

Organizers of this year’s second Charlie Parker Celebration touted that the addition of an artist in residence, noted trumpeter Clay Jenkins, would raise the bar for this year’s event. Okay, I thought, it’s a nice touch, a little more than the festival did last year, something new to promote. But a visiting musician sitting in for a few numbers at a plethora of clubs wasn’t going to send any bars skyward.

Saturday night Clay Jenkins joined Steve Lambert’s quartet at The Broadway Kansas City (formerly The Broadway Jazz Club) for about half a set. I had a chance to both meet and hear Jenkins. He’s a genuinely nice individual and a genuinely terrific trumpeter. And when he stepped onto the stage, he wasn’t just a guest. He became an integral part of the ensemble. Here were four of Kansas City’s best young musicians – Steve Lambert on saxophone, Andrew Ouellette on piano, Ben Leifer on bass and Ryan Lee on drums – playing at their best with a nationally renowned jazz musician.

The addition of Jenkins to this year’s festival brings a cohesiveness to the Parker Celebration club shows beyond a poster and PR. Saturday night at The Broadway Kansas City, out of the corner of my eye, I may have seen a bar levitate just a bit.

Below are photos of what we saw. As always, clicking on a shot should open a larger version of it.

Clay Jenkins with the Steve Lambert Quartet. Left to right: Andrew Ouellette on piano, Steve Lambert on saxophone, Ben Leifer on bass, Clay Jenkins on trumpet, Ryan Lee on drums.

Clay Jenkins on trumpet

Steve Lambert on tenor sax

Ryan Lee and Clay Jenkins

Andrew Ouellette, Steve Lambert and Ben Leifer

Ben Leifer and Clay Jenkins

Clay Jenkins in The Broadway Jazz Club

Ben Leifer on bass

Ryan and Clay

Andrew Ouellette, Steve Lambert, Ben Leifer, Clay Jenkins

The Steve Lambert Quartet

Clay Jenkins

A Week of Good News, and an Outlier

Two signs of a healthy Kansas City jazz scene stood out last week: A general manager with a track record of success coming to The Broadway Jazz Club and unprecedented donor support for the American Jazz Museum.

Since it opened nearly a year and a half ago, the jazz community has desperately wanted to see The Broadway Jazz Club thrive. Not just for the additional opportunities to hear jazz, but because it embraced the concept of a dinner jazz club, a niche unfilled in Kansas City since the demise of Jardine’s.

But The Broadway Jazz Club wasn’t located just a little north of the Country Club Plaza, Jardine’s onetime neighborhood. It was in Midtown. You didn’t see Nichols Fountain as you approached Broadway. You saw a Sprint store with bars on its windows. Plus, the success of Take Five Coffee + Bar meant Johnson County jazz fans no longer needed to drive into town for dinner and jazz. Some of the best music is now in their back yard.

The club closed for the first couple weeks of January for upgrades. It reopened with a clearly diminished music budget, mostly duos and trios, largely comparable to the jazz that not-a-jazz-club The American Restaurant booked. You could hear complete bands at the Green Lady Lounge, at The Blue Room, at Take Five. There were exceptions, but too often The Broadway Jazz Club felt like listening to a pianist with a brass or woodwind player on a stage and in a room intended for much more than that.

Recently, Green Lady Lounge proprietor John Scott has quietly consulted with the owners of The Broadway Jazz Club. Scott knows the area. Before Green Lady, he owned a gym – still operating, with a different owner – in the rear of the faded strip mall across the street. And he grasps how to run a neighborhood club spotlighting jazz. In the last year and a half he has opened a second stage in Green Lady’s basement level while tripling the club’s revenues.

Starting June 1st, John Scott takes over as general manager of The Broadway Jazz Club. After a couple of weeks closed for adjustments, Broadway will reopen as Broadway Kansas City. Initially, the club will operate just Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, and Wednesdays when the 12th Street Jump radio program records there. Broadway will be less the-second-coming-of-Jardine’s and more a club which embraces the neighborhood Scott understands, but with the live jazz he adores. He envisions a bigger sound to fill the room, tighter shows, and the same professional presentation that is a hallmark of Green Lady. It’s wrapping Kansas City’s heritage in a more appealing light and comprehensively branding it with a different feel than you’ll find in Johnson County. Not better, not worse, but unique. And if you want to sample this style of unique, you’ll need to come into Midtown.

