The Townhouse Celebrates 102 Years + Repeal Day!

The Townhouse celebrated its 102nd year in operation as L.A.'s oldest bar last night with a shindig to also kick up our heels that Prohibition ended 84 years ago, with a Repeal Day extravaganza that we all look forward to every year.

The halls were decked, and spirits were high, as spirits were flowing freely without fear of arrest, like back in the day. Festivities began early, with a full on pig roast with all the fixings put out on the pool table and served up by our friends at Oscar's Cerveteca. It's all free and open to everyone, and it was delish. I'm still thinking about the excellent cheesy grits they had going on - yuuuuum. What a nice thing to do for everyone, it really is. Also nice was the free whiskey tasting that I didn't get there in time for, but that's probably a good thing.

One was given tickets when you arrived, to exchange for drinks at 1933 prices ($1!) for an hour when you heard the bell ring. They offered old timey themed drinks, and I indulged in a "Penicillin" which instantly cured whatever ailed me. The era-appropriate jazzy musical stylings of Brad Kay were on display entertaining everyone downstairs in the Del Monte Speakeasy, where the real draw of the night for me was also taking place - a talk on Venice (and drinks!) history given by the wonderful bar historian, and my friend, George Czarnecki.

Czarnecki is a true Venice treasure, and his rich baritone held everyone rapt while he spun tales about the ghosts of Townhouse past. He introduced the talk by saying it was the most important day on "the calendar of cocktail culture", and that if we had been sitting there like this during Prohibition, we'd have been breaking the law in this "Den of Iniquity" - which it still is. Czarnecki thanked our hosts, owners Louie and Netty Ryan, then told of how he and former owner Frank Bennett (who he came to work for 24 years ago!) used to come downstairs after work and polish off a bottle while regaling each other with yarns from their shared war veteran days (Korean and Vietnam, respectively). When the bottle ran dry and Bennett ran out of wind, he would slam his hand down on the table and exclaim, "AMEN!" and they'd go back upstairs to let people in for a new day.

Venice - Coney Island Of The Pacific by Jeffrey Stanton was cited by Czarnecki as the definitive history of Venice (I'm working on the modern history myself), and stressed that "If you're going to live and work in Venice, you BETTER appreciate what was here." (Hear that, Snapchat?) He went on to say that "You can't really understand unless you've seen what we've lost, and what we have left." Exactly. That is what all we who love and care about Venice have been struggling to preserve. What we have left.

"Somewhere Cesar Menotti is smiling a wry smile that we're using his name to sell coffee," cracked Czarnecki about the other previous owner (there have only been three in all its 102 years). Because Menotti slung drinks upstairs, and when Prohibition came about, he simply moved the operation downstairs. He explained that the stairways are so steep at The Townie because they used to be elevator shafts to pulley the drinkers downstairs! In all my years of bellying up at The Townhouse, somehow I never knew that. You wouldn't be invited downstairs, however, unless Menotti "liked the cut of your jib."  It was also known as a Mafia bar, "where the bodies would just wash out with the tide in the morning." This was said with a wink, but I wouldn't be at all surprised. This was - and still is in some ways - the Wild West.

"In the '30's, this country could use a drink, a bracer," Czarnecki said about the Depression Era, but I feel like we all needed one just as bad on this night decades later. During Prohibition, the toast that would ring out in The Townhouse basement was "Let us strike a blow for Liberty!" - which they eventually did. As we must all do again now. Everyone knows this, and Czarnecki addressed it by saying, "Exercise your franchise - Vote! If you can't vote FOR something, vote to REPEAL something. Then find yourself a good saloon." Like The Townhouse.

In closing, Czarnecki, our beloved boulevardier, led us all in the glass clinking and shouting of "Let us strike a blow for Liberty!" We did, and then dear George bellowed, "Ladies and Gentlemen - AMEN!" as his mentor had done before him. (These days I would add, AWOMEN!)

Louie Ryan thanked everyone for coming, saying he was merely the "Custodian of The Townhouse at this point", and that George had led him in how to honor the venerable bar's history when he took over from Bennett. Todd Van Hoffman summed it up, saying "The Townhouse honors the living history of Venice." You truly can feel the aura of its history, and I was jealous of the broad who had dressed up in perfect Prohibition Era style ... it made it feel like we'd just emerged from a time machine. Let's all theme it up next year!

Then the bell rang and we all drank like 1930's people. The Mudbug Brass Band led the parade from upstairs to down, and regaled the crowd with their Dixieland fun until last call.

Happy 102 years, Townhouse! Happy 84 years of legality, Drinkers! To Liberty!

