Cultural critic Ted Gioia has gained a great deal of consideration lately along with his gimlet-eyed views of up to date tradition. In a usually jaundiced evaluation final Could he charged that “in the 21st century, creative stagnation is aggressively promoted by entertainment and culture businesses.”
However Gioia is hardly a pessimist, focusing equally on the lengthy view and the cyclical nature of cultural innovation and decline. In a latest column on his Substack “The Honest Broker” he highlighted a countervailing drive girding humanity in opposition to the torrent of formulaic pablum.
“When people hear music in a group setting their brainwaves start to synchronize,” he writes. “The body also releases the hormone oxytocin, which makes them more trusting and willing to bond together. That’s why so many couples, over the course of centuries, have discovered their romantic attraction at a dance or nightclub.”
I learn this column, titled “The Glorious Future of Live Music,” a number of days after speaking with Dan Vado in regards to the imminent closure of his San Jose membership the Artwork Boutiki. It struck me that the unhappy corollary to Gioia’s celebration of the singular energy of music to carry folks collectively is the truth that musicians want amenable areas to work their alchemy.
Music’s future appears a complete lot much less wonderful within the South Bay with the Artwork Boutiki’s final gig on New Yr’s Eve marking the lack of irreplaceable venue the place jazz acts, rock bands and singer/songwriters have communed with listeners whereas audiences related with one another.
In a dialog that sometimes turned emotional, Vado described the troublesome resolution to shutter the Artwork Boutiki, which moved to its present location in 2013. He singled out the double whammy of skinny post-pandemic audiences and inflation for forcing his hand.
“Attendance at shows is down 20 percent this past year,” he mentioned. “Expenses have been up even more, most dramatically the utilities. In the summer we have to run the air conditioning and it was costing $3,000 a month. More than once we did GoFundMes just to stay open through the end of the year.”
Describing the Artwork Boutiki as a labor of affection doesn’t fairly seize the character of the enterprise. The venue has been a household venture from the beginning. His spouse, Michelle Vado, is readily available most reveals working on the café.
His older son, Dustin Vado, arrange the sound system and might normally be discovered working the membership’s sound board. And his youthful son, drummer and vibraphonist Dillon Vado, has been an everyday on the venue with numerous combos, most lately Coronary heart Issues, his collaboration with San Jose-reared vocalist Amy D.
“It’s been a DIY family effort,” Dan Vado mentioned. “Our space is perfect for midsized touring jazz bands, but whether it’s punk show one day or jazz show the next day people come away saying it’s the best sounding venue.”
In some ways the Artwork Boutiki exemplifies the outsized function performed by impartial venues, which disproportionately present area for native artists and touring acts that may not match neatly into genre-specific golf equipment. San Jose drummer Wally Schnalle, who lately performed a sold-out Artwork Boutiki double invoice along with his fusion band Fool Fish and the prog jazz combo Raze the Maze, famous that the venue’s closing “will leave a cultural void in San Jose.”
Working in quite a lot of musical settings, San Jose drummer Gabby Horlick has thrived on the Artwork Boutiki, one of many few areas within the space able to internet hosting her seventh Road Large Band, which performs a closing gig on the venue Dec. 7.
“It’s the venue we played at the most by far since we launched 12 years ago,” she mentioned. “There are not a lot of stages we fit on, other than the Tabard Theatre, which closed in 2023. Nothing compares to it. For local bands, they make you feel like a professional with a nice stage, good lighting and unmatched sound.”
Horlick additionally leads the Sick Ones, which she first assembled for a one-off cowl present. However the band developed into one thing of an Artwork Boutiki home band with quarterly reveals dedicated to themes like “country music, low-rider oldies, and No Doubt’s ‘Tragic Kingdom,’” she mentioned.
Booked for New Yr’s Eve, “we get to be the last band to play the Art Boutiki,” Horlick mentioned. “We’re reprising shortened versions of all those themes, and Dan’s going to sit in with the band to sing on one of them.”
Vado launched the Artwork Boutiki as a showcase for comedian books printed by his Slave Labor Graphics. Fittingly he turns the venue’s closing Drink and Draw session Dec. 18 right into a guide launch occasion for his concise however Proustian memoir, “My Diecast Life.” It’s a sequence of vignettes sparked by recollections of taking part in with Scorching Wheels and different diecast automobiles he rediscovered within the attic of his childhood dwelling.
The Artwork Boutiki would already be a reminiscence however for Vado’s willpower to not cancel any beforehand scheduled gigs. The prospect of a white-knight music fan driving in to avoid wasting the day appears to have flickered and light.
“We made an announcement early hoping that someone would come and say we’d like to take over,” Vado mentioned. “But when they look at the details they see it’s probably not a good idea.”
In a notoriously troublesome enterprise, Vado leaves the sector after sowing numerous encounters between artists and audiences, experiences that can proceed to resonate for a very long time.
