Room to Rock
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In 1999, after more than 16 years of promoting shows at a laundry list of local clubs as well as with the behemoth Jam Productions, Duffy had had enough of the freelance grind, and began working as a sound engineer for live shows. “I didn’t have to make decisions, I didn’t have to put my money on the line, and I didn’t have to worry about someone taking my show, but I was still involved with music,” he says. Last summer his wife, Lidia, noticed a help-wanted ad in the Reader soliciting a production assistant and talent buyer for the Abbey. “She said, ‘Look, this is what you do!’ And I gave her the whole ‘Any job worth having in this business isn’t going to be advertised in the Reader.’ It sat for a week on the couch and one morning I kept looking at it, and I felt a little guilty, so I put a call in.” After a number of meetings with Abbey owner Pat Looney, Duffy took the job.
These days there’s a well-established touring circuit for punk bands, thanks to full-time all-ages spaces like the Fireside Bowl, but in the early 80s, most established clubs shied away from punk bands. Promoters like Duffy were always on the lookout for potential venues, and after the 950 he moved on to the West End, the tiny club at the corner of Racine and Armitage that eventually employed future Lounge Ax owner Sue Miller as talent buyer. By 1984 he was booking shows at Exit–including the Fall, Ministry, and Big Black, when Jeff Pezzati was still playing bass in the band–and Smart Bar and Metro. His dealings with Metro came to an end in 1986, after a notorious gig with D.O.A. and Firehose; the show went fine, but when the crowd spilled out onto Clark Street afterward, a fight erupted between some punks and some neo-Nazi skinheads. From there Duffy moved on to the juice bar Medusa’s and the Cubby Bear, where Miller had also recently moved, and by 1989 he was focusing on Dreamerz in Wicker Park, where he booked Gwar, the Butthole Surfers, and the first local shows by Fugazi and Nirvana.
A new rock club is scheduled to open in the space adjacent to Tommy Nevin’s Pub on April 20, becoming the first such venue in Evanston. Nevin’s Live is owned, not surprisingly, by the Clean Plate Club, which operates the Evanston restaurants Pete Miller’s Steakhouse, Davis Street Fishmarket, and Merle’s Smokehouse, as well as Tommy Nevin’s. The talent buyer, Mitch Marlow, who has managed Kingsize Sound Labs for the last three and a half years, promises an “eclectic mix within the pop-rock realm,” citing the late Lounge Ax as a model.