Lacey Kay Cowden + Matt Ellis = Bright Moments

Well, Lacey Kay Cowden sure ended her June residency at The Townhouse with a slam bang finish! Phew.

After entrancing audiences each Tuesday in June with her dulcet tones, Cowden wrapped it up last night with perhaps her strongest performance ever. We're great friends, so I've seen her play a lot, but last night was something special. The confidence and strength displayed as she wove her musical tales of rambling and roaming, loving and learning was of a performer both feeling it, and knowing it, down to her bones. Her backing band made it all extra powerful, with a real T-Bone Burnett kind of sound that we all just loved.

*{Note to Mr. Burnett - You should probably work with Cowden. You'll love it.}

Playing the stories off of her Go Great Guns ep, Cowden simply killed it. Like, I watched people fall in love with her in front of my eyes. I love it when you see people get turned on to new music that they DIG. It's a special kind of alchemy that only comes along every so often. Rad.

Another great friend (and Cowden's ep producer) took the stage next, and similarly scorched it. Matt Ellis and his band brought their rock and roll heat to the already boiling room, where even my hair was almost curling down there in the Del Monte Speakeasy. It really felt like Summer finally, the heat and rock and fun with your friends that pretty much define this season.

Friends! That's the best part of these shows, that everyone on the bill are friends, so all of the mutual friends are in the audience too, and everywhere you turn it's another happy greeting, another heartfelt embrace, another story to tell, another rug to cut. It was also the very last night of my friend Mario's 30's, so we got DOWN in fine fashion (there was even a little break dancing going on).

Ellis regaled us with his catchy-ass songs (mainly off his excellent most recent album, The Greatest Escape), that always stick in my head for days after I hear them. He brought up his lovely wife, Vavine, to join him on my favorite number, "Seven Years At Sea". It's so lush and sublime, and watching them sing this beauty together is so great I can barely stand it. Seriously.

I was pretty much going nuts with my friends the whole time, thus not doing any note taking, but I can tell you that every song placed Ellis and company more firmly in the collective palm of our hands. I realize there's some hyperbole going on here today, but that's what it felt like to me, so there. Aside from the two Ellis hecklers right in front (aka bff's), that is.

All that good music only made us want more, and we got it from DJ Bright Moments (Paddy Wilkins). That dude spun us right up into a frenzy, jamming everything from Prince to "Happy Birthday" for Mario. Bright Moments will not only get you dancing, but remind you that in that moment are actually experiencing for yourself a blindingly bright moment.

We collapsed out the door, singing and dancing all the way home under the almost full bright Summer moon moments.

Stoked.

Repeal Day At The Townhouse!

Yesterday, December 5th, marked the 80th anniversary of the ending of Prohibition, and The Townhouse/Del Monte Speakeasy celebrated in high style. What a blast!

Proprietors Louie and Netty Ryan hosted the party, which featured a pig roast meal upstairs- FREE to ALL! - courtesy of Oscar's Cerveteca.

They blew through two whole pigs (and a spread of delicious sides, all set up on the pool table) before the lecture downstairs was even through.

Yes, the lecture. A standing room only crowd (of a much greyer demographic than usually packs in, with lots of mountain men chapeaux, suspenders and ironic mustaches) filled the downstairs Del Monte Speakeasy to listen to cocktail historian, Richard Foss, hold court about the history and good times had with liquor over the centuries.

It was very informative and entertaining, made even more so by the fact that the staff was delivering theme drinks that corresponded to the slide show throughout the talk. We were greeted with a glass of a whiskey-based Repeal Day Punch (delicious). That led to the Pisco something, the French 75 and The Last Word. I couldn't always hear the stories behind everything, because I had squeezed in right by the bar where the tenders were shaking up all those cocktails. It kind of added to the experience, actually.

By the end of the lecture, people were feeling pretty good. When the last slide proclaimed "Prohibition OVER!", it was met with rowdy cheers, while the fact that Foss told us there was still a Prohibition Party (that received like 536 votes in 2012!) was shot down with jeers. I mean, really. If you'd like to know even more, there is a Museum of the American Cocktail! Good stuff.

After some mingling, it was back upstairs for a good old fashioned Old Fashioned. Brad Kay played era-appropriate jazz downstairs, while the upstairs bar got more and more crowded as drinks were 1933 priced at $1 from 10 - 11 pm. (As were coffees next door at Menotti's). Yowza.

Many thanks once again to the Ryans and the entire staff of The Townhouse/Del Monte Speakeasy for a stroll back through time, done up beautifully and generously for our whole town to enjoy. As Mr. Foss said at the end of his program, "Come back. This place is always this fun!" True story ... then AND now.

