Nov 19, 2024 12:57 PM
In Memoriam: Roy Haynes, 1925–2024
Powerhouse jazz drummer and bandleader Roy Haynes died Tuesday in Nassau County, New York. He was 99. One of the few…
Bruce Finkelman (left) and Craig Golden of 16 On Center, an ambitious enterprise that oversees multiple Chicago-area venues.
(Photo: Michael Jackson)“Do you have the Midas touch?” DownBeat asked Craig Golden, partner with Bruce Finkelman of the remarkably successful 16 On Center enterprise, which oversees such Chicago-area venues as SPACE (Evanston), Thalia Hall, The Salt Shed, The Promontory and The Empty Bottle.
“I haven’t heard that one before,” responded Golden over the phone, with the type of self-effacing humor that brought Finkelman and him together in the early ’90s. Finkelman, proprietor of the grungy but invincible Empty Bottle in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, had then sought cross-pollination between his eclectic music booking and Golden’s comedy club interests.
Golden had gigged as a guitarist, but the lackadaisical, inattentive dives he’d played offered little beyond the band beer comp, if there was one. (His subsequent venues all have green rooms — some even with shower and laundry service — plus an upfront booking policy.) Disenchanted, he took advantage of his wood-refinishing skills and pivoted to general contractor work, then real estate.
Finkelman floundered as a fledgling guitarist himself, performing a single live show he describes as “the scariest experience of my life, and I was so drunk. The world told me it wasn’t to be.” Regardless, both remain music lovers and much of their care in building and curating comes from ground zero. “My first job was at a joint in Missouri, the Blue Note,” recalled Finkelman. “From sweeping floors I worked my way sideways. The place was a playground of sight, sound and senses. Witnessing artists and community sharing ideas, that created my blueprint.” He took that ideal to the unprepossessing Empty Bottle in 1993, which had been bumped two blocks up from its first location on Western Avenue, since Finkelman had dared host a music night to the landlord’s summary affirmative: “No more!”
“The Friendly Inn was the original name,” recalled Finkelman, though it was affectionately known as The Bucket O’Blood. “For years Ken Vandermark and John Corbett ran festivals of improvised music, and Bottle-centric artists run through the 16OC landscape.” Count Rob Mazurek, Jeff Parker, the late Peter Brötzmann and Dutch improvisers Available Jelly as Bottle alumni.
Golden’s legacy project is SPACE in Evanston, a state-of-the art venue initially launched as a studio (hence extensive sound dampening, the live room built on a separate pad that doesn’t vibrate with the rest of the concrete floor, doors designed not to leak sound). Telescoping back to teenage days experiencing artists at Amazing Grace, a legendary long-gone Evanston venue a few blocks south, Golden wanted an intimate space. “I remember being in the music there, really feeling Les McCann, or whoever, emote, so I wanted a thrust stage, not just bandstand-as-fourth-wall scenario,” commented Craig, “so it’s not a loud nightclub. The quiet resonates. You can hear what’s between the notes.”
With that said, one of Golden’s partners at the venue is blues guitarist Dave Specter, who, though he shares the ethos “shredding is for cabbages,” knows audiences expect their Chicago blues loud-and-proud. “We upgraded our sound system during the pandemic and recently our front-of-house console. We’re also very proud of our house backline, which ranks among the best in the country,” claimed Specter.
SPACE’s Davis Inman is part of a highly effective team that includes 16OC director of music Jake Samuels, Brent Heyl and fellow talent buyers Jake Austen at The Promontory and Bobby Ramirez at Thalia Hall. “We’re all in regular communication about shows, the various teams congregate weekly or bi-weekly to strategize,” Inman said. The fact that SPACE and The Promontory are 19 miles apart means that exclusivity clauses aren’t a big deal. “We once had Kermit Ruffins with his Rebirth Brass Band at SPACE and Promontory; Maceo Parker and Ramsey Lewis, too, and hope to book Sun Ra Orchestra at both locations in the future.” Some of Inman’s favorite 2024 bookings included Christian McBride’s Ursa Major, Julian Lage and Don Was’ Pan-Detroit Ensemble. Samuels has also booked 20-plus gigs this year at Northwestern University’s Cahn Auditorium under the canopy of “Space Presents,” and, along with their popular annual “Out of Space” festival, a new folk music event attracting 5,000 fans a day has been a smash.
