RIP Monterey Live

Monterey Live is dead. Long live Monterey Live!

The four year-old club on Alvarado Street in downtown Monterey closed its doors after last night's show (5/31/2009).

Prior to 2005, the kind of artist that regularly came through Santa Cruz to play at Henflings or the Kuumbwa (e.g. Greg Brown, The Waifs, Slaid Cleaves, Kris Delmhorst) never came through the Monterey Peninsula.

I had been heading north to see those Santa Cruz shows years before I met Juliet, but we got tired of the two hour round trip. We'd come home after midnight and never be able convince our friends to come, too. It was the big reason we started Tree House Concerts in 2003.

FILLING THE GAP

When Monterey Live opened, I thought house concerts were dead. All the artists would want to play the club instead of someone's home. But that didn't happen. All of a sudden the Monterey Peninsula became a way station for the level of artist who wouldn't play a house concert but could never draw the Sunset Center or Golden State Theater.

A lot of the early success was because of a partnership between Monterey Live and Tom Miller, who had moved his bookings from the old Henfling's to Don Quixote's International Music Hall in Felton. Tom could double the artist's exposure by booking them both in Felton and Monterey, knowing the two markets really don't overlap.

Unfortunately, it didn't last long. Tom realized that Monterey Live wasn't marketing well enough, and nobody was coming to the Monterey shows, unlike the Felton shows.

VOTE WITH YOUR FEET

Since then, Monterey Live changed ownership, and it slowly died. Over the years, I was contacted twice by their marketing professionals about partnering (i.e. using my 200+ mailing list to promote). I turned them down and then tried to explain how their 20-century marketing techniques (e.g. CoastWeekly ad or story in the Monterey Herald) wasn't going to cut it. And the 21st century ideas I freely gave away never sunk in.

I had also seen how you all voted with your feet. In 2004, we had Peter Mulvey stop by, and it was our biggest draw still to this day. In 2005, I told that same mailing list of 200+ people that Peter was coming back and playing Monterey Live. I was one of five people to show up.

It's hard enough to compete with all the entertainment in someone's home after 8 p.m., but residents of the Monterey Peninsula really don't like coming downtown to see music. You'd come to our home in Pacific Grove, however, so that was high praise.

I remember booking Jimmy Chickenpants in 2006. The brand new bluegrass band from Santa Cruz didn't have much of a web site, and I had no music clips to send to anyone when the invitations went out. It didn't matter. 30 of you showed up anyways, and we had never booked bluegrass prior to that night.

Amazing to me, you never cared what music I was booking. You just wanted to come over to our house. Even when the club downtown might have seemed cooler, you still came to our house. I booked unknown bands who's music you never previewed, and you still came to our house.

SAD BUT FULFILLED

I'm sad that Monterey Live has closed. I knew the two different owners tried hard, but they were up against a mindset on the Peninsula that was against coming out of their homes after the sun goes down. Traditional marketing didn't make a dent, and we all went back to our lifestyles and missed some great music.

Regardless, I'm also feeling a little fulfilled. Tree House Concerts continues to be an underground, off the radar, non traditional, non commercial, stealing of moments, and nobody else knows how much fun we're having.

Could we turn it into a business? Probably not. But knowing I could book a cross dressing Hungarian harmonica band and you'd still come?

Priceless.