The jazz community hasn’t felt this excited about the future of Broadway since it opened.

We can feel equally excited about the future of the American Jazz Museum. With proposed cuts to its city funding half restored – museum supporters have always done an exceptional job of raising a ruckus at City Hall – last week the museum announced record private donations.

Its fifth annual PEER Into the Future fundraising lunch on April 20th attracted nearly 240 guests and raised more than $112,000 in private donations. Add over $128,000 in donations prior to the luncheon and the museum has so far raised over $240,500 for general operations.

That’s extraordinary. Don’t kid yourself. There’s an elephant in the Kansas City jazz room, and it’s the American Jazz Museum.

You can criticize elements of the museum. It should be larger. The permanent exhibits need to evolve to entice repeat visits. But recognize that they do a superlative job of fundraising, better than any other Kansas City jazz organization in the thirty-plus years I’ve known the scene.

(PEER, by they way, stands for Performance, Exhibition, Education and Research, which are the museum’s key missions.)

The museum is a central player in KC Jazz ALIVE, an organization working to bring together a too often divided jazz scene, with too many organizations and every group out for itself. Separately, club owners are talking with each other. The owners don’t see themselves as competitors, but as crucial to maintaining a thriving audience for jazz.

Yet, there’s an outlier which appears intent on moving its own direction and not working with others in the jazz community. The Mutual Musicians Foundation is unquestionably the most historic building and institution in Kansas City jazz. They are educating school age music students at no charge each Saturday morning. They are sponsoring an educational jazz festival centering on KC swing next month. If they can raise the money to erect a tower and begin broadcasting by June of next year, they will be home to this city’s only jazz radio station.

The Foundation is no relic. It is sponsoring vital programs.

But the Foundation declines to participate in the unity enveloping the rest of the jazz community. The organization chooses to estrange itself despite other groups repeatedly reaching out to its members.

The rest of the jazz community is not competing with the Mutual Musicians Foundation. On the contrary, I repeatedly hear how this community wants to embrace the Foundation’s history and help celebrate its successes. More than that, I suspect some of the same donors who have supported the American Jazz Museum will also wrap their financial arms around the Foundation when it moves beyond presenting itself an an aggrieved institution.

Because supporters of Kansas City jazz are recognizing that the scene flourishes most when we work together.

A Tale of Two Jazz Clubs Last Saturday Night

The surrounding shopping center is still being built. And if you try to find a parking spot right out front, but none are available, you have to circle around and drive back to the street to reach the other lot – the one you see right there, in plain sight, but can’t get to – from another entrance. I expect someday this will all connect and the planning for that lot will make sense. But today, it doesn’t. It’s that new.

I walked in five, maybe ten minutes after the music started, and nearly every seat was filled. There were a few open ones in the booths by the espresso machine, the area where talking over the music isn't discouraged. I snagged one in the back. Before the end of the set, folding chairs were being set up for the crowd continuing to flow in. That's how it's been since the place opened, I’m told.

The audience was overwhelmingly young. I wasn’t the only gray-haired guest, but I sat largely surrounded by high school students. Most others in the audience looked like twenty- and thirty-somethings. And everybody was listening. The few conversations heard here and there while musicians played were short. These people came for jazz.

135th and Metcalf is as suburban as life on this earth gets. And out here in a glistening new Johnson County club, the current and next generation of jazz's audience is turning out to hear Kansas City’s extraordinary musicians. The next time someone tritely proclaims "jazz is dead," escort them to Take Five on a Friday or Saturday night. Then see if they can still honestly mouth those words.

*****

By 10:15, I assumed, the dinner crowd will have eaten and many will have left. No problem, I was certain, in finding a seat at this time. But the parking lot was still mostly filled. That was odd, I thought. And when I opened the door to The Broadway Jazz Club, I was greeted by a packed house, easily as many people as had crowded Take Five. They sat focused on the music on stage. I claimed a small table up front. A musician later told me the club had been like this all night.

