Why was the stage at Little Brother’s so damn high?

We didn’t set out to have a four-foot high stage. We had designed it at 3’4″ to accommodate some really big bass cabinets without those monsters touching the stage-top’s bottom and causing sound-reinforcement nightmares. But the fire inspector said we needed a foot between the cabs and the stage. We reminded him that the wires were passive, but he insisted that the code said there had to be one foot between them, so we complied.

Now, the down side was that the performers were farther away, thus shows felt less intimate. But on the nights that we sold lots of tickets, you could see from way in the back. And man, did it cut down on stage diving.

And the top question I find myself asked everywhere I go is… “Why were you on Judge Judy?”

Actually, it’s “why did you close?”*

I believe that the end began with my intent to sell Little Brother’s to two serious, fun-loving music fans from out of town. One guy had worked for an agency and been a live music promoter in college. The other had been a touring musician that played Little Brother’s with a band that was popular on CD101.

I personally felt out of gas, trying to keep up with crowds half my age that were interested in music I only half cared about. I often said “I’ve seen this movie before and I liked it better the first two times.” I didn’t dislike the the bands or the kids coming to shows, I just didn’t love them the way I had before.

These buyers had the love, desire, enthusiasm, and just enough money to seal the deal. Although a purchase agreement was drawn up by my attorney in fall of 2006, it was contingent on them being able to buy the building too.

My personal Simon Legree – the Short North landlord that owned the building (having purchased it three years into my tenantcy) – began the so-called “negotiation” thusly: “you buy this and the next building for $x,000,000 and we have a deal.” They were so put off by the man’s arrogance that they dropped the deal and ended up buying an old theater in Madison,Wisconsin. Back to my reality I went.

I found myself without a lease, a constantly changing market and less desire than ever to do my job. I negotiated a new one that would have increased my rent 15 percent over three years and was told that the paperwork would be sent. Weeks passed without a word. I never spoke to or heard from him again.

I was contacted by his attorney, the kind that makes people tell lawyer jokes, but he wasn’t funny and he sure wasn’t joking. He told me smugly how much he loved “women’s music” (foreshadowing the lesbian business they were lining up to take over the room?) and asked if I would leave peacefully or if they would have to throw me out. He asked me for back rent, though I didn’t owe back rent, only taxes and insurance on the property, which we’d struggled to pay every year since the landlord took over the building and added it to our expenses, but we’d always caught up on them as soon as we were able.

It has been good to have a break for the last couple of years and to have plenty of time to spend time with my son, away from the double insanity of the bar and music business. Perhaps I should thank the man. On second thought, maybe not.

Any more questions?

* We also released a lot of details about this situation in 2007 and 2008 at littlebrothers.com if you’re interested in more of the back story.

Question: Why did you move from the “Olde North” (2404 N. High St.) to the longer portion of the Short North?

Answer: Humpty Dumpty didn’t jump, he was pushed.  George Sicaris, my first and favorite Greek landlord was told by the city to fix up the buildings housing us and Monkey’s Retreat, or tear them down. (They were falling down together.) He opted for the latter option and erect a strip mall.

To George’s credit, he gave me $5,000 and a year’s head start to move on. We were offered the use of a great building (1100 N. High St.) that was originally a library with a beautiful edifice. I used to admire it back in my cab-drivin’ days, while sitting across the street at the then Big Bear grocery (now Family Dollar)

Question: Why did you change the name when you moved? (Probably my most-asked question.)

Answer: Stache’s was officially Stache and Little Brother’s from the time that it opened. The original Stache was Jim, who had a moustache. His co-owner, Kenny, was short, thus nicknamed “little brother.” After Little Brother’s opened, I ran into his wife at the grocery store, who said she was so glad he was finally getting some credit.

My reasons for using it were several. One, I had been a little brother growing up and had used “Little Brother Presents” when promoting shows at other places, like the Newport or Alrosa Villa. Plus, also, too (to borrow a Scrawl album title), my older, shorter brother, Terry Dougan, who died suddenly in 1991, was a fan of the club. His last words to me were “see you at NRBQ” (at Stache’s). I know I felt his spirit there whenever they played Little Brother’s, and whenever someone covered a John Prine song.

On an ordinary weekday in 1987, a large man with a bullhorn and a thick Russian-Israeli accent blocked traffic at the corner of 15th and High Street, the busiest corner on the Ohio State University campus. He bellowed out to students and other passers-by, “All the way from England: Badfinger! Very good band! Tonight only at Stache and Little Brother’s, 2404 North High!”

He passed out fliers and harangued people for several hours, using his bullhorn at point-blank range. He then went mobile in a beat-up luxury sedan, continuing to promote Paul McCartney’s favorite band with his electronic megaphone up and down the High Street drag.

The man was Pete Herman, the owner of Stache’s for nearly two years, and a black cloud on the Columbus Music Scene.