The 900-plus capacity Thalia Hall, a Chicago Landmark in the historic Pilsen neighborhood, is a prime example of the firm’s adaptive re-use policy. A Romanesque Revival theater from 1892, modeled after a Prague opera house, it had fallen into cobwebbed neglect until 16OC took over. Now firmly established as one of the premier music rooms in Chicago, Thalia recently hosted a rare visit from Hermeto Pascoal and co-ordinated a vast orchestra conducted by Arthur Verocai. “We have a lot of fun putting together jazz programs here,” said Ramirez. “A big advantage with Thalia Hall is that we’ve accumulated a diverse audience across genres, so we’re a bridge of sorts between different musical communities. We love helping newer jazz acts expand their reach to folk that may not have found them as quickly, and we’re honored when a legacy act plays with us and connects with a new community.”
Where SPACE had been a long defunct clothing store, before that a Harley-Davidson showroom, Hyde Park’s The Promontory was a bankrupt Borders bookstore, sleekly reimagined as a bi-level 600-person-capacity, 150-seat, customizable event space and restaurant, with veranda, that caters to the South Side’s hip-hop and R&B scenes, as well as choice jazz, which Golden would like to see more of.
“We don’t believe in force-feeding anybody, we generally book what we think the audience wants and what we can get behind to present,” he said, confessing he grew up reading DownBeat rather than Rolling Stone.
One of 16OC’s joys is “farm teaming” talent across venues, watching a band that might kick off their career at the Bottle, progress through their 150-, 250-, 1,000-plus-volume spaces (The Flaming Lips, a case in point). The newest of these and the most breathtaking is the 100,000-square-foot entertainment supercenter — a collaboration between 16OC, Blue Star Properties, R2 and Skydeck — that is The Salt Shed, a West Town concert venue that can accommodate up to 5,500 outside and 3,500 under its iconic white roof. Pandemic-induced stalling of the world allowed Finkelman and Golden to ruminate on how, or why, they would rehab Morton’s corroded industrial monolith. “COVID slowed us down, we thought we might be out of our minds, since we’d all soon be dead anyway,” Golden laughed grimly, but when the stewards of the shed brainstormed with the visionary twosome, it was meant to be. As photographer Sandy Steinbrecher notes in her stunning book chronicling the reconstruction, The Salt Shed, they found partners “specializing in the meticulous restoration of historic buildings, known for creating distinctive, beautiful spaces for music and food.” This blue-collar cultural cathedral built on pillars of steel and sodium chloride hosted local jazzman Makaya McCraven (known for successful appearances at Thalia Hall) and Londoners Sons of Kemet and Nubya Garcia on opening night in February 2023.
Rather than swivel to the next project with an eye for maximal profit, 16OC, to quote passages in Steinbrecher’s book, prioritize “fostering a sense of belonging” and “sustaining the soul of the city.” Enhancements are underway for the Shed (the Three Top cocktail lounge already opened and a boat dock and brewpub will launch in March) and SPACE (the historical acronym, now seldom used, stands for Society for the Preservation of Arts and Culture in Evanston) will soon double in size.
“We’re adding a swanky new lobby,” said Golden, “and a nice outdoor event space for another 250 people with a 40-seat restaurant patio, front and back. The hope is to revive evenings out shortened by pandemic days and the dissipation of after-show crowds, and book jazz trios, 10.30 p.m. to 1 a.m., for nighthawks like us.” DB
“I treat every day like it’s Thanksgiving,” said Roy Haynes.
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