To roll down MacArthur Boulevard toward the
lively interchange of Wabash and Stanford avenues is to forget that
Wabash Curve ever existed. The four-lane intersection offers a
gateway for drivers from the east to the commercial district on the
west and presents a shortcut to Interstate 55. Chances are, even
the neighbors living near the intersection have gotten used to the
steady drone of traffic, forgetting the gritty guitar reverb and
throbbing drumbeats that once inundated the night air south of the
curve. Plenty of people remember the shabby
greenhouse with the barbed-wire-fenced yard. To many, the Asylum
— a teen coffeehouse and all-ages music venue — has
become something of a legend, conjuring memories of the days when
teens had a place where they could rock freely and let their dyed
hair down. For kids who cut their chops on classic
underground acts such as Black Flag and Minor Threat or learned
that it doesn’t take rhythm to dance if you know how to pogo, the
Asylum provided a place where a Mohawk and a Bad Brains album meant
credibility. When this haven for the fringe closed its doors in 2001,
it tied a figurative string around the fingers of a few individuals,
reminding them of what it’s like to be young and marginalized
— and many of them haven’t forgotten.
Early to finish, I was late to start — I
might be an adult, but I’m a minor at heart. — Minor Threat
Since the 1980s, the punk-rock
underground of small towns and suburbs has been defined by
hardcore, a genre much less scary than its title suggests. The
speedy riffs and shouted vocals have branched off into numerous
genres, including emo, its more radio-friendly cousin. The teenage
practitioners and fans of this style of music are often excluded
from the typical 21-and-up music venues, so the history of this
particular brand of punk rock is, more so than many, intertwined
with all-ages music venues. Clubs and shows attract a cross-section of
underground-rock fans: bespectacled, tight-jeaned emo kids and
indie rockers; old-school punks sporting dyed hair, leather, and
studs; hardcore kids clad in obscure band T-shirts, perhaps with an
X or two markered onto the back of a hand. But to stereotype the
underground is to kill its spirit: Most are just there for the
music and to hang out with kids who know the true worth of a good
guitar riff. Springfield doesn’t have a shortage of
good tries when it comes to the history of all-ages music shows. The Spot, the Atrium, the Asylum, the Rise,
Club 10, Andiamo!, 2One7 Skate Shop, On Broadway, among others
— all, at one time or another, have invited teens to come
drink soda and listen to their favorite bands — or, at least,
their friends’ bands. Now, only a handful of
places are left where kids can come and rock. Skank Skates, an indoor skate park, has hosted
shows off and on for more than a decade. Bread Stretchers crams
music fans of all ages into its L-shaped downtown site on weekends.
Viele’s Planet boards up the booze and hosts all-ages shows a
couple times a month. The Black Sheep Café, with any luck,
will open soon. All-ages music venues teeter on the brink of
extinction — and, chances are, they always will. Owners make
little money and tend to put more into their ventures than they get
out. With no room for ulterior motives, the owners run shows on
pure enthusiasm from their appreciative patrons. Some have more
troubles than others, but, you can bet, the clipboard-toting men in
suits are always lurking, trying to understand what’s
happening inside the walls of these sanctuaries for young adults
outside the mainstream. Success isn’t measured so much in
profitable dollar signs as it is in how many months these venues
can sustain themselves. Steve Brink, owner of the Asylum, envisioned a
place for kids to hang out and drink noncorporate coffee, and
that’s exactly what the Asylum was. There were a few
incidents in the first six months: Brink recalls having to use
scare tactics, kicking a door off its hinges when he caught a
couple of kids smoking up in the bathroom. It sounds dramatic, but
the door was hollow, Brink quips from his new stomping grounds in
Raleigh, N.C. For the four years spent with kids running in and
out, there was not a single lawsuit. “I understand the realities of being a
teenager, but we tried to make the distinction that people come
there to get away from things, not so much to get away with
things,” Brink says. “So, that was our
premise.” Brink got the itch to open a coffee shop of
his own after spending some time at a similar hole-in-the-wall
coffee joint in an area of Augusta, Ga., he considered a hub of
activity for the alternative kids. A record shop and a concert hall
