Detail of a cartoon found hanging at the 528 Club. Musicians, take heed.
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Walking out of the 528 Club, Heath Spencer Philip knew he'd never sing there again. Before he and his backup band, comprising some of Guy Schwartz's New Jack Hippies, had arrived at the club on this November night, expectations were high. Philip, a young, tremendous blues singer with a voice more booming than a jet engine's roar, was breaking out of his homebody mold. Monthly gigs to underage Kool-Aid sippers would be no more. Philip was putting himself out there. Schwartz, veteran songwriter and Reuben Kincaid to Philip's Keith Partridge, has said of the extremely talented Philip: "He's a low-shooter." A performance at 528, where patrons had actually lobbied for Philip, would be the beginning of more frequent gigging. It should have been a coming-out party.
In reality, it was like hell night at a TKE frat house. Those same patrons, high on Philip, were probably the ones who either up and left the moment Philip began singing or twisted their lips and shrugged their shoulders in disappointment the moment he began attracting the unwanted attention of the bar's owner, Leonard Shifflett.
"I recommend all musicians play [the 528]," says Schwartz, who has been performing live for more than 20 years. "You get thicker skins. And at least [this club] will pay you and not try to hurt you."
Down Jones Road, lined with pharmacies, supermarkets and car washes, and past the intersection of FM 1960, is a one-story mini-mall where the 528 occupies 3,000 square feet of one end. Inside the club are the usual testosterone-heavy accoutrements: a relatively flat pool table, dart boards, a shuffle-bowling lane and enough beer posters of bimbos in bikinis to make a mechanic feel at garage. The ceiling is low, and the stage faces out from the southeast corner toward the bar, which nearly splits the place in two.
Before and during Philip's performance, Shifflett stood outside grilling steaks for customers. His cooking apron and tongs, however, didn't stop him from making appearances in front of the band. His problem: the volume.
"I asked them 12 times to cut it down," says Shifflett, who has owned the club since 1997. "People were leaving. And I said, 'I asked ya to keep it low.' They'd do it for 30 seconds and get loud again. That's when I got aggravated.
"The building was shaking. I'm not abrasive. I wasn't yelling....[Booking agent/bartender] Pete may have yelled at them from the bar to turn it down. I normally tell the people who work for me to turn it down, but when I have to get involved..."
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to. His intimidating point had been made.
Schwartz says the performance overall generated little response, good or bad, from the customers, which were about 50 strong at the time Philip hit his first couple notes around 8 p.m. Philip says he and the band were approached by Shifflett after the third song. "I knew we were in trouble."
Schwartz says once the band resumed playing, it tried to bow to Shifflett's wishes. The band's guitarist played with his electric instrument unplugged. Its only amplification came from a microphone. "I've played everything," says Schwartz, "but I never played a song quieter. It was almost sarcastic. [Shifflett] was still screaming. We were bewildered." Says Philip: "Madonna on the jukebox was louder."
After hours of tug-of-war between the band and Shifflett, Philip ended the gig around midnight. Schwartz agreed it was the right thing to do. The crowd had thinned considerably. As the band packed up its equipment, Schwartz says, he approached Shifflett at the bar and told the owner no payment was necessary. "I said, 'It's obvious you don't want us to continue playing. We don't care if we don't get paid. We know you're not happy.' " To Schwartz's surprise, Shifflett paid the band as agreed.
On his way out, Schwartz noticed a sheet of paper tacked onto a bulletin board near the door. On it was a cartoon of a man, hiding behind a tree with a guitar strapped around his shoulders, and another, presumably Shifflett, standing with a briefcase of "528 stuff" in one hand and an ax in the other. A caption reads: "hunting season." "It wasn't just us," says Schwartz, almost relieved.
Joe Finley, a one-man karaoke performer, has played the 528 a few times over the years. He says Shifflett is an agreeable guy. "Len expects honesty," he says. "He expects a certain show....If a guy says he's gonna perform blues, rock and country and only performs blues, he'll get upset."
On that point, Philip says, he had dropped off one of his CDs during the courting process. Whether it was listened to remains a mystery. "They knew what I was about," he says. "We can get loud."
The moral of the story? Scout your local terrain before you dive into it. "It probably would've been a good show," says Shifflett. "It was just too damn loud."
Band Jam
Though competition isn't necessarily a forum for creative genius, the folk at SideCar Pub still like pitting local musicians against each other occasionally. What do the alpha bands stand to gain? Gift certificates, ranging from $200 to $500, to Evans Music City.