During Pete’s tenure, Curt Schieber continued to promote shows at the club as “No Other Presents” while running Schoolkids Records. These shows included acts that came from England, France, Germany and all over the globe. Joey Molland, the principal remaining member of Badfinger, though from England, was living in Columbus at the time.

Curt, in fact, saved Stache’s with his shows while Pete constantly alienated customers with his bizarre behavior and desire to change the club.

Before buying Stache’s, Pete had worked in a topless joint where he became familiar with laws that forbade patrons from touching the dancers. The fact that this was specific to strip clubs was lost on him. Ray Fuller, a staple of the local blues scene, played the room regularly. When couples would get up to slow dance during one of his ballads, Pete, worried about losing his liquor license, would physically separate them, reprimanding them with a stern “NO TOUCHING!”

At closing time, he would parade around the room, armed with a golf club and his signature bullhorn, barking “By order of the police, you must leave the building!” He proudly boasted of once using that golf club on a woman who was sitting on a man’s lap and “playing with his schmekel.”

He refused to allow bands to play music over the PA between sets, insisting that people put money into the jukebox. And he would often berate them into playing Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley, music he “understood.”

He made sure that customers were clear that he didn’t understand much of the music Curt or other local promoters brought in. When customers called to find out who was playing, he would oddly proclaim, “Pretty Boy Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, Pussy Galore and Booty Looty Mutha Fucker!” The last band, he claimed, was “Rock Hudson’s House Band” – his homophobic humor coming through.  He would also often tell people “you want to know who’s playing? You come down and find out for yourself.” From time to time, booking agents our touring acts would call, interested in playing the club, and they would be received in the same warm manner as the customers.

My purchase of Stache’s began when I asked him at a sold out Marshall Crenshaw show to put a little gin in my gin and tonic. “Smile,” I said. “At least you’re making money tonight.”

He snapped back “You think I’m  making money? You buy the goddamned place!”

I said “How much?”

He said “What you give me?”

I shot a number at him and he said “you give me $X as down payment and we will do it.”

I stepped outside to catch my breath, and saw the neon sign in the window of Dick’s Den across the street: “Why not?”

Just then, my friend Dave Dornbach walked by and I said, “hey Dave, didn’t you just buy a bar in Cleveland?”

He said yes.

“I think I just bought this one,” I told him.

It took another six months to get Pete to agree to my original figure on paper.

Months after I took over and Pete was gone, I got a signage fee bill from the City of Columbus, which claimed the new name of my bar was “Mississippi Lunch.”

It seems that Pete had, for one brief weekend, gotten tired of “punk rock barbarians” and tried to change Stache’s into a disco with go-go girls.  The name of this establishment was to be “Mississippi Lounge,” but when he phoned in the name change, the person on the other end heard “lunch” instead of “lounge.”

It cost $40 more to change it back to Stache and Little Brother’s.

To his credit, he was a pretty easy act to follow.

By the end of song one, he was bleeding from self-inflicted beer bottle gashes, had hurt our friend Liz with a mic stand, shattered an overhead light fixture and fan and chased all but nine of the 150 ticket-buyers outside to watch through the windows.

Five people hid behind the pool table, while local musician Bill Bruner and one other brave soul sat on the sidelines, within spitting distance.

I had booked them as a last minute fill-in on a Friday night. GG’s reputation was a scary one of self-mutilation, destruction, sexual and scatological antics and the claim that he would, at some unknown date and location, take his own life on stage.  They had played Columbus before at a private party, and I had heard about the mayhem they unleashed.

I didn’t want to book them, but my bar needed the biz, and I knew that the voyeuristic appeal of GG’s performance would draw a crowd. When his bass player called and said that they just needed some gas money to get to Florida for a much more lucrative gig, he insisted and promised that they would keep it tame. Soundman Curt Tuckerman, who had seen them on their first time through, concurred that by comparison, it was.

I had thought, out loud, while standing back by the soundboard, that maybe I should stop the show, but Curt insisted it would end quickly, and it did. The whole thing might have lasted 17 minutes, with the last five spent on a cover of the Stones’ “Dead Flowers” by a lonely nude GG sitting on a table, having just given up on trying to poop on the microphone, complete with facial constipation.

During my first years at Stache’s, I took it personally that some (especially punk rock and jam band) musicians saw and treated me as “the man,” when I thought of myself as a member of the counterculture.  I eventually (in most cases) accepted my role as the local ogre/promoter/cluboner.

To me, the most amazing aspect of this crazy experience was that GG’s anger was directed at the crowd and the support act (Razr), not at the bar or me. He yelled at the audience that they were poseurs and literally frightened them out of the room, hurling bodily fluids and gear. There was no protest when I deducted the cost of the damages  (about 25 percent of their pay), but I did end up with an empty bar at midnight on a Friday.

Postscript: Several months after playing Stache’s, Allin was convicted of assaulting a female acquaintance and spent more than a year in prison. When he got out, he started making the rounds on talk show circuses like Jerry Springer and Geraldo. He died of a drug overdose in 1993.