Help Us Determine the Future of Music at the Table - Jazz Night Once A Month?
Table Music
Now here’s a quandary for you. 
Many of you remember the Bethany Grill. That location, now home to Bethany Physical Therapy, went through a few restaurant operators over the years. Many of our customers counted the owner, Les, as a friend and still lament his moving on. The Grill’s restaurant never seemed to thrive but the bar seemingly did well. There was often live music there and, when we first started our business, we‘d often lounge in our empty dining room listening to the whooping and hollering across the parking lot.And then our business got better. We would fill up on Friday night, but Saturday was often slow. Even Thursday was better than Saturday. We speculated that the locals weren’t dining Saturday because they wanted something to do on “date night” in addition to just going out to dinner. If you go downtown you can hit Huber’s for a Spanish coffee, or Papa Hayden’s for dessert after dinner. Or maybe take in a movie… but what are you going to do in Bethany? “Ah ha!” we said. Let’s have live music. It worked for Les, and folks tell us how they miss that scene. Well, we should have made those folks pay in advance because they have stayed away in droves. What’s with that?It breaks my heart to have the great talent come to the Table and play to a nearly empty room. We feel bad for the musicians. Terry Robb is a perennial national champion finger picker and blues musician. Where were you when he played here… twice? Sorry you missed it. We’re OK with the cash investment if the strategy is working – though come Christmas we’d rather have had the $1,000 per month outlay. It’s disheartening to have talented musicians playing quality music with authenticity… to nobody.While it’s true that folks haven’t shown up for the music, Saturdays have turned around and become fairly busy. There is a lot to be said for energizing one’s desires with focused intention. Often we are able to produce the desired outcomes even though they don’t seem to correlate to our actions.What should we do? We’ve just about decided to give up. This location sucks as a regional destination. To the broader marketplace it more or less does not exist. At least the Mad Greek can declare its location as 185th and West Union and be easily located. But we rock as a neighborhood hangout. It’s a numbers game. Think about it: zip 97229 has about 45,000 residents, maybe 20% of those are Indian with a finite affection for blues and jazz, a fair-sized segment of the population are seniors with early bedtimes and poor night driving skills, and many more are families with young children. For now we are going to set aside our plan to reliably provide entertainment every Saturday and replace it with an intention to offer music less frequently but with more focused promotion. 
I’ve known Dan Balmer for a long time – he played with George Mitchell on Saturday, February 5th and it was a smash success. Dan will be back on the 19th with an acoustic bass player to serenade us during the Tamarack Cellars Winemakers Dinner.) Dan has a strong local following, plays jazz guitar regularly at Jimmy Maks, has recently toured internationally with Dianne Schurr, and plays in the professional ranks with many top names. George Mitchell has been Diana Ross’ keyboard player for over 25 years, played with a number of jazz greats and has done Letterman, Oprah and The Tonight Show. This level of talent really brought out the crowd. It's a great room for live music and folks really enjoyed the up-close view and hanging out with Dan and george at the Big Table during breaks and after the show.So. Here it is. If you want to have music at the Table, give me a sign. Show up and speak up. If not, that’s OK too. We’ll stop. A simpler life is well recommended. Our biography here has always been a dance between consistency and flexibility. We don’t want to be willy-nilly, but neither do we want to be doggedly foisting answers at folks with no questions. You be the judge. Please treat yourself to what might be the best gig in town that night. And feel free to add your voice to the conversation by commenting below.