The second-floor office at 1035 N. Western Ave. in Chicago once served as Bruce Finkelman’s sleeping quarters. That was until the bands that perform a flight below at his club, the Empty Bottle, literally started rocking the place apart.
“It’s right above the stage,” Finkelman said of his bedroom-turned-booking office, where tapes spill off the window sill. “Every time a band played, it was like `Fantasia,’ with furniture dancing.”
Finkelman, 31, no longer sleeps in the room, but he might as well keep a cot and pillow nearby. Week after week, he spends long hours there reviewing demos, talking to agents and noodling with his computer.
As owner of the Empty Bottle, Finkelman’s ultimate task is to fill more than four dozen performing slots each month. It’s a labor of love and fun, but it’s not easy. Finkelman tries to balance each night’s lineup so the bands fit and the five-year-old club stays afloat.
The process is duplicated at top-notch venues all over the Chicago area, by the likes of Sue Miller at Lounge Ax, Anastasia Davies at Schubasq and Bill Fitzgerald at FitzGerald’scq in Berwyn. In offering an inside glimpse of the Empty Bottle operation, Finkelman reveals something of what a typical talent buyer goes through to stage show after show — and how he and his staff put their unique stamp on the booking process.
Of the many clubs that book modern rock and underground bands, the Empty Bottle boasts one of the most varied calendars around. In any given month, featured artists run the gamut from the sinuous, serious jazz of Vandermark 5 to Los Straitjackets, a surf instrumental quartet that performs in Mexican wrestling masks. The Empty Bottle also embraces post-punk, drum ‘n’ bass, dub, traditional country and pure pop, to name a few more genres.
Finkelman sometimes flies by the seat of his pants, but his booking process is far from random. It depends as much on keen ears as computer programs, as much on musical instinct as telephone tact — though when all else fails, he is apt to consult his Magic 8-Ball. Some trade secrets he won’t reveal, because club competition can be fierce, but Finkelman makes no mystery of the eclectic, music-over-money values that shape the Empty Bottle’s talent philosophy.
Basically, if Finkelman and his staff dig the group’s sound and attitude, offstage and on, they’re in.
“It’s all subjective to us; that’s the only way we can do this job,” Finkelman said. “We have to like it. The only way that I can run a place like this is if it’s fun for us. We tried to create a place that would be fun for us to hang out in, thinking there would other people who would agree with us.”
Making sense of the schedule
That said, the job of shuffling time slots and keeping abreast of new talent can be more daunting than anything a TV network programmer goes through during sweeps month.
Tuesdays and Wednesday nights are dedicated to jazz, and Sundays and Mondays reserved for deejays. It’s the multi-band bills on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights that require a bit more strategy and research.
Those three nights fall under the same general game plan. “If you have a three-band bill, what you want is a headliner people know about, and usually two local bands,” Finkelman said. “Ninety-five percent of the time, if I haven’t heard of a band, then no one’s heard of the band, unless I hear from a friend of mine that the band’s breaking.”
A good chunk of the homework begins on Finkelman’s computer, filled with files tracking the countless bands and demos he has screened. With a few clicks of his mouse, “We know we can go back and see what would work on a bill, and what wouldn’t work,” Finkelman said.
The computer often sits on the floor with its dust cover removed — a testament to the time he spends tinkering with it. “It’s my hobby; I’m a computer geek, but I probably cause more people agony by fooling with it,” said Finkelman, who double-majored in computers and hotel-restaurant management at the University of Missouri. “I’m one of those people who takes it apart and has 50 pieces left over.”
He recently has had to replace the cover on the computer because, as he put it, “my terrier was just nosing around the back, looking for a bone, and he got shocked. He jumped back four feet.”
Finkelman is more tech-savvy than most club owners. He has set up his own Web page (www.emptybottle.com); even on vacation, he stays wired to the Empty Bottle. Sunning in Acapulco earlier this year, he checked his e-mail and learned that a fire had destroyed the warehouse of Estrus Records. The Bellingham, Wash. label, which specializes in ’60s-influenced proto punk, had sent Finkelman many fine acts.
Estrus was started by Dave Crider, lead singer of the Mono Men. “Dave took a chance with us while we were a young club, when a lot of agents wouldn’t,” Finkelman said. “He could’ve played anywhere in town, but he chose us.” As a payback to Crider, Finkelman began organizing an eight-band benefit from his laptop (the March 1 show raised $2,700).