Nothing is new or glistening at 36th and Broadway. As you approach from the west, on Valentine Road, or from the south, driving up Broadway, you pass Hookah Haven and a Sprint store with its front windows covered by cris-crossing metal bars. This part of town wears a rugged, gritty feel.

The parking lot around back is well lit. It’s easier to figure out how to get to than that new one at the mall. But I walked from the suburban lot to the club’s front door along a path of clean, freshly-laid bricks. Here, I trek up a concrete sidewalk, steam blowing over it through an old vent in the building, and lines spray painted on it, I assume outlining utilities. I’m aware that I’m not in Kansas anymore.

This neighborhood has been The Broadway Jazz Club’s albatross since it opened. This isn't just up the street from the Country Club Plaza location where Jardine’s ruled for years. This is midtown. This club clearly needed to capture the love of all the patrons who frequented Jardine’s. But with a glistening new bar in the suburbs, many of those people don’t need to drive to an area where they feel uncomfortable to enjoy jazz. Scream that this neighborhood really is safe all you want. A storefront with cris-crossing metal bars in the next group of shops doesn't imply safe.

The Broadway Jazz Club needed to build its own following. This night it appears to be succeeding at exactly that. The crowd is older than the crowd at Take Five. Nobody here is a high school student. This is an audience which wants to hear jazz and which is comfortable in an urban locale that isn’t The Plaza. It includes some of the old Jardine’s audience. But mostly, The Broadway Jazz Club is uncovering its niche.

*****

The owner of a Westport restaurant once told me that his venue’s success came in large part by turning the crowd three times each day. For breakfast, he draws businessmen on their way to work or stopping in for a power meeting. At lunch, he attracts a diverse midtown crowd getting out of their nearby offices for a good meal. Then in the evening, Westport twenty-somethings looking for the next fashionable bar flow through his doors.

The Take Five business model appears to count on drawing different crowds at different times of the day. In the mornings, they offer gourmet coffee and good breakfasts. At lunch, they offer all that plus a selection of salads and sandwiches. On weekend nights, add jazz and alcohol to the mix.

The Broadway Jazz Club is only open for dinner and late at night. They serve more expensive (but fairly priced) and more complete dinners. They operate within a narrower window for generating income, leaving less room for errors or off nights. The Jardine’s business model was to fill and turn the room twice on weekends. I suspect Broadway brings similar weekend goals.

Both models appear to be working. These are two very different clubs. One is fresh and new and attracts a family audience. The other carries the grit of an older Kansas City neighborhood and draws an older and more diverse crowd that feels at home there.

But for all their differences, on Saturday night I noted two points in common. Both clubs were filled with people listening to jazz. And the music was spectacular.

Generations

About 10:15 last Saturday night, a guest was growing angry. He and his wife stood just inside the front door and wanted a seat. He had friends inside already. But there were no open tables. Quickly, Pat ran to clear one.

“We’re leaving,” the man grumbled to his wife. “Why?” she asked. Their friends were in there and she wanted to hear the music. Pat returned, took their cover charge and seated the couple.

Later, I spotted them at the table with their friends. The woman was smiling broadly and swaying in her seat to the music. The man’s face still looked like one wanting to grumble. But under the table, his left foot was bobbing up and down to Eboni Fondren’s wildly swinging vocals.

He was having more fun than he wanted anyone to know.

Last Saturday night at The Broadway Jazz Club, Mark Lowrey premiered a new group, with both Dionne Jeroue and Eboni Fondren on vocals. Angela Hagenbach opened the night. I don’t know what it was like in there earlier in the evening, but after 10, the room was packed.

In a glance around the club, I spied heads and shoulders swaying, crossed legs swinging boldly in time, waists twisting in seats forward and back. And more bobbing feet.

Kansas City has lacked a jazz supper club since Jardine’s died, and we all expected The Broadway Jazz Club to be the new Jardine’s. But in so many ways, it’s not.

