Mark Riddle, a 25-year-old English teacher who used to run an open-mic night in Katherine, near Darwin, Australia, has been a regular fixture at Grooveyard on Thursdays. He goes to Wednesday's jazz night to write, then takes the stage the next day to read his "darkly comic" short stories and poems.
"The whole atmosphere of the place is just geared toward encouragement and expression," Riddle said. "It's the most welcoming venue I've ever performed in. There's always someone new there. It doesn't matter what you do — you just do your thing and everyone listens."
A frequent customer on open-mic night is Curtis Nadj, 34, an English teacher and language student from Toronto. He's been going to Grooveyard at least once, sometimes three times a week for the last year and a half. Nadj likes the atmosphere, which he described as "intimate" and "loud when it needs to be loud and quiet when it needs to be quiet." His only complaint was that, like other bars in Taiwan, Grooveyard can be "a little smoky."
"What they need is a fan and I'd probably move in," Nadj said. "But that's probably why they haven't installed one."
Red-I, who was born in Pingtung but grew up in Belize, likes Grooveyard so much he travels from Taidung to play there once every two months or more with his band, The Riddim Outlawz. He said that, unlike other venues in Taiwan that might only give a band a small cut of the profits, Grooveyard's "cover" charge goes straight to the musicians.
"Most places would make it impossible for a full-time working musician to make money," he said, noting that for him it's usually not worth the trip to perform in Taipei. "I don't want to make it a money issue, but [Smith and Byrne] tend to place more emphasis on making sure the band receives what is fair."
What's more, he said, "Those guys are musicians, and they're cool musicians."
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