RIP Southgate House...

After a dreadful, rainy day, the last thing you want is to come home to is a foul dose of seriously bad news. Today, word spread through the internet with haste, and just a little bit ago, the news was official. Newport, Kentucky's legendary venue, the Southgate House, will close its doors after thirty years as the best live music venue in the Midwest on New Year's Eve, 2011. If you don't live within the Cincinnati area, this might elicit a shrug of indifference, but the Southgate is a place that offered near-perfect acoustics, a dimly-lit balcony, a "green room" behind the men's room for the artists, and a confounding labyrinth of stairs and doorways that made just finding your way around the place a royal pain in the ass, especially after you'd had a couple. It was a building that overlooked the Ohio River a hundred years before Newport built a giant shopping mall and aquarium across the street, a mansion designed to house sin and vice on the down low, while simultaneously flaunting its brazen debauchery to Kentucky's more puritanical neighbors to the north. The prostitutes, river trash, and gangsters had vacated the Southgate House by the time I'd reached adulthood and started hanging out there, but the smoky Victorian atmosphere remained. Just stepping into the front hallway made you feel like you were doing something illicit. This seemed like a place you could get away with shit!

I remember being barely out of high school, huddled around the back door in the alley behind Southgate House, so a friend could sneak me in to see Hot Water Music for free. Clutching a 20 oz. bottle of Jack and Coke to my chest, I walked in and tried to look like I belonged. I'd been to shows in basements and Cincinnati's notoriously institutional concert hall Bogart''s before, but seeing Hot Water Music on that elegantly draped stage, blasting out heavily tour-bearded songs of rage was like a moment of awakening. I knew that Southgate House was the place where grown-ups hung out, and I proceeded to spend a considerable portion of my adult life there, consuming adult beverages, stumbling from room to room, watching rock n' roll bands, tipping my bartender, and somehow never managing to fall down its formidable staircase on my way out.

I saw the Drive-By Truckers play a nearly three hour set there, fresh off the release of The Dirty South and passing a bottle of Jack Daniels around the stage like a hot potato. My friends had gotten free tickets to an arena football game and I stood there by myself blown away, texting everyone with vindictive glee. They have this song called "Goddamn Lonely Love," and at the time I was so taken with it that I wrote the song title and the date of the show on my wristband and taped it to my wall so everyone who went in my room for years could see it. I have a terrible sense of direction, and it would get even worse when I was high off a perfect Southgate House show, trying to navigate my way home through the streets of downtown Cincinnati. There's been a lot of those kind of shows, and that's why the closing of Southgate House doesn't just suck, it HURTS.

Just a quick list of bands I've seen there: The Black Angels, Sebadoh, Dead Meadow, Blue Cheer, Wanda Jackson, The Black Lips, Don Caballero, Zombi, Cursive, Songs: Ohia, The Hold Steady, The Greenhornes, The Guitars, Pearlene, Earth, Black Mountain, etc, etc. No matter how crowded the place got, I never failed to find a parking spot on the street around the corner behind the Travelodge. The place is closing, so what difference does it make if I give up my secret spot?! I've taken so many walks past the parking meters to cross 3rd Street to examine the marquee only to take it for granted. Yeah, the economy sucks real bad, and times are really tough. Still, losing Southgate House is like losing a part of my life forever.

I remember crossing that street and hearing such violent volume that I felt the need to buy earplugs in Junie's Lounge (Sunn 0))) in 2010, still the loudest band I've ever seen), and I remember leaving the place covered in beer after dozens of local shows. I was lucky enough to play music in the upstairs Parlour a few years back, and my friends threw me the best 30th birthday party ever last year in the Ballroom. The closing of Southgate House feels like a punch in the chest, but this poster helps me remember everything good about the place. The pessimist in me thinks that this is a devastating blow to the Cincinnati music scene, but I hope that a new place can sprout up soon to pick up the slack. RIP Southgate House, there will NEVER be another one like you....