At Jardine’s, except for a special engagement when everyone was purposely hushed, or on a Sunday night when only Alatruka fans came, a packed club usually meant you were unlikely to enjoy the show. It meant you were more likely to hear about the big deal that jerk at the next table landed last week than hear the vocalist on stage.

Instead, throughout this club you hear the music. And, viscerally, you react. Eboni’s or Dionne’s voice grabs you and swings you this way and that. You can’t help it, even if you came with a grumbly face.

But there was a larger difference Saturday night.

Sitting right in front was an elderly couple, the kind some people will tell you are the world’s only remaining jazz patrons. But two tables over sat a couple in their twenties. Throughout the club, bodies in their thirties, forties and fifties filled seats and swayed.

The crowd spanned generations.

I don’t know if this is the audience which frequents midtown in the 21st century, or if the music and environment here simply appeal to a more diverse demographic. But The Broadway Jazz Club was not just thriving last weekend. It attracted a broader age range, more generations of fans, than is typically associated with jazz.

I noticed the same age diversity at The Green Lady Lounge a couple weeks back. There, the music is not as vibrant throughout the room. The club’s 1940s ambiance, to which the jazz contributes, and its convenient Crossroads address, are likely part of the draw. But whatever the reason, late on a Saturday night, the club was filled with a predominantly younger crowd.

Perhaps the limited number of jazz clubs in this city a few years ago carried with it a self-fulfilling stigma that jazz clubs are where old people go. Perhaps new owners have brought a fresh ambiance and appeal to their clubs.

I’m not ready to declare that new generations are discovering jazz. But the newer clubs are succeeding in creating an experience more generations are enjoying.

*****

Generations of musicians, too.

Twenty years ago, Karrin Allyson played The Phoenix every Tuesday night with Rod Fleeman. And she played at Jardine’s, The Club at Plaza III, the Boulevard Cafe. Angela Hagenbach could be heard throughout Kansas City, too.

Last Saturday night, Angela stayed at The Broadway Jazz Club after her early set. And late in the evening, after midnight, she joined Dionne and Eboni on stage for a masterful take of Summertime.

Then, following her show at the Gem Theater with the 60th Anniversary Newport Jazz troupe, Karrin stopped by. Somewhere around 12:30 or 12:45, she was coaxed on stage. And backed by Mark Lowrey on piano, Jeff Harshbarger on bass and Ryan Lee on drums, she tore into an audience request, Moanin’.

The night sparkled through a blend of generations, on stage as much as in the audience.

Friday, When I Returned to The Broadway Jazz Club

Not two hours after last week’s blog post went online, Broadway Jazz Club owner Neil Pollock phoned me. I’d never met him. A mutual friend had given me his number, and I intended to call him later in the day. I was surprised and impressed that he found my phone number and reached out so quickly.

Neil wanted to insure I was okay and hear more details on the attack in the club’s parking lot the previous weekend. The club, he said, would immediately add a security guard to the lot on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. And if a guest wants to be escorted back to their car, just ask.

Later in the day, building owner Greg Patterson also phoned. He noted that in nine years of owning property in that area, he had seen little crime and nothing like this.

My day job entails dealing with vendors. I learned long ago that a key to separating good businesses from bad ones is how they respond to a problem.

The Broadway Jazz Club responded impressively. I didn’t expect anybody to call me but I’m grateful that they did. The addition of the security guard goes a long way towards relieving perceived uncertainties over the neighborhood.

I believe them when they tell me crime has not been an issue at 36th and Broadway. Greg has owned property there far longer than I’ve paid attention to the area. But this club cannot escape comparisons to Jardine’s, and its  Broadway neighborhood bears a rougher edge than just-off-The-Plaza. Correct or not, that impression was going to have to be overcome.

I continue to compare Broadway Jazz Club's situation to R Bar. R Bar was a wonderful restaurant with live jazz in the West Bottoms. But the Golden Ox’s days as a Bottoms destination had passed, Kemper Arena sat as a neighboring hulk, and driving into the area felt too adventuresome for the type of customer who would spend well on dinner and drinks. R Bar was never able to overcome its neighborhood and is gone.

