a conversation about music and what makes a scene
On the night of his last show with the Antithesisters, omnipresent drummer AJ Ferreira ponders a question about the difference between playing shows in Dover and playing in Portsmouth. Before he can speak, a nearby fan at The Red Door overhears and chimes in, “Oh, you’re gonna open up that can of worms all over again?”

Ferreira answers diplomatically, saying, “I like both, for different reasons.”

Variations on this theme occur daily, at nightclubs, on sidewalks and in cafes. But the constant conversation about music in Portsmouth versus Dover begs a larger question: what makes a healthy music scene? How large should it be? What everyone’s really weighing is, what do we have and what do we need?

In the early 1980s, guitarist Bob Halperin moved to Portsmouth from Cambridge, Mass., and was earning a living playing gigs six or seven days a week. He remembers one particular visit to the Pic N Pay grocery store, when he went in looking for dinner and left an hour later with two bags of groceries and five new gigs. Those days are gone. Our local music scene is still very much alive, but the size and shape has shifted. The rising cost of living in Portsmouth, combined with the displacement of apartments by condominiums, has dispersed younger artists throughout the area. Nearby Dover, whose population grew by 6 percent between 2000 and 2005, is demographically, musically and artistically ascendant.

Ralph Napolitano, bass player for Gazpacho and owner of Ralph’s House of Tone in Dover, sums up the musicians’ litany of complaints about Portsmouth. “Affluent people moved in because of all the culture, and then the culture got a little noisy, so they put the kibosh on it.” Thinking about Dover, he brightens. “Dover, to me, is like Portsmouth when I used to hang out in Portsmouth in the late ’70s, early ’80s. Dover is sort of like Portsmouth 20 years ago—on a big cultural rise.”

Barley Pub bartender and Dover resident Eric Stone is one music fan who doesn’t go to Portsmouth as much as he used to.
“I’m trying to think of the last time I saw a show there. Dover has become such a great town for music right now. It’s a little bit quieter, it’s easier to get around, especially living in Dover. It’s different in the sense that even though you get a lot of the same bands, maybe some of the venues sound a little better than others. And Dover’s a smaller, tighter-knit community than Portsmouth, and that helps the bands create a sense of community.”

Chris Otash, a lifelong Dover resident, remembers frequenting the Portsmouth clubs in his youth. “I used to go to the Elvis Room a lot. That place was really cool, and I liked the way it was set up.”

The appeal of a relatively small room able to attract a variety of bigger acts propelled Otash to open the Dover Brick House in November 2004 and offer something he felt was lacking in Dover. “There were two Irish bars, a beer bar and Carabella’s was Carabella’s. I wanted to branch out and do something totally different. We get music three or four nights a week, and it’s a variety of music. We don’t want a band that plays a Saturday night to play for another four or six weeks. We want diversity.”

While sometimes turnout is uneven, area venues are also regularly bringing in acts from Boston, Portland or Providence, and many of the acts return. Joe Wawrzyn plays guitar and sings with Boston band The Westward Trail, which has played both the Muddy River in Portsmouth and The Brick House in Dover.

“We always have a great time playing in New Hampshire. The response is always great and it seems these kids have an actual craving for some new shit, rather than just going out to drink and ignore the bands. Plus, we’re always surprised at the amount of people actually getting on the dance floor to move. A hip crowd that’s not too jaded to dance? Who knew?”

Portsmouth, with a population of 20,700, and Dover, population 28,500, are magnets for venues and audiences because of their dense, walkable downtowns. But the Seacoast also supports places like The Stone Church, a 200-seat venue in Newmarket, as well as the Rochester Opera House, which occasionally offers popular touring bands or local acts like John Eddie, Tommy Makem or the Lydia Warren band. On a recent Friday night in Rochester, it was possible to stand in one spot on Main Street and watch through the windows as Camarojuana rocked at Big Head’s, rising singer/songwriter Liz Parmalee held the mike at the Old Oak Tavern, and Fushia Marmalade got the crowd dancing at Slim’s Tex Mex Saloon. In Exeter, Shooter’s Pub and the Loaf and Ladle offer the occasional event or series, and The Ioka theater supplements its movie schedule with live music events several times a year. In Somersworth, Station 319 is carving out a spot with a menagerie of top-notch local acts. And with a few acoustic nights at The Coffee Beanery, which opened earlier this year, even Greenland is getting its feet wet.

