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Why
We Love Jennifer Gilson
And Juliana Nash
by Mojie Crigler |
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In the late 1990s, two clubs opened in New York City. Defying the
era's extravagance, the clubs offered free, acoustic music in simple,
intimate settings. The Living Room and Pete's Candy Store
were instantly popular, booking unknown as well as veteran acts
and becoming important focal points for the New York singer-songwriter
community. For the venues to succeed, their respective owners, Jennifer
Gilson and Juliana Nash, labored and took great risks.
They trusted their taste and imagination. While many businesses
born in the nineties fell by the wayside, these two remain.
"I listen to absolutely everything that comes in," said Jennifer
Gilson, speaking by telephone from Manhattan. "Even when I can tell
by the CD cover that it's something I'm not going to like." In 1998,
Gilson opened the Living Room in Manhattan's Lower East Side with
three partners, one of whom was soon bought out. "I just listen
to the music and whether I say, 'Hey that's really good' or 'I don't
think I'm into that.'" She estimated that she receives two to three
hundred submissions per month. "Pretty much, booking a room is one
person's opinion, and people's demos that I don't accept I tell
them that it's not necessarily a reflection on your music, it's
just that I'm not booking it for my room."
Gilson said she receives "demo packages with stickers and bows and
ribbons and eight reams of paper worth of press. You don't need
that much. A one-sheet on who you are, where you play, you know,
what you're about, and the music is usually sufficient." Unafraid
to try newcomers, Gilson is rewarded with the return of performers
like Norah Jones who develop successful touring and recording
careers. "They like the room so they'll play for the tip jar."
 When
considering submissions, "the space is the first priority," said
Juliana Nash, on the telephone from Pete's Candy Store, whose back
room is the size of a railway car. "Is that band too loud? Even
if they're a loud band, do they seem good enough to play to a small
room?" Nash accepted her friend Andy McDowell's invitation
to invest in Pete's in 1999; soon he asked her to book and run the
club as well. "It's just personal taste really. I'm a songwriter
so I look for good melodies. Or sometimes I'll just book a band
if there's something smart or clever, a force that moves me." She
receives over a hundred and fifty CD and mp3 submissions per month.
"Jazz has never worked here," Nash said. "So even if I love a jazz
act, I never book it."
Bands she believes can draw a crowd week after week garner a paid
residency for an extended period of time. Occasionally, Nash gives
a night to a musician to book, which both links the bands and draws
a large collective of listeners. She learned this during the years
she lived and played in Boston. "I used to say, 'I'll take that
Saturday night, but you have to let me book it.' And then I'd create
a whole party. And it'd be fun from the minute you start."
Like many performers, Nash and her band experienced overbooked nights,
waiting on the sidewalk with their equipment before going on hours
late, all in exchange for fifty bucks. So when she opened Pete's,
Nash opted for tip jar (and free sandwich) payment, free shows,
and punctual performances. She wanted "a place where musicians felt
like human beings." Knowing how much her band benefited from regularly
playing long sets, Nash established residencies. "I see this as
a place that people can play and develop," she said.
"I just wanted a comfortable place that had great sound," said Gilson,
who was encouraged to open her own venue by musicians at Sin-É,
where she did the booking for several years. "When Jeff Buckley
died, everyone went to the Sin-É area, but it was closed by then
and there was no general space for people to meet. I think everyone
met at the Hotel Galvez. That was the only singer-songwriter
neighborhood and there was need for another one." Gilson envisioned
a place "where musicians wanted to play." Magic Shop Recording
Studio owner Steve Rosenthal, who co-owns the Living
Room, ensured quality sound. "It's all about the music," said Gilson.
"Without them, I don't have a place." The Living Room originally
served food as well as drink, but Gilson eighty-sixed the kitchen
when it was obvious people were coming to hear music, not to eat.
Before it housed the Living Room, the corner of Allen and Stanton
was a defunct fried chicken restaurant, gone out of business when
the prostitutes and drug industry left the neighborhood. Having
scoured the streets by foot looking for a space, Gilson found the
landlord through the Department of Buildings. "There wasn't even
a 'For Rent' sign," she said. "But I knew nothing was happening
there. I knew it was a dead-end street." In addition to money pooled
by three other investors, Gilson maxed out her credit cards which
she finished paying off just last month. Involved in the space's
demolition and reconstruction on a daily basis, Gilson brought in
carpenters and electricians (and later, vendors) that she met through
previous jobs at Kate's Joint and Life. "I used to do everything,"
she said. "Order all the supplies, all the beer, and the booking."
She has a bar manager now and delegates more, though she said she'll
always do the booking.
The decor of the Living Room "sort of evolved," she said. "We just
painted the place so we could get it open." With peach-colored walls
and a gaggle of black chairs and tables, the Living Room also boasts
windows that run the length of two walls. Coming from lightless
Sin-É, Gilson wanted a space with sunlight. "Of course I didn't
think of the air-conditioning bills at that time," she said.