Seeing a security guard adds a bundle of confidence to crossing The Broadway Jazz Club’s parking lot.

So does a crowd.

*****

I’d planned to return to the club the next Friday, to hear Megan Birdsall.

When I was mugged on Brush Creek Boulevard (just-off-The-Plaza isn’t really as safe as its image) maybe 30 years ago, I carried anger over the incident with me for a long time. But this time, writing last week’s blog post proved cathartic. This time, I’m not angry.

Emotionally, I could go.

Freezing drizzle fell during Friday’s rush hour. News alerts popped up on my phone warning about crashes everywhere. The Accuweather app’s forecast showed drawings of ice falling from the sky starting at 9 p.m. I didn’t need to get out in that. The Weather Channel app instead predicted snow at 11.

But I wanted to go. I wanted to go as much to prove to myself that I was right, that emotionally I could go, as to hear jazz.

No ice fell. By 10 p.m. the Accuweather app replaced the ice illustrations with pictures of snow at midnight. The Weather Channel app agreed. I headed to my car.

Traffic was light. Accuweather must have scared a bunch of people that evening, I thought.

But as I turned into The Broadway Jazz Club’s parking lot, I was surprised to find it nearly filled. I took the last spot.

I walked into the club. It was filled with more people than I'd seen there on any previous visit. Every seat at the bar was filled. I took a table beside the bar.

Megan sang, I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby. And I looked out on a club full of happy people. Most were listening, some chatted, some ate, most drank. Not every table was filled. But when Neil phoned the previous Monday, he said crowds had been growing week by week. I was seeing that.

Every club develops its own personality. The Broadway Jazz Club is still young, but it’s growing up right. The feeling Friday night was one of being among jazz-loving friends. This is more Cheers Plus Jazz than Jardine’s. Never mind the neighborhood outside the windows. A security guard and escort if you ask will handle that. Inside, I’m Norm.

The Blue Room is Kansas City’s most honored jazz club at our most historic intersection, with some stellar performances – Deborah Brown, Bobby Watson and Horizon – you will not hear at any other KC club. Stepping into the Green Lady Lounge is like stepping back in time, into a classic jazz club (though on weekends you should claim a seat near the band if you want to hear it). At The Majestic, you’re in a speakeasy and you know it, while Take Five feels like hearing a jazz ensemble in your living room.

The Broadway Jazz Club is properly addressing concerns while growing into what’s starting to feel like Cheers Plus Jazz, and a nice dinner.

When I left, I walked to the space in the back of the lot where I’d parked. After my experience the week before, the club insisted on escorting me. I wiped some snow from the car (the Weather channel app had it right all along). I drove home.

There were no incidents.

I kind of like feeling like Norm.

On My Fifth Visit to the Broadway Jazz Club

I pulled into the parking lot behind The Broadway Jazz Club at about 10:40, maybe 10:45 p.m. I looked at the large lights overhead. This parking lot is well lit, I thought. It feels safe. I need to mention that in my blog.

I’d come from Jazz Winterlude at Johnson County Community College. But this night I also wanted to see singer Dionne Jeroue at The Broadway Jazz Club. I’ve heard her several times in Everette DeVan’s Tuesday jams at The Phoenix, and I’ve been taken by her exceptional voice. But those are Everette’s jams. I wanted to hear her leading her own group.

I was a bit disappointed when I walked in. Dionne was accompanied by Hammond B3 organ, guitar and drums, same as Tuesday nights at The Phoenix. I was hoping to hear that voice backed with different instrumentation. But Rod Fleeman was the guitarist. Several weeks ago, at Take Five, he helped drive Shay Estes’s group to an inspired level. This, I realized, was a promising mix.

Dionne is young and gaining experience in commanding a stage. Her voice is exceptional, smooth yet bold with a punch at the right spots, on jazz standards, pop hits and Motown classics. And there’s charisma on that stage, a sexiness without trying to be sexy, a playfulness exuding joy. Her story of confronting a raccoon in her bedroom worked. It was well told and funny, and it broke up the set. However, that second set featured too long a string of up-tempo songs. It would have benefitted from some pacing. She’s learning. But between her vocal talent and presence, Kansas City, this is a singer watch.