Considering the amount of music played throughout the area, it’s interesting that there’s as much discussion about “the state of the scene” as there is. Is it that Portsmouth is losing its title as the “capital” of the scene, or is it something more?
For a long time it was almost as if you couldn’t escape original music in the city. The Rosa and The Portsmouth Brewery had bands every weekend for years until the early or mid 1990s, as did the Codfish (The Blue Mermaid), the oft-referenced Elvis Room and even The Rusty Hammer. Daddy’s Junky Music was on Congress at one point. Fishtraks, a full-service recording studio that served the likes of Bill Morrissey and Harvey Reid, among other regional folk luminaries, was right downtown on the corner of Fleet Street and Congress. Sessions, an independent record store, inhabited the recently demolished Eagle Photo building, and Rock Bottom Records, another indie record store, held in-store concerts and distributed a zine called “Hi-Fi.” Owner Kevin Guyer started Broken White Records with former Fishtraks owner Tom Daly. Broken White went on to release offerings from Portland’s King Memphis, Slaid Cleaves’ back catalog, Jon Nolan’s old band Say ZuZu and Melvern Taylor as well. All the while, The Press Room consistently offered live music seven nights a week.

“The thing that’s too bad is that there aren’t as many places to play (compared to 30 years ago),” says Bruce Pingree, who for the last 16 years has booked acts at The Press Room. Previously, he also helped program The Music Hall and, before they closed, he helped book the Elvis Room and worked as a DJ at the Riverside Club and the Warehouse. “But that’s a problem that we’re seeing over a lot of the country, it’s not just something going on in Portsmouth. And I’m sure pieces of that are maybe because of the (noise and curfew) ordinances. Some people might just be saying, ‘Forget it, it’s not worth trying to do.’”

Pingree also sees a change in the mindset of people with free time and disposable income. “Part of it is just a change in the way some people are. People don’t go out as much as they used to, to go see live music. There’s so much entertainment these days, for people to sit around on the Internet, or whatever. I know a lot of people who don’t really go out to see live music that much. When I was younger, I did it quite a bit. I think part of it is just a change that’s going on right now with the way people are when it comes to entertainment.”

Bob Halperin agrees. In addition to playing solo locally, he also makes a living touring the Northeast with the successful Zydeco dance band Li’l Anne and Hot Cayenne.

“As tough as things have gotten around here, and things have gotten pretty tough, it’s worse everywhere else,” he says.
Any problem for the Portsmouth music scene is a problem for the Seacoast scene, and local musicians and bookers have given a lot of thought to the problems they see. It’s not always clear how to solve them.

Performer Dan Blakeslee is Seacoast born and raised. When the cheerful, spiky-haired singer and artist recalls the not-so-distant past, some of his cheer disappears.

“The whole dilemma with the University of New Hampshire … well, when I started playing there in ’92, ’93, ’94, so many more students came out to see bands, because computers weren’t in the dorms. If you played the Granite State Room, there would be 300 or 400 people there, or even capacity, which is like 500. But now? If a local band plays there, there’s like 30 people. People are always online. People just don’t know when to (say), ‘Hey man! Let’s experience life! Let’s get out there and see the show, instead of just downloading it!’ But then, in 2000 or around there, UNH kind of frowned upon having local bands play.”

Some, like keyboard player and promoter Mike Phillips, try to use the Internet to their advantage to promote upcoming shows with online networking sites such as MySpace. Still, Phillips says he sees inconsistent turnouts. “What I try to do is to get everybody to re-post on MySpace. But not everybody feels passionately about a show as much as I do.”

Newmarket, like Dover, is also home to many UNH students renting apartments, which Stone Church owner Peter Hamelin says contributes to the abnormality of the school’s music scene.

“Look at Durham, and look at other cities with major universities of 12,000 or 13,000 people. Most have thriving music communities, five or six record shops, a couple of places to go to see live music. In Durham, no one’s doing it. UNH culture is an interesting culture. A lot of people migrate to Newmarket, they see shows at The Stone Church. A lot migrate to Dover and see shows at The Brick House or The Barley Pub.”

