`Sue is a true rocker,” says Mac McCaughan of North Carolina band Superchunk, referring to Sue Miller, who with Julia Adams owns the Lincoln Avenue rock club Lounge Ax. “The first time we ever played at Lounge Ax, she was in attendance, but unlike other times, she was wearing her pajamas because she was barely out of the recovery room following open-heart surgery. It’s kind of fuzzy, but I think she was pulling a little IV bag around with her, I’m not sure. I am sure that she was showing everyone her big, recent scar. I’ll never forget that scar.”
Miller, cradling her infant son Spencer in the apartment above her club, offers a slight correction when the anecdote is mentioned to her: “I was in my pajamas, but there was no IV bottle,” she says. “I was still bandaged up and swollen a few days after the surgery” on New Year’s Day 1991.
Why was she back so soon? Miller nuzzles her baby and states the obvious: “I just love this place.”
Many bands and fans feel the same way. McCaughan’s reminiscence is contained in the liner notes to the recently released “The Lounge Ax Defense and Relocation Compact Disc” (Touch & Go), on which 14 leading-light underground rock bands, from the Jesus Lizard and the Mekons to Sebadoh and Guided by Voices, contribute songs for the express purpose of bailing out Miller and Adams, whose club has been teetering on the brink of extinction for the last year. In addition, 11 bands will perform during an extraordinary three-night benefit concert this weekend at the Congress Theater, 2135 N. Milwaukee Ave., to help the cash-strapped club finance a move to a more hospitable neighborhood.
After opening in 1987, Lounge Ax thrived amid a Lincoln Avenue strip of clubs, cafes, bookshops and record stores that was Ground Zero for the city’s bohemian arts community. But all that has changed in recent years. Across from Lounge Ax, the Biograph Theater has turned from an art house into a mainstream multiplex cinema and neighboring institutions such as mainstream multiplex cinema and neighboring institutions such as Orphans, Guild Books and Wax Trax have moved or shut down. In a neighborhood that is becoming pricier and more gentrified by the month, Lounge Ax is increasingly becoming an unwanted outsider.
It is a plight faced by countless clubs caught in community transition games every year, and most fade into oblivion. Last summer, it appeared to be Lounge Ax’s turn. A new resident of a condominium high-rise behind the club complained to Miller and Adams about noise. (Which prompts the question of why anyone sensitive to noise would even consider moving into one of the city’s busiest commercial zones, the intersection of Lincoln Avenue, Fullerton Avenue and Halsted Street, where Lounge Ax has been operating virtually complaint-free for the last nine years.)
The owners responded by pouring thousands of dollars into sound buffering at the back of the club, but it wasn’t enough. The neighbor pressed his complaint at City Hall, and Adams and Miller were called to a meeting with Winston Mardis, director of the city’s License Commission. There they were told that the club was operating under an outmoded music and dance license instead of the public place of amusement license required by a 1993 city ordinance.
The ordinance applies to clubs that advertise live music and stipulates that these venues must have special zoning and adjacent parking–neither of which Lounge Ax has. Part of an effort by Mayor Richard Daley to address the impact that bars and clubs have on the communities around them, the ordinance, if followed to the letter, would result in the shutdown of 700 clubs citywide, according to City Hall sources.
Bureaucratic hassles
For several weeks last summer, police began issuing tickets nightly to Lounge Ax for operating with an improper license, despite the club’s fine standing within the community and blemish-free criminal record. But when the club owners showed up for a court hearing, their case was continued and police stopped writing tickets, while a City Council committee and the mayor’s office began to re-examine the ordinance and its potential consequences. Adams says that even the noise complaints have stopped, but that the reprieve from last summer’s hassles is only temporary; Lounge Ax’s 10-year lease expires next summer, and then the club will almost certainly have to move.
“We expect the rent to go up considerably, and we don’t really fit in here anymore anyway,” Adams says. “This has become a neighborhood of guys with big necks drinking beers and they’re not very tolerant of people who look different from them.”
Miller and Adams have gone shopping for a new space, but they realize it’s a futile exercise unless they attract an investor or win the lottery. Quite simply, no one gets rich booking underground rock bands six nights a week, and attorney fees and sound improvements have further drained the Lounge Ax till. But all that could change in coming weeks.
The benefit CD, released by Chicago-based Touch & Go Records, has sold more than 10,000 copies, says label spokesman Scott Giampano, which should bring tens of thousands of dollars to the club.
“It’s doing better than expected, in part because a lot of people are getting behind it, and not just from Chicago,” Giampano says. “We’ve gotten a lot of free advertising space for it from magazines, and gotten some news coverage and reviews in national magazines. It’s a small club, but people who are wired (into the underground scene and touring circuit) know about it. It’s the kind of club that has a great word-of-mouth reputation, and we actually had many more bands who wanted to be on the CD than we knew what to do with.”
The list of quality bands on the CD–all contributing songs that they had not released anywhere else–left Miller reeling. “The shock of the record for me was that it didn’t matter who we were–it was going to sell because the bands on it are so good,” she says. “I’m an overly emotional person anyway, and it was just heartwarming and moving to me when Touch & Go did this.”
A helping hand
She and Adams are equally stunned by the show of support generated by this weekend’s benefit concert. But the concert’s organizer, Heather Catherine Whinna, says the 11 bands were eager to lend a hand, and that many other artists, including Kim Deal and Tortoise, wanted to participate but couldn’t because of scheduling conflicts. As it is, Whinna has assembled a strong lineup with a distinctively different flavor on each night.
Friday: Poi Dog Pondering, the Drovers, Robbie Fulks. Saturday: Shellac, Gastr del Sol, The For Carnation, Dianogah. Sunday: Yo La Tengo, Eleventh Dream Day, Seam, Red Red Meat. It’s arguably the finest single weekend of local indie-rock bands (the sole out-of-town ringer is Yo La Tengo) assembled in recent Chicago history. (Tickets, at $10 for each night, are available at Lounge Ax, Reckless Records, Dr. Wax in Evanston, Record Swap in Homewood, Naperville and Tinley Park, and Atomic Records in Milwaukee. Call the Congress Theater, 312-252-4000, for details.)
“What Lounge Ax is going through is a big deal to me,” says Whinna, a record store clerk who has booked numerous underground shows in Chicago. “They’re the only women in Chicago that have ever run a rock club, and that means a lot.”
Adams and Miller are slightly embarrassed by all the attention. “I come from the school of thinking that says if you run a business, you should be able to stay open without benefit of a benefit,” Adams says. “I know that there are other bar owners out there wondering, `Why do they deserve this?’ I’m thankful to everyone, but it’s a weird position to be in.”
Chalk it up to karma: Miller’s and Adams’ resumes are a list of good deads done for weary touring bands and scuffling local musicians. Miller may hold the unofficial record for most “thank you” mentions on CD liner notes. For many bands, Lounge Ax has been an oasis of comfort in a nationwide desert of quick-buck bookers, lousy sound systems and warm beer in the dressing room.
As the Jesus Lizard put it in the liner notes to the benefit album in their typically succinct, tongue-in-cheek manner: “Thank heaven for little girls.”
“It is kind of weird to be in the public eye with all our problems because we’re shy people,” Miller says. “Not everyone loves us, but I really think the reason all this is happening is because we’re nice guys. I admit it: We’re nice guys.”