Tom Freund - The Edge of Venice

Tom Freund has been a part of my Venice for as long as I can remember. His latest album, The Edge Of Venice, gave us a good excuse to sit down and talk about our Venice, and his music that is inspired by this special part of the world.


Tom was born and raised in New York, where he self-taught himself the upright bass and piano at the age of 7, then picked up the guitar at 11. He was already getting jazz gigs in high school, and so began a musician's life that has never included any kind of desk job. College was the Berklee School of Music and then Claremont College, when he decided to come West to check out the music scene. Once he got that degree in English Lit, it was off to the races, starting "the tour of life."

Tom was broken into the touring musician's life when he played as a member of alt-country band, The Silos. "It's a great way to see the world. When you play a show somewhere, you're in the scene you'd be in if you lived in that town, so you meet a lot of like people and the world gets smaller." After a stint living in Austin, Texas, Tom bought a big dresser at the French 50/60's store when he was visiting Venice, and decided it was easier to move himself than the dresser, and has lived here ever since. Though he travels the world playing gigs (and just got back from opening for Ben Harper in Europe), it's always Venice he looks forward to coming back home to.

Tom's daughter, Delilah, was born in Venice and through her, Tom has realized the phenomenal and tightly-knit community that Venice also is for parents and kids. He recorded a great kids album, Hug Trees, in honor of this, that every Venice kid (or every kid, period) should own.


We sat down at The French Market to catch up and talk about this place we love and his latest album. We agreed that it's getting harder to live in Venice as an artist (though the artists made Venice what it is in the first place), and Tom said, "I'm hanging onto Lincoln for dear life." Hence his album title, the EDGE of Venice. But that title also has double meaning, as the EDGE that Venice has to it is also something worth clinging to. As it gets more homogenized around here, it's harder to see that edge, but it's there, and we're hanging onto it for dear life. Tom (and I) love the old school places, like the Abbot's Habit corner ("Legendary"), the French Market, Firefly, and The Roosterfish ("The dopest place left for a drink"), though Tom is not afraid to hit the Other Room for a Malbec on occasion. He misses The Stronghold music scene, which he was a big part of, and we're still trying to find the place that can be like that artistically, locally.

Perhaps it could be The Del Monte Speakeasy, where Tom had his cd release show for The Edge Of Venice the other night. Located in the basement of The Townhouse bar on Windward, the Del Monte is now open for business (stay tuned for the story on them soon) and hosted a slam-bang night of music to celebrate Freund's latest musical endeavor. The Del Monte really was a speakeasy in the Prohibition era, and is now completely refurbished and gorgeous, with great sound.

Australian indie darling Julia Stone opened the night up for Tom, in her first show without her brother, Angus. She has an angel voice, and can blast some great trumpet too. I loved her version of "You're The One That I Want" from Grease the most. Check her out.


Tom's friend introduced him by saying, "In this sacred, crazy, fucked up, tilted place called Venice, we can all relate to Tom Freund!" I loved that. In a night that featured many of the songs off the new album, and a bunch of classic ones, each and every number was one that had the crowd dancing and singing along ... many of whom have been Freund Fans from the beginning. As Tom said before launching into his song "Where Is The Love?", "This whole night is about friends." So true. And many of Tom's musician friends were there to back him up: Chris Joyner, Gabriel Noel, Ben Peeler, Pete McNeil, David Ralicke, Brett Dennen, and Julia Stone back up there to duet with Tom on his great, "Why Wyoming?" and "Sugar Don't Get No Sweeter Than This" and the excellent covers of The Who's "Let My Love Open The Door" and the Beatles' "Revolution". Good times.


"Wounded Surfer Boy" off the new album sounds a whole lot like a bunch of Venice people I've known, with its verse that goes:

He's the Mayor of the neighborhood
He rides around on a skateboard made of wood
He's got no car, no house to call his own
But that's alright he'll find someplace to stay tonight
And that's alright by her

Yep. "You've heard this one before in Venice," said Tom to introduce one of my favorites, "Truly Mellow". It features a chorus of "La da dah's" that the whole room sang along, especially when Tom said, "C'mon Venice, sing so they can hear about it in Marina del Rey!" And we did.


At night's end, everyone staggered back upstairs to cool off outside on Windward. Sweaty, smiling, happy and feeling truly mellow. A perfect night in and about Venice, California.

Add Tom Freund's The Edge Of Venice to your Venice Soundtrack ... It's not complete without it. It and all of Tom's discography are available at TomFreund.com, ITunes, CD Baby, Amazon, and at whatever record stores are still alive and kicking.

Support your local (International) artists!