Hamelin shares Blakeslee’s zeal for real life. “I hope there are a lot more kids that will invest in music, and come out and spread interest. We hope to give them something to do.” He refers to the Busk Till Dusk event in July, where more than 70 performers signed up to play throughout downtown Portsmouth on a Saturday afternoon, to remind people that the streets belong to musicians, too, and to draw attention to the diversity and talent of the local scene. “I like Portsmouth putting music in outdoor spots. I like to see it put in front of people. ‘Here’s live music that you can experience. Get off the couch, put your clicker down.’ That’s something that I say a lot.”

Says Mike Phillips—himself 28—“(What Portsmouth) needs is to get the younger people in their late teens and early 20s to be inspired. Be inspired by what is happening now, and to form a band and do what they’re doing. There’s enough room for every band to have a show four times a year. Which isn’t a lot, but still you find other shows around here that are smaller, maybe not at real venues.”

At house parties and basement shows, where people have space to accommodate about 20 people, they invite friends and often the public, into their homes to see homegrown and touring acts, often in noise or experimental genres. Two of the best known are the “Dirty Basement” on the Durham-Dover town line and the more recent addition of the “Chutney Flats” apartment on Brewster Street in Portsmouth.

“There aren’t a lot of venues that will have the kind of shows that basement shows typically are. And a lot of the basement shows bring young kids, too. Which is great,” Phillips says.

Thinking along the same lines is Patrick Bernard, who as DJ Beat Pervert hosts Scissor Test Tuesdays at The Red Door, a series oriented toward experimentation, and contributes a monthly music column to The Wire. When people are talking about the scene, they’re also talking about myriad smaller scenes that help construct the broader foundations of the music community. Bernard recognizes the financial interest behind some of the booking decisions, but wants to prove that edgier music can make money, too.

“Some of the bands that I see playing on the weekend, I’m not gonna lie, I think are god-awful. But then I see 60 or 70 people there really enjoying it. So I see why the venue’s doing it, but I’m so surprised that there’s no venue that, on a Friday or Saturday, will cater to the whole scene that gets overlooked. There’s a scene of people that would come out on a Friday or Saturday in droves to come see this band. I don’t think that (club bookers) realize that, maybe it’s a little bit weird, but they’re still gonna come out.”

He offers a suggestion. “I think there should be monthly, something on a Friday or Saturday, where they can showcase a lot of the bands that maybe would never get to play on a weekend. And then they might see, ‘Oh, the crowd came out now,’ and why? Because they finally got a chance to showcase them on a weekend, and they’re not relegated to a Tuesday once a month. I think that there are bands from Portsmouth that can play anywhere in the world and do well, they’re that good.”

There are others who agree the scene could benefit by taking more risks and offering a wider array of music. Jazz percussionist and composer Jose Duque moved to Portsmouth in 1997 after graduating from the Berklee School of Music in Boston. “I would like to know who’s the guy who started the concept of why jazz has to be on a Sunday, and why in a brunch. I just don’t understand why that is. Jazz is the quintessential American creation, and it’s so universal. It’s one of the things that is the biggest contribution from America to music, and it’s really, really understated here,” he says.

It’s not for lack of a jazz community. The Press Room recently celebrated 25 years of Sunday night jazz, and musician Tim Webb recently started two new online sites for networking, www.nejazzscene.com and www.avantcoast.com. Liz Parmalee says that when she booked jazz at Dover Soul, she unexpectedly tapped into an enthusiastic community.

“I couldn’t believe how many jazz musicians came out of the woodwork. Just the people who lived right here in Dover, I was amazed how many jazz musicians I could have playing at Dover Soul were contacting me, all the time, bringing different musicians in. People from UNH were coming in to play. There were just tons and tons of jazz musicians,” she says, gesturing wildly with her hands.

She describes her regret about not being able to continue booking jazz. “I got so many people thanking me for giving them opportunities to play at Dover Soul, and when the series kind of fell apart, I felt really guilty that now all these people were without a place to play. I felt really bad, and I would run into them on the street, and the first thing they would say was, ‘Thank you so much, we really appreciate it, thanks for giving us a place to play, thanks for looking out for us.’ That was good. That was probably the best part of booking.”

The scene isn’t divided just by genre, but also by age. Bob Halperin notes that those who seem to be coming out to shows and “paying attention in general” are under 30 or over 45.

Those in their 20s are consistently focused on getting younger people engaged with music the way Hamelin describes. The all-ages crowd doesn’t make money for club owners who rely on bar sales, but many musicians consider it crucial to reach out to this demographic, partly because teens are hungry consumers and partly because the musicians remember being that age themselves.