Rod stopped by to chat between sets. This was his first time in this club and, like all of us, he liked what he saw. I voiced concerns about the neighborhood. He decided to move his car, parked on a side street, closer. I mentioned the well lit lot in the back.

The show ended after 1, and I stood to leave. My camera pack was strapped to my waist. I’d photographed Winterlude earlier in the evening and thought I might take some photos here, but didn’t.

I don’t know the exact time I walked out the door, and down 36th Street to the parking lot. But after the incident, the clock in my car read 1:23.

I stepped into the lot. I took my iPhone out of my pocket. On the way home, I’d listen to NPR stories I’d missed earlier in the day, I thought.

I opened my car door.

Suddenly, from across 36th street, a youth, probably in his mid teens, yelled unintelligibly at me and ran towards my car.

I tried to get in and shut the door quickly. If I could just lock the door and start the car, I’d escape him. But the camera pack made sitting in the seat slow and awkward. I slumped in and yanked the car door shut, but the youth was there and pulled the handle from the outside. He was stronger and faster. He opened the door before I could lock it.

“Give me that phone!” he yelled. I didn’t. It was in the hand away from the door. Instinctively, I clasped it tighter.

“Give me the phone!”

Another youth, similar age, ran up from the back of the lot, from Central Street. He stopped at the open car door and looked at me, eyes all open and crazed. He pulled from his pocket what looked like a small gun. He pointed it at my leg, then at my groin, then at my leg.

“Get out!” he demanded.

In the mid 1980s, when I lived off The Plaza, I was mugged one night while walking home. I was on Brush Creek Boulevard, across from Winstead’s. Daylight Savings Time had just ended. The week before it had been light outside at this time, but this night was dark. Four youths walked up Brush Creek Boulevard and demanded my wallet. I wouldn’t give it to them. They started hitting me, knocked me to the ground, broke my eyeglasses, on Brush Creek Boulevard across from Winstead’s. I started to scream for help. When I did, they ran off. I decided then that if I was ever assaulted again, I would scream.

“Help me!” I yelled, as loud as I could. “Help me!”

“Get out! Get out!” yelled the youth with eyes all open and crazed, waving a gun at my leg.

“Help me! Help me!”

The first youth kicked the car door, swinging it as far open as it could go before bouncing back on its springs.

“Help me! Help me!”

Nobody came. But both youths turned and ran off, towards the back of the well lit parking lot, towards Central Street.

I slammed the car door shut and locked it. I tried to put the key in the ignition. But my hand shook, uncontrollably, as I stabbed the key repeatedly at the dashboard and the steering column. Somehow, finally, I found the ignition.

I started the car. I looked at the time. I drove off.

Going home, NPR stories I’d missed earlier in the day streamed from my iPhone through the car radio. But all I heard, on the drive back to Johnson County, was my voice in my head yelling “Help me! Help me!” And just beyond the windshield, throughout the drive, I saw two eyes staring back at me, all open and crazed.

Megan Birdsall Quartet at The Broadway Jazz Club

Maybe this will be where the musicians hang out. It certainly was two days after Christmas.

Singer Megan Birdsall came to the new Broadway Jazz Club armed with some of the best KC jazz musicians you could hope for: Paul Smith on piano, Danny Embrey on guitar, Steve Rigazzi on bass and Sam Wisman on drums. Then Steve Lambert walked in, tenor sax in hand. Trombonist Kevin Cerovich and bassist Ben Leifer stopped by after their Take Five gig ended. Pianist Andrew Ouellette, bassist Bob Bowman and drummer John Kizilarmut all showed up. So did Mambo DeLeon, with congas.

For the third of her four sets, Megan called the guests to the stage and joined them for an unexpected jam. It was a wild glimpse at more of the breadth of jazz talent bursting through Kansas City today.

And it was a glimpse at the potential of the new Broadway Jazz Club. Its location is in a part of town that KC jazz fans have not been asked, for many years, to consider. The club’s challenge is convincing everyone to come on down and sample the inviting atmosphere, the solid staging and sound, and the good food and drinks. If word builds that nights like this are what you’re missing, that challenge becomes considerably easier to conquer.

