The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Feeling the beat
Reaching out to various tastes, chances are, there’s a Northeast Ohio music venue that suits you best
It’s roughly the same every night: The assembled crowd is growing restless. Man oh man, when will it start?
Eventually, the house lights go dark, the crowd going nuts before the act hits the stage.
Then, finally, the musical artist takes the stage, be they a turn-the-amps-up-to-11 five-piece rock act or she a quiet singer-songwriter about to entertain with merely an acoustic guitar and a microphone.
Night after night in Cleveland and the greater region sees rock acts, hiphop artists, country bands and others playing to adoring fans or folks simply out giving a new act a chance to captivate them.
And this happens in venues large and small, from the relatively tiny Grog Shop in Cleveland Heights to the cavernous home of the Cavaliers, Quicken Loans Arena, down the road in Cleveland, with lots of options in between including bigger clubs, performing arts centers and theaters.
“A
lot of artists were skipping Cleveland. I think we’re back on the map, and we’re helping with that. We’re not the reason for it, but we definitely are helping with it to a large degree.
One place that tries to stand out from the music-venue crowd may also be the area’s newest. Opened in late 2014, the Music Box Supper Club on the West Bank of Cleveland’s Flats, was designed to fill a niche, says Vice President Mike Miller.
“We target sort of a baby-boomer audience,” he says during a phone interview. “There are some great rock clubs in Cleveland — just fabulous rock clubs — but most of them target a much younger audience.
“It’s an old-fashioned concept,” he adds about what the Music Box offers. “It’s dinner and a show.”
Miller and his wife, Colleen, are the managing partners and part of the ownership group he refers to as “the working stiffs,” a collection of area business executives who invested in the Millers’ idea.
“They all were just excited to make something happen in downtown Cleveland,” he says.
Colleen, Miller says, has spent three decades working in the music business, most of that time in Chicago, where the pair met many years go. They relocated to Northeast Ohio, where he grew up, in 2010 and began to work on their shared dream.
The Music Box sits in the former home of Club Coconuts, right on the Cuyahoga River. While the Music Box is home to a full-service restaurant, The Rusty Anchor, where guests can get a sophisticated meal prior to show, the big selling point is tableside service during the show. That happens at the club’s two stages — the secondstory Concert Hall and the downstairs Supper Club, which has a bit more of an elaborate menu.
“It’s traditional,” Miller says “You have a server, she brings you menus, you can order a nice bottle of wine, you can order a nice meal with a dessert, cocktails, and you sit in your seat while you see the Indigo Girls.”
As for music side of things, he credits Colleen with booking great acts, which range from local musicians, up-and-coming artists and nationally known names on tour.
“We recently had — from Crosby, Stills and Nash — Graham Nash,” he says. “Lucinda Williams has kind of made it her home here in Cleveland.”
And he points to a great experience months back with aforementioned folk-rock act Indigo Girls.
“They immediately said, ‘We want to come back.’ There’s a big national name, and they’re now coming back, and we’re close to selling out two nights with them.”
(In fact, the band’s official site lists the shows, on April 23 and 24, as being sell-outs.)
He believes artists enjoy the intimacy of the Music Box and the receptive audiences there, he says.
“A lot of artists were skipping Cleveland,” he says. “I think we’re back on the map, and we’re helping with that. We’re not the reason for it, but we definitely are helping with it to a large degree.”
He allows, however, that being an independent club has its pros and cons.
“Sometimes, yeah, there are challenges. I guess you could say a chain like House of Blues is able to offer multiple dates at multiple cities for their venues … and we don’t have that advantage,” Miller says. “I think we’re more adaptive and quick to be able to jump on some things those national chains can’t.
“A lot of artists want to add a date here. Suddenly, they discover, ‘Hey, we’re driving by Cleveland — what’s open? What’s available?’ And something like the Music Box might be the perfect solution to that.”
Miller says the Music Box really has become what he and Colleen envisioned.
“We’re kind of pleasantly startled all the time how popular we’ve gotten right off that concept. We’ve really stayed true to what our vision was,” he says. “The audience has really grown. We have a mailing list that people have signed up for opted in for — that’s almost 60,000 people. It’s become a very popular destination for the entire region.
There is more going on at the Music Box than music, and, to hear Miller tell it, it’s a lot more.
“We also are doing a tremendous number of events at the venue,” he says. “We’re probably going to do about 45 weddings this year.”
That’s in addition to myriad fundraising events held by a wide range of Northeast Ohio organizations, he says.
In addition, the Music Box has partnered with the Cleveland History Center for a popular weekly series, Cleveland Stories Dinner Parties, with various speakers covering a wide range of subjects.
There’s also the monthly Science Cafe, with the tagline “Talk science, drink beer.” (Miller clearly is proud of that.) The next one, on April 9, is titled “Tiny Brains at High Speed: The Neuroscience of Fly Flight.”
“They just did one on artificial intelligence, and we had to turn people away,” he says.
He’s also clearly proud of the Music Box’s versatility.
“We have (the American) Heart Association coming in to do a major fundraiser one day, we have a wedding the next day and then we have a concert with the Indigo Girls the next day,” he says. “The variety of what you can expect here is pretty broad.”