Jazz musicians Patrick Byrne and Roger Smith felt Taichung needed more places for bands that play original music — so they built one.
Their club, which opened last summer, features different bands on Fridays and Saturdays, an open-mic night on Thursdays and live jazz on Wednesdays. They called the place Grooveyard, and by all accounts that's exactly what it is.
"It's the best live music venue in Taiwan, bottom line," said Red-I, a full-time musician who's been performing around the world with various reggae acts for the last 25 years. "It's probably the only place that really was created by musicians and actually for the benefit of musicians. A lot of people would like to say that. But just from playing around the island, I think they're the most sincere in that way."
PHOTOS COURTESY OF GROOVEYARD AND HENRY WESTHEIM
Byrne, a 40-year-old saxophone player from Canada, and Smith, 31, a multi-instrument whiz from Australia, met five years ago and formed 'Round Midnight, a jazz combo that began playing full time three years ago, averaging 10 to 15 shows a month. "We were one of the first bands in Taichung to crack that" market, Smith said.
Personnel changes caused the band to go part time, giving Smith and Byrne space to seek other opportunities. "We saw a hole in the music scene. You heard a lot of local music here that's excellent but most of it's cover [songs]," said Byrne, who was interviewed from Taichung by phone last week. "We wanted to open a place that's for musicians and develops the scene more, a place with a warm atmosphere where people could play whatever they're creating and where people could relax and enjoy decent music."
Their solution seems to have become a one-stop shopping center for Taichung's creative types and fans of live music. In addition to weekly gigs by everything from expat country-and-western bands to Taiwanese heavy metal acts, Grooveyard hosts workshops on subjects like drum-playing and theater and functions as a gallery where painters and photographers can hang their work. Things have gone so well that Friday and Saturday night's shows are usually booked two months in advance, and Byrne said they have plans to open a second live music venue in Taichung, perhaps towards the end of the month.
"Grooveyard is one of the best venues I've played at because the two musicians that started it had a musician's perspective in mind," said Nick Fothergill, 29, whose acoustic rock trio Black Lung Inner City Choir recently completed a three-month tour of Canada. "The things that make a musician feel comfortable when coming into a club are there."
He likes the sound system, which he said is "on par" with what he's seen in similar-sized venues in Canada. Grooveyard also has two electric pianos, three trumpets and an acoustic guitar, which it makes available for performers.
These come in handy on open-mic night, which Byrne said draws an average of 40 to 60 people. From poets to musicians, everyone is welcome. They sign up on a first-come, first-served basis, with the one restriction being that only acoustical music is allowed after 11:30pm, because of complaints by nearby residents that led Byrne and Smith to briefly close Grooveyard earlier this year to install more soundproofing.
"You never know what's going to happen" on open-mic night "and, more often than not, it's really exciting because it's new and its fun and it's improvised right off the top," Byrne said.
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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