flanked the place, and to Brink, who spent his days as an engineer
in Girard, that life was a dream come true. His off time was spent
getting involved with youth ministries throughout the city, but it
was always the alternative side. He took a group of kids to
Cornerstone, an outdoor concert featuring hardcore, punk and other
Christian music genres that have wandered off the beaten path. The
first year he brought a few kids; that number grew to a few dozen,
and finally Brink hauled nearly 100 kids to the show. “I started to get to know this whole
alternative counterculture that’s there in
Springfield,” Brink says. “They were talking about how
they would love a place to hang out, and I thought,
‘Here’s a base of support.’ ” Brink put up his retirement fund, somewhere
between $8,000 and $10,000, to open the coffeehouse in 1997. With
help from friends, people from the church he was involved in, and
businesses, he managed to triple his money for converting the
florist shop into a hip enclave. “I got pretty good at begging for
materials,” Brink says. “Just installing a sink and
putting in a urinal, things like that get pretty pricey when you
have a concrete floor.” But after the plush Salvation Army couches and
roasted beans moved in, the name of the game was making rent. The
building was slated for demolition from the time Brink signed the
lease, so approximetly $1,200 a month was offered, a discount that
still meant pushing a lot of coffee to turn a profit. “Even I wasn’t paid that much;
basically I was paid enough to put gas in my truck and maybe pay
the insurance on it,” Brink says. “I had to supplement
with working as a substitute teacher for the school
district.” Brink started having shows “pretty much
right off the bat.” As word got out, they hosted shows twice
a month and an open-mic night. When things started moving, the
number increased, and, after a couple of years, the young adults
who frequented the coffeehouse were booking shows with bands from
Los Angeles to New York City. A portion of the cover charge would
always go to the bands. In the end, though the Asylum closed: a large
road was slated to run through what was the back of the building,
and Brink ran out of gas. Support was high and the shows were going
strong, but the building was coming down. After closing the door on
this particular dream, Brink began chasing another: hiking the
Appalachian Trail. “[Brink] had a really good job, quit his
job, spent a lot of money fixing the place up, and really
friggin’ changed people’s lives,” says Miles
Parkhill, drummer for the band Park and a patron of the
coffeehouse. “One little place can make such a huge
impact.”
“The worst crime that I ever did was
playing rock & roll, but the money’s no good.”
— The Stranglers
Around the same time the Asylum was
getting its footing, Viele’s Planet and Skank Skates were
consistently hosting shows. In 1997, the owners of Bread Stretchers
Gourmet Subs decided to join the party. Mike Capps, co-owner of Bread Stretchers,
started running shows when one of the other owners, who happened to
be in a band, was looking for a place to play. As you walk into the
corner shop, though, your first question might be “Where does
the band go?” Push the tables and chairs up against the
walls, put the band in the corner, and the shop becomes the perfect
place for a band to play. “If you [had] 50 kids, it looked
packed,” says Parkhill. With a 100-person capacity, the shop
lacks a stage, making for a close, cozy arrangement between band
and crowd. In the beginning, Capps says, when the crowd
was older, he made quite a bit of money. The restaurant is licensed
to sell alcohol, and people came to eat and have a few beverages
while watching the show. But around 2002 the crowd got younger, and
with a younger crowd comes a smaller profit. Not that Capps minds;
he doesn’t put on shows to rake in cash. But in 2004 the
shows stopped paying for themselves, and Capps wondered how long he
would be able to continue. “I would just say, ‘Pay my people
what they are worth and keep the rest,’ ” Capps says,
“but it’s got to a point where I have to take some of
the money. Whatever they can make is great. If they can pull in
$700 a night, they get to keep quite a bit of money.” Somehow the bands play on, and paying
customers are coming to hear the music again. But if they’re
not making money, why would the owners of a successful sandwich
shop continue to put on shows that don’t turn a profit? “High-school kids have their basketball
games, and that’s game night,” Capps says. “Well,
Friday and Saturday night at Bread Stretchers is game night for a
guitar player. Why not offer a place for them to play their
game?”
