July 7-13, 2005

music

New World (Café) Order

Has XPN's conjoined twin really hurt Philly's smaller stages?

by John Vettese

It"s been nine months since World Café Live altered the landscape of music venues in Philadelphia, and opinions are still divided on whether the change was marginal or monolithic.

With its towering red neon signs visible from Center City, dueling upstairs and downstairs spaces accommodating artists with a range of draws, and its building-sharing partnership with UPenn's public broadcasting giant WXPN, is the Café a vortex sucking acts and attendees away from smaller, more established places like North By Northwest and the Tin Angel? Or is it just a bit of healthy competition?

It all depends on who you ask, really.

"Imagine if you had a very groovy independent bookstore and a Borders opens next door," says Larry Goldfarb. "It's like that."

Goldfarb has booked shows at the Tin Angel for more than 12 years and has been an outspoken critic of World Café Live since the project was in the idea stage. Last fall, he vented to the Daily News, questioning the relationship between a private booker and a public station and mentioning that many agents and managers he had dealt with viewed the station and the venue as one. Asked how World Café's presence has played out since then, he is no less cynical."Of course it has hurt us; there are many acts that have played for us that want to give it a try," he says. "But we're still here, we're still going strong."

On the other side of the coin is Hal Real, a former real estate lawyer who invested millions in turning the 44,000-square-foot industrial plumbing factory into a majestic downstairs venue with a capacity of 300 to 600, a quieter upstairs listening space that seats 120 and separate studios and offices for WXPN.

From his perspective, World Café Live has fit into the city just as he'd hoped and expected. He revels in the eclectic blend of artists the venue draws, and says it hasn't been too much of a blow to Philly's more established spaces.

"We do jazz, but we don't just do jazz. We do rock, but we're not just doing rock," Real says. "We're not hurting Zanzibar Blue, we're not hurting the Tin Angel. The way we fit in is in a city with a variety of choices, we're just another one."

Except, as of two weeks ago, there's one fewer choice.

With the shuttering of Bryn Mawr's popular acoustic venue The Point on June 25, the landscape has changed again. But both owner Richard Kardon and booker Jesse Lundy, chatting over iced coffee last month, want to make it abundantly clear that the venue's closing was not because of World Café. Lundy says business was as good as it ever had been, and that the issues had to do with circumstances and disagreements with their landlord.

That said, those disagreements were over ways The Point could make itself more competitive with Real's and Goldfarb's respective venues.

"We agree not so much that we were going after the same shows, but that the inventory of artists available to book is diluted a little more because somebody else is going for them," Lundy says.

Since The Point's capacity was around only 110, artists like Al Stewart and Sophie B. Hawkins would wind up playing both an early and a late show in order to get paid. Kardon says some performers connected with the venue's M.O., that they were willing to make the trade-off in order to play a more intimate, relaxed space.

However, artists weren't always willing to play two sets in one night, and some would go to venues with liquor licenses and dinner menus that would only ask them to play one set.

"We always had that issue, even before World Café opened," Kardon says. "When it was just us and the Tin Angel [booking acts from WXPN's rotation], inevitably because they have that bar, they were sometimes able to make better offers."

Earlier this year, Kardon and Lundy began studying the feasibility of procuring a liquor license, setting up a wine-by-the-glass bar and revamping the kitchen to offer more high-end entrees in the venue. "That extra income could have made us more competitive for certain shows going to World Café or the Tin Angel," Kardon explains.

But the landlord, worried about the effect of a liquor license on the neighborhood as well as his apartments upstairs from the venue — an odd concern, given the fact that The Point has been BYO for years — balked at the idea, and Kardon and Lundy decided to close shop and look for a new space.

So World Café Live didn't drive The Point out of business; you could say it forced its bookers to adapt to a changing landscape.

Lundy, for his part, is very magnanimous in his outlook.

"There was a lot of speculation about the perceived advantages World Café might have down there, but I think they have done a respectable job of doing what is right for their room without pillaging the rest of us," he says.