Says Blakeslee, “I know that when I was under 21 I would kill to get into any of the clubs and see my favorite bands. Even now, I have so many underage kids that ask me if I play any all-ages venues. And I’m like, ‘Where?’ I try to set up things here and there, but it’s little nibbles.”

The Dover Brick House often offers all-ages shows on Sunday afternoons. Since last fall, the Muddy River has gotten rid of 18+ shows, although the Stone Church still offers them. Beyond that, the only other real option for an all-ages show is at the Sad Café in Plaistow, a 40-minute drive from Portsmouth.

“That place is tough because you don’t get anything to play there; it all goes to the venue,” Blakeslee says. “But that’s a good space, too, for bands that are starting out. I’ve seen so many amazing high school bands play there. I had no idea who they were, then I heard them play and I’m like, ‘Holy crap!’ And they can bring in a crowd, too, because they’re thirsting to get out there to see music but there’s nowhere (for them) to see it.”

“All-ages shows are a pain in the butt,” admits Chris Otash of The Dover Brick House. “There are positives and negatives, but I feel the positives outweigh the negatives. Kids can go to the movies for $8, or they can see four bands for $8,” he says. “It’s a good outlet for people to come out and play, but it can be an eyesore for the other businesses if there’s 50 or 60 teenagers waiting outside at four in the afternoon. The (punk rock) kids aren’t bad kids, but they look like they’re causing trouble if there’s 50 of them. But we’re helping a lot of young bands get experience and exposure. We’re helping the community, and the younger bands bring all their friends, their 12-year-old brothers, and even their parents sometimes.”

He also hopes that it’s a good long-term plan, financially. “We’re training them to come to our bar when they turn 21. I want them to have a sense of ownership of this place, to be able to say, ‘I’ve been coming to shows here for a long time.’”

One of the biggest questions that arises for both downtown Portsmouth and Dover is the question of a mid-size venue, say a 500-seater. Residents often voice the wish that there were an outlet like Burlington’s Higher Ground or Portland’s State Theater. The Stone Church helps fill that bill, mixing up emerging acts such as New York City’s Benevento Russo Duo and Stoughton, Mass., resident Lori McKenna (Faith Hill recorded five of her songs) with established acts such as Leon Russell, Ralph Stanley and Hot Tuna. These types of bands would normally play urban venues in New York City, Philadelphia or Washington, D.C.

What they’re looking for, though, seems to be as much a spiritual center of the music community as a venue.

“The biggest problem with the music ‘scene’ here is that there’s no central location, there’s no clubhouse,” Laurel Brauns says. In addition to performing her own material in the area, Brauns hosts the Monday night Hush Hush Sweet Harlot songwriter series at The Red Door. “I’m not one to sit here and harp about how this town was such a better place when the Elvis Room was here, because I didn’t even live here then. And I don’t really care about talking about something that happened a long time ago,” she says.

“Let’s move forward, and think about what we’re gonna do. For a really long time, no one’s bit on the idea of opening up a club here. We need a club that’s big enough to fit 200 people, in walking distance of the Portsmouth area. And that’s what we need, period. Everyone keeps saying, ‘Dover is the next Portsmouth, blah blah blah.’ No. Portsmouth is Portsmouth.

Obviously things would be a lot better if these few towns were right next to each other, but they’re not, and we have to deal with the reality that it’s difficult for us to get there and them to get here. And it’s gonna be always hard.”

While her own music series can accommodate some mid-range touring solo artists, she says a larger space dedicated to music and art, a space such as The Space Gallery in Portland or AS220 in Providence, would address other needs. Among current Portsmouth venues, Bourbon’s at The Muddy River holds 124 people, The Press Room holds 89 upstairs, The Blue Mermaid seats 60, The Dolphin Striker 50, and The Red Door can pack 49.

“It could be a clubhouse for the scene. And the best part about it would be that it could be a place where all kinds of music can play. I think if you have a dedicated venue, that’s specifically for music and arts, that are alternative and not necessarily mainstream—or even mainstream, it doesn’t matter—then any kind of music can really fly there,” she says.

Liz Parmalee has been thinking along the same lines.