So take a look at the photos below. If you weren’t at the new Broadway Jazz Club on Saturday night, December 27th, this is what you missed.

Now, make a point not to let that happen again.

(As always, clicking on a photo should open a larger version of it.)

Megan and the band she brought. Left to right: Paul Smith on piano, Megan Birdsall, vocals, Steve Rigazzi on bass, Sam Wisman on drums, Danny Embrey on guitar.

Megan Birdsall

Paul Smith on piano

Danny Embrey on guitar

Steve Rigazzi on bass

Little Jimmy Rushing and Paul Smith watch Megan.

The guests jam. Left to right: Kevin Cerovich on trombone, Steve Lambert on sax, Miguel “el Mambo” DeLeon on percussion, Ben Leifer on bass, John Kizilarmut on drums. Hidden: Andrew Ouellette on piano.

Kevin Cerovich on trombone and Steve Lambert on tenor sax

John Kizilarmut and Mambo DeLeon

Ben Leifer and Megan

Megan and the band she didn’t bring. Left to right: Andrew Ouellette on piano, Megan Birdsall, Bob Bowman on bass, John Kizilarmut on drums.

Bob Bowman on bass

Megan Birdsall sings in The Broadway Jazz Club

Shay Estes Quintet at The Broadway Jazz Club

It was, I believe, the second weekend they were open. And I took the shots late, during the last set, so I wouldn’t get in everyone’s way. As a matter of fact, the crowd earlier in the evening wasn’t bad, especially considering jazz fans are just discovering The Broadway Jazz Club.

So don’t try to tell me that the empty tables in these shots mean jazz is dead or some other hokum. They only mean it was late at night during the second week of a brand new club.

They also mean some of us heard wonderful jazz that you missed.

Last week I offered initial impressions of The Broadway Jazz Club. This week and next, I offer photos so you can see for yourself.

On Saturday, December 12th, Shay Estes took the stage accompanied by Matt Otto on saxophone, T.J. Martley on piano, Karl McComas-Reichl on bass and Sam Wisman on drums. I hadn’t heard Shay backed by this particular quartet before. But with the club’s exceptional sound system, this night just about every corner of 36th and Broadway filled with delight.

The final set opened with just T.J and Matt. Wow. How do I hear more of just these two? Maybe T.J. and Matt as an early evening opener some night? Just throwing the idea out there.

More of Shay Estes, too, please, with whatever quartet she chooses.

As always, clicking on a photo should open a larger version of it.

The Shay Estes Quintet (for this night, anyway). Left to right: T.J. Martley on piano, Karl McComas-Reichl on bass, Shay Estes, vocals, Sam Wisman on drums, Matt Otto on sax.

Shay Estes and Karl McComas-Reichl

T.J. Martley on piano

Matt Otto on sax

Shay Estes

Sam Wisman on drums

Paintings of KC jazz legends line the wall at The Broadway Jazz Club. Here, the view from Marilyn Maye to the stage. Even back here, you can gently converse without noise overwhelming the music you came to hear.

Karl McComas-Reichl on bass while Shay Estes sings

T.J. Martley plays piano while being watched, on the wall behind him, by little Jimmy Rushing.

The Shay Estes Quintet at The Broadway Jazz Club

The Broadway Jazz Club

Step into The Broadway Jazz Club and you’re struck by the music.

Sit at one of the tables up front to be immersed in jazz. Settle there and you’re not going to talk, unless it’s to request a song or ask where the tip jar is.

Clearly, attention has been given to the sound. At the tables to the side of the stage, music is less dominant but still perfectly clear. Sit midway back in the club, at one of the tables where booth seating lines the wall, and you can hear the music or quietly converse without noise dominating the reason you came. Around the bar, you can drink and enjoy jazz, except maybe in that back left corner near the kitchen.

The kitchen. That’s important, too.

