Tea Totaled
Dd asks for one last dance with Deep Ellum's fairest ballroom.
30.March.2007

There will be no great send-off. No party with roped-off tables, no VIP room in the back or catering in the front, and no hobnobbing bash where fans, friends and family pace from one entrance to the other while clinking drinks and remembering old times.
            It’ll end with another national showcase that caters to a niche audience. A Plain White T’s concert was scheduled for March 31 at the Gypsy Tea Room months and months ago, wedged between Missouri alt-country longtimers The Bottle Rockets and Brooklyn loft noise-addicts TV On The Radio. It was just another link in the usual chain of mid-level acts looking for a fitting mid-capacity concert hall in Dallas.
            A Plain White T’s concert was scheduled while the music venue’s owners continued an uphill climb against Chapter 7 bankruptcy--the kind where a company stays in business with the belief that its many debts would be better repaid by staying in business rather than liquidating and selling off. As far as Brandt and Brady Wood, co-owners and heads of the former Entertainment Collective, were concerned, the house was healthy enough to continue after March 31.
            And maybe that’s why the house is having such an underwhelming curtain call in mere days. The Gypsy’s board of debtors is telling the Wood Brothers to unplug the life support, and those two men are standing frozen in the doorway, refusing to believe it.

My Morning Jacket's Jim James at the Gypsy Tea Room

It’s a different death than the ones the brothers and their staff have faced in the past year in the form of the EC. Trees saw a sad, but expected, mercy death, as it was an oversized house with hit-or-miss booking that bled cash, while restaurants Jeroboam and the Green Room fell like dominoes. But the Gypsy Tea Room was the star at the top of Deep Ellum’s tree, the two-room king that drew consistent, large crowds up until this very moment.
            Austin agency Charles Attal Presents led the house’s booking in recent years, attracting every big band that could fill the larger ballroom and every up-and-coming band that deserved to pack the smaller “tea room” side. But versatility wasn’t its only strength; the Gypsy struck a pretty incredible balance between intimacy and size, allowing any given mob oh-so-close access to some pretty huge names without looking, sounding or feeling like a dump.
            On April 1 (ahem, not a joke), that option for local music is a goner. And nobody cares.
            Don’t believe me? Local papers and blogs were quick to leak the closure news weeks ago, but tributes to the room since then have been quiet and scarce. Public outrage certainly hasn’t made up for this critical silence, and exceptions to this are too busy listing band names, not memories or staff or friendships or those really weird, special moments that define an independent music venue.
            So what defined the Gypsy Tea Room? As far as I’m concerned, it was only two things: a well-designed hall and a solid schedule. Out of my near-decade of Gypsy Tea Room concerts, I can rattle off some incredible shows that took place there--Autolux, Slayer, Sonic Youth--but I never felt...welcome.
            Could be because the room was just that much bigger than other Dallas venues where I’ve made friends; when you’re bartending and wristband-dealing for hundreds upon hundreds of patrons, it’s harder to be welcome and friendly as a bartender, a bouncer, a manager. Consider that a casualty of the venue’s booking scope. Fair enough. But that scope caused an even greater casualty, one that has left the closing venue as nothing more than a replaceable slab of concrete with a stage and some monitors.
            As time wore on, the venue’s attention to local bands simply waned. It’s weird to say that, as I’ve seen some incredible local showcases in the Gypsy’s smaller room--Red Monroe, Peter Schmidt and his Gentleman Scholars, the incredible Final Friday hip-hop series--but those had become an all-too-rare occurrence, a polite afterthought to the booking machine. Again, when private parties and well-known nationals can sell more tickets and more alcohol, something has to give...especially for a room facing bankruptcy, right?

The Rentals at the Gypsy Tea Room

But now the club’s facing a whole lot of nothing. On the other side of downtown, nestled next to Victory Park, a House of Blues concert hall is being built at a rapid pace to make its opening date in May. On the other side of town, the Granada Theater has already swiped the Gypsy’s big April shows--a venue that exceeds the Gypsy’s size, personality and local appreciation, no less.
            Outsiders have little reason to stay sour. Those same touring bands will still want your money after March 31, as does Charles Attal Presents, which has already picked other venues--particularly the new HoB--to book for the foreseeable future. Some private events will seek new homes, while others left the Gypsy years ago--the Dallas Observer Music Awards, for starters, which hasn’t been held at the Gypsy since 2004.
            The money’s going elsewhere, Brandt and Brady. Worse, though, is that the heart has been gone for so long. It’s the Dallas way--when you can’t use heart and passion as a bargaining chip, someone bigger and more sterile’s going to kick you in the nuts. It’s a lesson the still-surviving venues of Deep Ellum should heed--and indeed, the better ones do.
            But the Gypsy staff is done with lessons, done with local shows, done with anything for right now. I e-mailed Gypsy partner Whit Meyers over a month ago with an off-handed pitch for a final show. In hindsight, my choice of words (“bigdlittled.com presents Burn This Mother Down”) was more insensitive than I’d ever intended, but even that aside, Meyers wasn’t interested in “sanction[ing] some sort of funeral pyre.” The house will close its doors on Saturday night like usual--trash-sweepers collecting cigarette butts and bottles, bouncers urging the last few Plain White T’s fans to go on home. In the hours that follow, the rest of the equipment will surely be packed up and returned or sold off as appropriate.
            A few longtime music fans will show up out of curiosity, and maybe a few news crews and writers will capture striking images of the dismantling that next day. I won’t be there.
            It’s an awful time for all involved--a closure like this is that much worse than any other EC failure for the reasons stated above. But if those guys want to hide, throw an abysmal final concert and have their sad, personal piss party, let them. The Gypsy has made it clear for the past few years that we may as well go to the next place with a big stage, a big floor and room enough to handle that many beer-drinking fans. They didn’t want anything more, and on Sunday morning, passers-by won’t be getting it, either.