“I picture—this is sort of weird—but when I think about things and visualize it, I see the music scene as this big, huge mass of community and music,” she says. “And maybe not everyone is that great, but they’re good usually, and they’re good people, and there are some people in there that are really very good. And they’re all trying to fit through this little, teeny funnel that’s not quite supporting them, or weeding them out, or doing justice to their talent.”

Parmalee describes her visualization of the hierarchy of venues, with open-mike nights at the bottom, progressing to opening gigs, weeknights at bars, and so forth as one goes up. “Some people stay at open mikes the whole time. It’s kind of like musical Darwinism, if people can make it up the ladder or not. But it’s all very natural and organic. There should be, in a healthy music scene, a kind of pyramid, and there should be opportunities and venues and means for people to move up to, maybe at the top, there’s an East Coast tour, or a big show at a venue that we should have around here.

“Portsmouth is, in that sense, a pyramid with no top—all the groundwork is there, open mike nights, bars, midsize clubs, but there is no central big venue to aspire to play in, no one place where an act has the satisfaction of saying, “Wow, my band’s name is on a ticket!”

One place where this does happen is the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom, which holds 1,800 people seated and 2,200 standing, and is placed in the top 30 worldwide for ticket sales at venues under 3,000 seats. Over the last two years, local bands opening for touring acts have included Truffle, One Hand Free, Vegas Temper, Toussaint, Averi and Pondering Judd. But it’s completely up to the touring act whether there’s room for a local act on the bill.

“Years ago we always booked local bands to open for shows,” says Andy Herrick, director of marketing for the venue and drummer in the nationally touring band Assembly of Dust. “The trend now industry wide is that 90 percent of the artists who perform at our venue are bringing their own support. National artists that are with big agencies or record companies bring the agency or record company’s ‘baby bands’ so that they can get in front of larger crowds and establish some touring experience.”

The Music Hall in Portsmouth, the next largest venue in the area at 900 seats, brings high-end dance and music performances to downtown, along with a longstanding independent movie series on weekdays. Traditionally, the live shows they book draw more middle-age crowds and families, though there was a time in the early 1990s when a short-lived series brought breakout acts like Morphine and Ani DiFranco to Portsmouth. Partly in an effort to close that gap, they recently launched the Intimately Yours series to feature more mainstream popular stars. This summer Seu Jorge and Suzanne Vega performed there, to be followed this fall by Bruce Cockburn and Bruce Hornsby. In April, Laurel Brauns opened for Patty Larkin. Last week, Newmarket’s Dave Tronzo helped open for Vega.

Some local musicians feel that’s just not enough.

“Have another Sonic Assembly,” Michael Phillips says, referencing the 2000-2001 local music mini-festivals held at The Music Hall to raise money for another all-ages venue. “This venue should be used for what it was intended. You have the theater productions, you have the movie productions, but think of the Somerville Theater. They do movies, but they have bands there all the time, and they do stuff with The Middle East. Maybe do a, ‘Dover Brick House Presents,’ or ‘The Press Room Presents.’ ‘Somebody Presents’ a show that they didn’t know what to do with, and they brought it to the Portsmouth Music Hall. If somebody’s offering you a big show and you can’t do it because the guarantee’s too much, bring it to The Music Hall. People will go there.”

“If local bands want to play here, then contact us!” offers The Music Hall’s executive director Patricia Lynch. But she cautions that it’s a big undertaking, and Portsmouth’s demographic is not the same as Boston’s.

“We’re a 900-seat venue. If the bands can bring in at least 700 people who are willing to pay $25, then great. But it’s very different. If they usually play a 100-seat bar for $10 per person, then they’re gonna have a great show there. But there are many different kinds of venues for a reason. It has to be both economically and artistically feasible.”

Still, she’s open to the idea of collaborating with other area venues or individuals willing to take the financial risk. “Pick the act carefully. Pick a gathering point of energy, find some way to mitigate the risk. The RPM Challenge celebration (held in part at The Music Hall in March) was successful because it was a big collaboration. You need to find some way to signal that it’s a big event.”

As for the contention that The Music Hall could do more music and fewer movies, she says that it’s a matter of logistics.

“We do a lot of shows for a theater of this size. This is what’s known as a ‘hemp house’ with rope riggings, one of the few left in America. There are benefits and obstacles—it’s 1878 technology, so it’s slow to load and unload shows. Sometimes it takes a week if it’s complicated. We might have to do everything, the lights and rigging, and make all the adjustments by hand. Often we’ll do work all day setting up, and quit at six, then run a film. But I’ve never seen so full a schedule as this theater. We’re using every inch of the capacity.”

