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As one of the premier venues on the East Coast, D.C.'s 9:30 Club has won the Billboard Touring Awards "Top Club" honor every year from 2007 to 2011, with the exception of 2008. Many acts have taken the stage, but one of the most memorable recent performances was Kendrick Lamar's first official D.C> show last August, courtesy of DC to BC and The Great Progression.
The Atlantic Plumbing building at 8th and V is getting torn down and built back up again by The JBG Companies. They've retained architect Morris Adjmi from New York City to build not only a 310-unit apartment building at that site (the orange building with a criss-cross design), but also a smaller 65-unit building pictured at the foreground of the rendering. The smaller building might go condo or rental, but the big building will definitely be rentals on top with a ground floor presence that is sure to excite the people who who frequent the 9:30 Club right next door. One section of the ground floor will be devoted to a six-screen indie movie theater and another part is reserved for art studios that will likely be subsidized (so artists can actually afford them). There is also some extra space for more retail that could possibly include a bar or restaurant. All that is to be decided, but for now, let's dig into what they know for sure.
"It is very large," says architect Morris Adjmi of the 310-unit building, "and we tried to be really careful about creating something that had a very human scale on the ground. We're going to reclaim the bricks [from The Atlantic Plumbing building] to use on the ground level. That makes sense for a lot of reasons, one it is good to recycle and it is something that was of the site, but also the scale of the bricks and the size of them really work at the ground level."
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This photo comes courtesy of the Washingtoniana Division of the D.C. Public Library, and I can’t stop staring at it. It’s the building at 815 V St. NW that would eventually become the 9:30 Club. But in 1948, it was Duke Ellington’s.
According to library records, Ellington was one of the club’s co-owners. The structure was built in 1946 and looks virtually identical today, down to the location and contrasting color of the club’s box office windows. Only the broadcast antenna that serves as a reminder of the building’s years as the home of WUST-AM 1120 appears absent, a later addition.
The city selected a new operator for the troubled Lincoln Theatre back in April, and now, finally, we know who it is. I.M.P. Productions, the company that owns the 9:30 Club and books Merriweather Post Pavilion, will take over booking at the U Street NW venue beginning in September, the mayor's office announced this afternoon.
The Lincoln, a historic music venue and former movie house, is owned by the city, which took direct control of the theater's operations in 2012 following years of shaky finances and inconsistent booking by a nonprofit. While it's been run by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, not much has gone on at the Lincoln, but the agency has been pursuing a for-profit operator for the venue since December.
I.M.P. has booked shows at the 1,225-seat theater before, including sold-out stands by Jeff Tweedy in 2010 and Jeff Mangum in 2012. I.M.P. chair Seth Hurwitz wasn't available to talk this afternoon—he's on an airplane, he says in an email—but says this in the press release:
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From 1991 to 2013, local bands called booking manager Lisa White when they wanted a show at 9:30 Club—and when they were pissed about not getting one. Working with primary booker and club co-owner Seth Hurwitz, White booked a lot of the bands that opened for big acts at the venue. She had the right background for it: She'd spent part of the 1980s as a freelance booker in town, putting bands in tiny clubs like dc space and BBQ Iguana. Small was her specialty.
White started booking the 9:30 Club when it was still a "wonderful rat-infested hellhole," as she puts it, on F Street NW, and she stayed on when the venue moved to its much roomier space on V Street NW in 1996. As 9:30 Club owner I.M.P. broadened its reach across the region, White put bands in other rooms that the company became involved in, like Republic Gardens, Fletcher's in Baltimore, and U Street Music Hall.
White left 9:30 Club last year after what she calls her last hurrah—the Funk-Ounk Throwback Jam in February. By that point, she'd already been living part-time in Austin for several years, and she badly needed a break from work. After she took as much time off as she could afford, White jumped right back into booking, but on a smaller scale. Now she finds bands for Gypsy Sally's, the small and still-new Americana venue in Georgetown.
White recently spoke to Washington City Paper about her new gig, the difficulties of booking small local bands at 9:30 Club, and why she'd never work for a massive entity like Live Nation.
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