When it comes to local and regional bands looking to land a spot, Finkelman has no shortage of contenders. To demonstrate, he opened a closet filled with hundreds of CDs and demo tapes. Many are sent in by the bands themselves. He also fills roughly one 70-page notebook a month with phone calls from groups.
Some of the messages are scams, Finkelman said. “My favorite is when bands or agents call up and say, `We represent a huge band that wants to play your club.’ I call back and find out it’s some other band.”
It’s not a money thing
The long line of hopefuls owes something to Finkelman’s booking policy, which is highly unusual among local rooms. Many venues expect their local acts to draw significant numbers, but Finkelman has other priorities.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said of a new band’s draw. “We’re trying to create a place that we like. If you come in here, you’re nice and you play for the love of the music, even if you play to a room with only two people, you can definitely come back.”
That informal attitude carries over to the Empty Bottle’s low cover charge. “We’re way cheaper than any other club price-wise,” said Carrie Leech, Finkelman’s booking and office assistant. “Even for big bands, it’s seven or eight bucks to get in.”
Once a week, Finkelman, Leech and other Empty Bottle staffers gather and spend an entire day plowing through demos. Once a band’s press kit arrives at the club, it usually takes one to two weeks before it gets reviewed. “We make an attempt to listen to everybody, and get back to everybody,” Finkelman said.
At that point in the process, most wannabes are weeded out. Finkelman’s instincts on what works have been honed through years of dues-paying. “I’ve been working in rock clubs since I was in college, doing everything: doorman, bartender, flier-maker, poster-putter-upper,” he said.
Some bands don’t make the cut musically. Others show their lack of business sense as they get impatient and begin badgering the club, a big turnoff. “Try to be nice on the phone,” he advises local acts. “You want to get a good rapport with the club, right? If we can’t talk to you on the phone, there’s no sense in being mean to us.”
Those who trust a friend or fly-by-night agent to get them a date might get left in the lurch because the Empty Bottle is stuck with no one to contact if the person quits. “It’s like these booking agents go into business to help their friends, then realize that they weren’t making enough money to pay the phone bills from the $10 a show they were getting,” Finkelman said.
On the opposite end of the scale, many major- and independent-label bands have established agencies doing their business. Finkelman often finds himself in politically charged situations as he tries to land the headline act he wants.
“It’s basically, the agent takes offers; at least that’s the way it’s supposed to work,” Finkelman said. “That goes back to being a good agent or a bad agent. A good agent comes from the perspective, `I’m not taking advantage of you. I’m working for my band, but I’m trying to make this work for everybody.’ A bad agent will try to strong-arm you into a high (pay) guarantee. But if the band only draws two people, and the cover is $5, what’s two times $5?”
Bad agents also will insist on booking bands into the club that have no business playing there. Finkelman recalled one such incident with the band Download, led by a former member of Skinny Puppy. “We told the band’s agent, `We don’t think you should be playing here,’ ” Finkelman recalled. “They should’ve been playing the Metro or the Vic.”
No place for ties
As it turned out, Download went into crash mode. The band took one look at the club and, deciding it was too small and ill-equipped, stormed out without playing a note. But for every bummer like that one, there are scores more highlights. Finkelman counts performances by the Flaming Lips, Hum, former Dream Syndicate leader Steve Wynn, Dianogah, the Grifters and Red Red Meat among his favorites. “One of the greatest things is when a band gets in that you’ve never heard of, and they’re awesome,” he said.
The current booking policy creates its share of challenges. Running the club and paying the bills often are week-to-week propositions, as the Empty Bottle favors bands who, while they may be high on passion, sometimes come up short on drawing power. Finkelman could boost his cover charges, or bid for more mainstream talent, but he has no plans to change his tune.
“If I really wanted to make a lot of money, I would’ve gone with my computer major or worked my way up at the Hyatt,” said Finkelman, a former manager with the hotel chain before opening the Empty Bottle. “But every time I put on a tie, I get the mumps.
“Besides,” he added, “I wanted a place that when I had $5 in my pocket, I could go out, have a beer and see a band.”
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Tribune features writer Lou Carlozo is also a singer-songwriter. He confines his use of empty bottles to playing slide guitar.