Nash, who has managed, bartended and waitressed since she was seventeen,
was managing Lucky Strike when longtime friend McDowell asked
her to invest in Pete's. Her band, just dropped from a label, was
in Boston and she was in New York. "I've always wanted a bar but
I didn't think I'd have it in my thirties," said Nash, who became
pregnant three months before Pete's opened. "So I just scrounged
up the money and did it and it was like the best thing, you know,
I've done in a while. It was like a test. I said to myself, 'I can
get that money and I'll do it. And I did.'"
McDowell already had a lease for the space, which was a soda fountain
and luncheonette for Williamsburg factory workers before becoming
Pete Caruso's candy store in the 1980s. Though the interior
changed, the sign on the outside was allowed to stay. "If you look,
someone left the 's' out on 'Pete's' and they just stuck a little
's' above 'Pete,'" said Nash. "He [McDowell] said to me, 'What do
you think we should call it?' And I said, 'I don't know, I think
we should keep the name, it's so funny.'" McDowell, a set designer
for MTV, is responsible for the card-suit detail on Pete’s
toffee-colored walls, as well as the bare-bulb-lined stage with
its brass grate back wall. Nash's husband, a glass-blower, made
the front room's lights. Thanks to Pete's back yard, Nash said,
the new no-smoking law hasn't been too detrimental. However, the
first month and a half after the law went into effect, she did notice
business decline by about a third. And her liquor costs increased
when people would go outside for a puff and the staff, thinking
the smokers left, would toss their drinks. Nash advocates a smoking
license, applied for in the same manner as a liquor license. "It's
not fair," she said. "You know, we're a little, tiny business."
Nash, a Manhattan native who attended the LaGuardia High School
of Music and Art before studying classical voice at the New
England Conservatory of Music, had her hands full when Pete's
opened. "It was very difficult that first year because I was trying
to manage the place and have a baby and keep singing. I was just
totally delusional about what I could do," she said. Nash is pregnant
for the second time, but finds it easier since Pete's is up and
running. "It's not bad," she said. "If I wasn't a singer and really
interested in pursuing that too, it would be not bad at all."
Nash and her husband and daughter recently moved to a family home
in the Hamptons, in part because the landlord of her husband's studio
wanted to double the rent. "My husband's an artist and he needed
a shop," said Nash, who also needed room for a piano. "We can't
afford to live in Brooklyn anymore." The move entails a two-hour
commute to Pete's and Nash said she'll be there less. "It is hard,"
she said. "I took a real hold on my career, but I'm glad I did because
I mean how long can you do the music business and not make money
and put all your eggs in one basket and then all of a sudden you're
forty and you've got no business. So I opted to have a lot more
in my life than just my band."
When Gilson's daughter, Addie, was an infant, Gilson would
put her in a crib on stage while she worked. Other times, Gilson
worked around Addie's sleep schedule, answering E-mails at one o'clock
in the morning. Addie's father is Living Room co-owner Steve Rosenthal,
with whom Gilson is moving the Living Room to 154 Ludlow. "The third
partner isn't following us into the next stage," she said. "That
was amicable. So it's just in the family now." Prompted to move
because the landlord "wanted to double our rent and hit us with
this crazy property tax bill," Gilson said, "We need a bigger place
anyway." At approximately 4500 square feet, the new space will have
a listening room with free acoustic music as well as ticketed artists.
"I want all levels of songwriters to be able to play in this place,"
she said. In addition to music, an enclosed upstairs room will house
literary readings, among other activities. Doors are scheduled to
open in early August.
Neither Gilson nor Nash engaged in an elaborate marketing plan.
Word of mouth brought people, and both places have been regulars
on New York magazines' "best bar" lists. With the diversity available
in New York, "everyone seems to find a home," said Gilson, whose
venue is at an excellent walk-in location. Said Nash, "I can't tell
you how much press we've had." The owners stay in their neighbors'
good graces by being extremely conscious of the noise factor. "Every
now and then someone would open the window and we'd get a call and
we'd close the window," Gilson said. Nash employed a yard person
after a couple of complaints. "I don't want to ruin my neighbors'
lives," she said.
Both Gilson and Nash said that being female in their field made
no difference. Occasionally, Nash said she gets "Oh you must be
the manager. Where's the owner?" But she said, "Basically I get
a lot of respect. I think it helps to be a musician and a woman
to run the bar. People are empathetic when I don't get back to them
for months. I'm like, 'I have a kid!'"
"I never thought I'd be in the music business," said Gilson, who
came to New York to be a professional ballet dancer. Life took her
in a different direction and she ran with it. "I know a lot of people
who make a living at what they do," she said. "They book their own
tours and they go around the country and they find out the venues
that are appropriate for their music and they make a living at it."
She was deconstructing the successful singer-songwriter, but she
could have been describing her and Nash's recipe for success: "They
do everything themselves." |
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_________________________________
Visit Pete's Candy Store at 709 Lorimer in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
and online at: www.petescandystore.com.
Visit The Living Room at the corner of Allen and Stanton in Manhattan
and online at: www.livingroomny.com. |
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_________________________________
Mojie Crigler is a freelance writer living in New York City. She
wrote about Erin McKeown for WOMANROCK's
June 2003 issue.
E-mail her at: mojie@womanrock.com. |
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