Some bigger acts have been brought to the area by Newmarket’s Stone Church, and, to a lesser extent, The Dover Brick House. Otash likes to be able to use a local band as an opener for a bigger act in the same genre. “A lot of the opening acts do just as well, or outshine the headliner. Maybe we’ll let that band headline sometime down the line. We also get lesser-known bands from out of town that will open for a big local band. Red Dragon from Philly were phenomenal. They opened for Soupbone Throne, even though they’re a headliner in Philly and other areas. Then they’ll do a tradeoff, and then in New York, where no one knows Soupbone Throne, they’ll open for Red Dragon.”

Hamelin works with the same philosophy at The Stone Church. In August 2004, just a few months before The Brick House opened, the much-storied and long-running Stone Church music club in Newmarket, which had nurtured acts like Phish, Soulive and Patty Larkin early in their careers, re-opened under new ownership after a two-year hiatus. With the high overhead, including things like a full set of stage lights and an in-house sound technician, Hamelin tries to hit the full capacity of 200 on weekend shows, and hopes for at least 75 to 100 people on a weekday. He, too, mixes local bands and touring headliners. When bands are at that level, he notes, the best thing to do is get out and play other markets.

“I hope that if a band is doing well locally, we can help them to spread their wings. …  Not to pump ourselves up, but The Stone Church is a prestigious gig to get. It’s a good launching pad, and a lot of people watch our schedule. If you play here, it helps you to start getting gigs in Portland or Burlington. We want to get the bands to think long-term.”

Ann Bryant hopes that she and her booking partner Lori Nolan can pick up some of the slack in Portsmouth with the Muddy River’s re-worked downstairs room, now called Bourbon’s.

“Touring bands going to Boston, Burlington, Buffalo, Portland, are gonna be in this area. And Portsmouth was a pitstop for a lot of national acts in a tiny room called The Elvis Room. I remember back in the day having national hardcore acts coming to the Elvis Room where it would be packed and you would have to buy your ticket ahead of time. That kind of attendance has not been seen since.”

Bryant hopes that the venues in the area can collaborate to try to accommodate more national acts, more often. “That kind of relationship between bookers and musicians, and (between) bookers and bookers, hasn’t been healthy enough to let that happen. I think that by opening up lines of communication, with (The Muddy River) working with The Brick House, working with The Press Room, working with The Red Door, all of the bookers in the area….  If we have an opportunity in this area to get a big band in here on a weekend, and we can’t fit them, you better believe we’re gonna be calling all the other bookers, trying to get this band in somewhere. Because we want to start getting that reputation, not just for ourselves but for the area.”

Conor Oberst put Omaha, Nebraska, (of all places) on the map, Nirvana did the same for Seattle and Wilco for Chicago’s indie rock scene. If a local band starts to do well regionally, it will reflect well on the Seacoast as a whole. And if one or two clubs start to blow up, everybody wins.

Musicians aren’t the only ones who want to see this happen. There’s also a community push to maintain this identity. A group of two dozen Seacoast venues recently banded together to promote this music scene as a cultural destination. Under the umbrella of the Seacoast Music Collaborative and with assistance from the Greater Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce, they won a matching grant from the state Division of Travel and Tourism to create a brochure that’s promoting the region as an entertainment destination. Representatives from The Music Hall, The Stone Church and The Wire helped get the project off the ground.

“A rising tide lifts all boats,” Peter Hamelin explains. “More music is good for everybody.” Or, as Bob Halperin puts it, “The more music there is in an area, the more people make that a target for their entertainment. A lot of the more savvy bar owners welcome competition.”

There’s more than identity and tradition at stake. In 2002, an independent organization confirmed that the Portsmouth nonprofit arts community overall contributed $26 million to the city’s economic activity just through their operations, more than double the other 20 cities of under 50,000 residents that were measured in the same study. The organization is in the midst of a new survey, which will include for-profit organizations like music venues.

In the meantime, the city of Portsmouth might also heed the growing perception that, despite marketing itself as an arts destination, the city is actually artist unfriendly.

