Courtesy of Chip Py
Josh Arnson (left) of Colonel Josh Honky Tonk and Tom Clifford of King Soul perform Friday evening at Surf Club Live in Bladensburg.
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Surf Club Live reopened Friday after being shut down for 30 days by the Prince George's County liquor board.
Owner Jim Byrum bought the Bladensburg club in February 2008 from Chick Hall, the son of the original owner, Chick Hall Sr., who opened the club in Colmar Manor in the 1950s.
The county liquor board closed the club last month due to a discrepancy with the liquor license transfer. Byrum said it was a paperwork issue and he had thought everything was in order after his purchase.
"I was taken aback. I thought all of that had been handled by the lawyers," he said. "It was all there. We just had to get it all together."
However, the 30-day closure affected not only concert-goers, but also the viability of the business.
"In this bad economy, who can stand to lose 30 days of income? It's tough already to survive," he said. "Everybody loves to come here and loves the room, but it's tough to keep a club like that open."
Byrum declined to comment on how much the club lost in revenue during the closure.
The club is open Wednesday through Saturday in the evening and some Sundays as well. Byrum wants to renovate the space and open during lunch hours with an extended menu in order to keep the club afloat.
"I had an outpouring of support and encouragement and people just reaching out to me," he said. "I didn't know I had so many friends in the community. Everybody asked what they could do to help."
Feliz McClairen, president of the D.C. Blues Society, said Surf Club Live may hold the most blues music events out of any other venue in the Washington, D.C.-metropolitan area.
McClairen said the club's fate has put his own shows in jeopardy, and he has been searching for back-up venues in case the club closed.
Washington, D.C.-based soul band King Soul played the inaugural show Friday when the club reopened its doors. Band frontman Tom Clifford said the venue is a special place that reminds him of a honky-tonk club he played at while living in Austin, Texas.
"I started going years ago to see the Hall Brothers play," he said of the former owners. "Unlike any other club around here, it was built as a club. It wasn't retrofitted like some of these places downtown."
That means a better stage and dance floor, Clifford said.
But despite grim economic news, some entertainers think venues like Surf Club Live will continue to attract audiences.
"As the conventional wisdom holds, when times get hard and more stressful, folks seek relief," McClairen said. "I think blues, like many other diversions, offers that."
E-mail Elahe Izadi at eizadi@gazette.net.