“Don’t want to stay at home not
making any noise.” — Generation X
Kids who don’t play sports or
are tired of cruising the mall — where do they go? As a young kid, Corey Howell, owner of 2One7,
broke his back. He gave up his aspirations of playing traditional
sports, trading them in for a skateboard. With the skateboard came
music. Howell moved his skate shop from a much smaller space to his
current location on Chatham Road, a large building resembling a
domed barn, which houses an indoor skate park and, until recently,
was the site of all-ages shows. “I guess my main concern is helping kids
have an outlet besides drinking [and] smoking and just giving them
something to do,” Howell says. It may sound like a lip
service, but Howell’s not bluffing — his tattoo proves
it. “They know I’m
straightedge,” Howell says. “I have a huge X tattooed
on my neck, and when you’ve got me — big scary tattoo
guy standing — outside and it basically says ‘No
drinking and no smoking’ tattooed across his throat, they
know it’s not allowed.” That’s not to say that all kids are
looking for good clean rock & roll fun, but keeping drugs and
alcohol out is key to staying open. The straightedge scene — a no-alcohol,
no-drugs lifestyle, some of whose participants practice veganism
and eschew casual sex and smoking — was birthed in the
mushrooming early-’80s Washington, D.C., punk-hardcore music
scene. When hardcore prototypes Minor Threat — specifically
lead singer Ian MacKaye — professed the virtues of an
anti-indulgence lifestyle on such songs as “Straight
Edge” and “Out of Step,” it struck a chord with
young rockers around the country. The movement gained rapid steam
in the late ’80s, with McKaye slowly fading back from the
lead role, but the scene had planted roots, and today it’s a
large faction of underground music across the country. After Howell had hosted approximately five
shows, he received word of a complaint, conveyed by fire marshal,
that the skate shop was hosting hundreds of kids each weekend. (It
averaged more like 50 to 75 kids, Howell says.) Code violations
were brought to light, and the plug was pulled. Howell opened his shop in a corner of the
Asylum, in the garage, but it quickly outgrew that space. Park, a
band that calls Springfield home when it isn’t touring the
country, often played the Asylum’s greenhouse. Many of
Springfield’s bands, flourishing and defunct, have played for
friends at the coffeehouse on MacArthur. When the Asylum moved out, Howell and
Parkhill, along with others, opened the Rise — a place,
Howell says, that they envisioned as a space for music shows. “We knew that it would be hard, and we
knew that there was no money involved and that we weren’t
going to make anything,” Howell says, “but when the
Asylum was closing, it was just, like, all these kids that
don’t drink and are underage — they didn’t have a
place to go.” Parkhill says that the place hosted quite a
few shows, including a show by emo band Yellowcard just as it was
breaking (Capitol Records faxed the band’s contract to our
local Kinko’s). But the venue was losing money and the time
was drawing near when the building would be torn down, so the Rise
finally fell. But where one venue closes, another opens, keeping
the music scene from being homeless for too long. “There hasn’t been a place for the
music scene to be able to call its own for a while, and we wanted
to establish that,” says Kevin Bradford, part-owner of the
Black Sheep Café, a faith-based cafe and music venue.
“We’re all about promoting the underground
music.” Bradford and his partners in the Black Sheep
Café — Roger Smith, Crystal Eairhart, and a silent
partner — believe that the venue has great potential. In a
corner of the front room sit the bare bones of what will become a
record store to sell albums from independent labels such as
Victory, Facedown, and Trustkill. But live music is the main draw:
Bradford says that they hope to host shows every weekend, with a
place onstage for local bands in addition to national acts. Because
the opening of the café was postponed, planned, scheduled
shows were moved next door to Skank Skates. (In mid-January, Skank
Skates hosted the popular New York hardcore band 25 Ta Life). “We’re all about promoting the
local scene because we want to give kids a place to play,”
Bradford says. “We want to build a community; we’re
very community-minded.” With help from landlord George Sinclair, owner
of Skank Skates, the Black Sheep partners are making changes to
comply with the city’s codes, including new doors that swing
outward and a reinforced floor. The owners painted the walls bright
colors and eliminated a drop ceiling to reveal a beautiful
old-fashioned tin ceiling, which they have spray-painted silver.
This place looks and feels like rock & roll. The owners plan to split the door charge right
down the middle, Bradford says, paying bands 50 percent of the
take, but they didn’t ever expect to make money in the
beginning. “A lot of [the money to get started]
came from the four of us, pretty much out of our pockets, to pay
the first couple months rent,” Bradford says. “This
place used to look like garbage before we got in here and started
changing it.” Pubs and clubs that offer music shows have the
luxury of handing over a large portion of the door charge to the
band because, on any given night, alcohol sales will be enough to
make the show worth a bar owner’s time and manpower. But
there’s only so much food and soda the owners can sell at an
all-ages show to turn a profit. The owners of the new café live
straightedge lifestyles and want to offer an atmosphere to kids and
young adults who either can’t or don’t want to
patronize the bar scene but are looking for a place to hear music.
Growing up on Minor Threat as he and the other owners did, Bradford
says, it only seemed right to give the café its moniker
— the black sheep was a symbol of the band — but, he
says, there are other reasons. “The whole concept of the Black Sheep is
that outwardly the sheep may look different — it maybe be
different and may be shunned by the other sheep — but
it’s still part of the flock,” Bradford says.
“It’s a symbol for the underground scene here.”
On Saturday, Jan. 28, the Black Sheep
Café hosts Ihateyourband Fest, a festival featuring the Its,
Sparland, Daphne, I Shot Lincoln, and Cranksanatra. Tickets, which
are available at www.ihateyourband.com/store.html or at the door on
the night of the show, cost $6 in advance and $8 at the door. The
Blacksheep Café is located at 1320 S. Eleventh St.
This article appears in Jan 26 – Feb 1, 2006.