Sure, you can dine and enjoy jazz at The Majestic. But prices make dinner there, for many of us, a rare treat. Dinner is affordable at The Phoenix, but there you’re more likely to hear blues than jazz. Or if you don’t sit close enough to the piano bar, you’re more likely to hear the boisterous guy at the next table. Small plates at Green Lady and Kill Devil are nice, but they’re not really dinner. And The Blue Room offers no food at all.

Don’t take me wrong. There are plenty of other reasons to revel in jazz at these clubs, and I do. But a visit to Denver and their dinner jazz club, Dazzle, left me feeling a bit stung. Here was a room crammed with tables and diners and drinkers, comfort food reasonably priced, nothing new, nothing perfect, a large stage up front, ambiance with a dash of sleaze, with good sound, and good jazz. You can find rooms like this in New York, in New Orleans, in Chicago, in Seattle. But for the last two years, not in Kansas City.

The Broadway Jazz Club forgoes the crammed tables. You can comfortably maneuver the space around the large, U-shaped center bar. Red walls, red booths, wood floors and dark lighting set the mood (a little too dark, perhaps, for some of us to easily read the menu. Or maybe the tables need brighter candles). Paintings of KC jazz icons line a wall. Food ranges from sandwiches to steaks, salads to seafood, chicken, pasta and comfort food. A lot behind the building provides plenty of parking. Add wonderful sound and wailing jazz and the ambiance is dinner juke joint circa 2014. Not as straight-out-of-the-1940s as The Green Lady Lounge, but if your table wobbles a smidgen because the floor right there is uneven, you’re not surprised.

*****

But it’s at 36th and Broadway.

This isn’t right off the Plaza, like KC's last dinner jazz club. You can’t see Nichols Fountain from the parking lot. The American Century office tower isn't next door. No hotels full of businessmen and tourists sit across the street. This may be more or less up the block from where Jardine’s thrived, but the neighborhood is different. This is midtown.

On my first visit, the audience was younger than you might expect in a jazz club, more twenty and thirty somethings than fifty and sixty somethings, more of the age group already comfortable with 36th and Broadway. It was wonderful to see a younger audience enjoying jazz. But for a jazz club in Kansas City to thrive, it also needs to attract the older guests who enjoy jazz and will drop a few bucks on dinner and drinks.

R Bar was a wonderful restaurant and bar in the West Bottoms. It opened featuring a stage in the front window, a sound system timed just right to carry music through its long, narrow space, and live jazz. But the owner found that jazz fans would not drive to the West Bottoms to enjoy the music. Musicians who filled other clubs played to a largely empty R Bar.

And there’s the elephant in the room. Will audiences that eschewed the West Bottoms embrace 36th and Broadway? How do you entice older patrons, often from Johnson County, who thought little of driving to the Plaza? Will they travel a little further, into less familiar midtown, to drop a little cash?

*****

Megan Birdsall headlined The Broadway Jazz Club last Friday night. Her group was excellent: Paul Smith on piano, Danny Embrey on guitar, Steve Rigazzi on bass, Sam Wisman on drums. But as the evening progressed, other musicians stopped by. Steve Lambert brought his sax. Kevin Cerovich carried his trombone from a Take Five gig. Bassists Bob Bowman and Ben Leifer showed up. Pianist Andrew Ouellette and drummer John Kizilarmut walked in. Miguel “Mambo” DeLeon brought his congas.

Megan turned over her third set to the visitors, sitting in with them. The set effectively became an unexpected and unrehearsed jam session. And when Cerovich and Lambert soloed, then Kizilarmut and Mambo traded lines, those of us in The Broadway Jazz Club were treated to an Ellington tune performed magically, as you’ll only hear it in a Kansas City jam.

*****

When opening a new club – probably any new business – consultants recommend having enough cash on hand to survive at least three months of inadequate revenue, while building the business, its image, its reputation.

A few weeks old, The Broadway Jazz Club is still in its infancy. But perhaps it’s on track towards building a reputation not just for musical excellence, but for the musically unexpected, because maybe this is where jazz musicians hang out. That’s a club nearly any jazz fan, of any generation, will seek out at least once.

And when they come, they’ll find that short walk from the parking lot to the front door, for a jazz club, offers just the right dash of sleaze.