“It’s funny, because there are a lot of, not only jazz musicians, but a lot of all types of artists on the Seacoast,” says Jose Duque. “With all the painters, sculptors and musicians, there’s a lot of creativity around. But there is really no support for it. I just wonder why that is, what is it that makes City Hall (not support art). Portsmouth, for example, has all these things calling it an ‘art town.’ Is it really? Is it really an art town? Are people really striving (to work) with artists? I don’t think so. People are moving away because they can’t afford to live there.”

Tim Emerson is a reserved and modest singer-guitarist who writes soft, intimate songs. On this topic, however, he’s got some steam to let out. “There’s some big, monetarily-powerful people in Portsmouth, a small group of people who own almost everything in Portsmouth. Which is just a scary thing. It feels like (the city) is open to all these different people who own all these places, but it takes a very high income in order for any of those places to stay in business and stay where they are. It’s basically an outdoor mall.”

He argues that a thriving music community, from street musicians on up, is vital to the appeal of Portsmouth.

When people call out for a middle-to-upper-size venue that loves music first and money second, a venue that welcomes crowds young and old, a venue that can bring in national acts as well as local musicians—in other words, the perfect venue—the ghost of the Elvis Room rises again and again.

“The Elvis Room belonged to Portsmouth; it belonged to this area. Which is why, when they were going under, people were like, ‘Let’s do everything we can to save the Elvis Room!’ From out of nowhere. People who went to shows, they felt like they had a stake in the place. There were a lot of issues with the close, but that little buzz, that little hum, is just sitting there,” Bryant says. “I keep waiting. I think that everyone’s been waiting for something for a long time.”

And that void is likely why the legend of The Elvis Room has lingered for so long, why people like Brauns and Parmalee who have moved to the area only after its closing still know about it, why kids perhaps too young to really remember it still miss it anyway.

Some, like Tim Emerson, are quick to point a finger at business interests. “I forget how many reasons why (the Elvis Room closed), but it doesn’t really seem to fit in the structure of Portsmouth anymore,” he says. “It was just too punk rock, you know? It’s not what the higher-ups want to see around Portsmouth anymore.

”Granted, a slew of bad press and troubling incidents plagued the club (and surely its neighbors) before its demise, including one in which a patron brandished a gun and another in which one of the club’s co-owners, Barbara Becht, was attacked.

Combine that with Portsmouth’s rising rents at that time and a small profit margin to begin with, and they had to close up shop, in spite of pleas from the clientele. Brauns is a realist, though—not a sentimentalist. “There are two camps. There are these people, and they’re in the city government just as much as they are among us, who are very excited about the arts and promoting them, not just as a thing that’s gonna help businesses make money, or bring tourists here, but because they genuinely, authentically believe in it. They want this to continue to be an artistic community. And yes, I think there also are more conservative business interests that are just interested in the bottom line. I don’t know. Probably the same forces that want to homogenize all of America,” she says, laughing.

She hopes, though, that someone will step up and continue to push on behalf of the arts. “Someone needs to take the bull by the horns. Maybe it’s gonna have to be me. Maybe it’s gonna take five people to form a little group to make that happen. It takes an incredible amount of energy to make something like that fly. I think the reason that some of the artists are hesitant to take something like that on is that it could become something that would completely overtake their lives. I can’t focus on cynicism, or else it makes me want to slit my wrists.”

She points to things beyond the closing of The Elvis Room as signs of the scene’s resilience. “Whether it be the shows at Brewster Street or the stuff at The Red Door, or Sparky’s series, those are all shifts in the right direction. As far as I’m concerned, those are all paradigm shifts. The town isn’t handing us the scene on a silver platter—we have to do it ourselves,” she says. “And I think that makes the community a lot stronger.”

To those like Brauns, perhaps words from the woman who built the legend can inspire action. Dawn-Marie Pierre, founder of The Elvis Room, offers this. “If people are still talking about (The Elvis Room) seven years later, doesn’t that say something? When I came to Portsmouth, there was a void. I always wanted to open a place, and someone asked me, ‘What’s stopping you?’ Five months later, it was open. I was on a mission. It’s not easy, it’s not for everyone, but for me, it was always about following your vision, following your bliss, showing you wouldn’t waver. Rent is expensive, finding a space is hard, but this is the way it is. How can I look at this without seeing it as obstacles? If there was ever a day I didn’t want to deal with the problems, then I wouldn’t have wanted to be there. Go a step further. Just don’t give up.”