Savvy showgoers have also noticed something about the acts going to World Café.

Lundy says many of these instances are just the natural progression of an artist's draw. Michelle Shocked headlined at World Café last week, but when she came to the The Point previously, it was "a huge underplay."

"Our position has always been if an artist's career is progressing, we don't want to stand in the way," he says.

However, Goldfarb takes issue with what could conversely be construed as overplays. Adrienne Young, who held a CD release show at the bigger downstairs Café last week, played earlier in the spring to maybe 60 people at The Point.

"What pisses me off when an act does maybe 45 people, they'll grab them and play them downstairs," Goldfarb says. "That's what hurts us."Real says a number of factors are taken into consideration in booking acts, including where in the area they last played. But he also views WCL's downstairs space as a buffer zone between these 100-capacity venues and the 800-capacity Theater of Living Arts and Trocadero.

"As a band outgrows a space, they can't go to one eight times the size," Real says. "There really wasn't something in between size, and that's what our downstairs is supposed to be."

Over at Mount Airy's cozy dining/listening lounge North By Northwest, business manager LaRose Ray looks at World Café as a positive. She's booked acts like Sonny Landreth who played the bigger venue and still returned, and she likens the increase in venues to the restaurant business.

"The more restaurants around you, the better your business is because you get known as a restaurant town," she says. "I honestly feel like there's room for another music venue like ours. It keeps us on our toes."

Her concern, however, is with the "XPN Presents" series of shows. Before World Café's opening, the station would sponsor performances by a handful of artists each month at many of the city's venues. The nametag combined with on-air mentions often helped draw bigger crowds, but since the fall, she has seen a severe drop in those sponsored shows.

"I don't blame that on World Café Live, though, I blame that on XPN," she says. "As a member of the station, that was a disappointing part of it for me, and I wish they would have stuck to their promise to serve all the clubs."

No "XPN Presents" shows are on the Tin Angel's upcoming schedule, either, but that's not the case universally. Lundy says he experienced no major drop before The Point's closing.

The official word from XPN marketing director Kim Winnick echoes the dilution point. The station does have a limit on the number of shows it can sponsor each month, and its reach extends to venues in Princeton and Harrisburg.

"Nothing's changed in how we approach it," Winnick says. "We try to mix it up, we just have another venue to work with."

Real says World Café doesn't get the "XPN Presents" tag per se, but it does collaborate on events like the Free at Noon series. Still, he asserts that the station isn't ignoring other venues in town.

"I think they've tried very hard to convince everybody that they remain Switzerland," he says. "They've bent over backward to show that they're giving other venues the same treatment."

Likewise, he says, World Café's bookings extend beyond the Adult Alternative Album-rock format into jazz and gospel, "stuff you rarely hear on XPN." Thus, the venue has relationships with WRTI at Temple as well as WHYY.

Mainstay local songwriter Jim Boggia played his record release at World Café Live in the spring, but also built up his fan base at The Point, and gave the venue a send-off by playing its final show. He believes there's no single venue in town appropriate for every type of show, and while World Café might give him more room to rock out to a bigger crowd, The Point felt like home to him.

"It's not a disparaging thing about World Café Live that you can't do things as intimate as The Point there," he says. "I'm glad World Café's there, and I don't see it intruding into that space."

But looking ahead on the city's concert radar, the next intrusion might be upon World Café when House of Blues opens its 500-600-seat club and restaurant at 15th and Chestnut next spring.

"When that happens, it's all gonna change," Goldfarb says with a chuckle. "Hal Real's gonna have to take another $4 million loan."

Real's response: Bring it."People think I'm crazy, but I'm thrilled," he says. "New Orleans, Austin, Nashville, they're all cities much smaller than Philadelphia with a lot more choices, a lot more things going on. This city is big enough, it needs to support a lot of different people, so it's great to see another option coming to life."