NIGHTSPOT UNFAZED : CELTICS BEAT CLUB COMICS IN OPENERS

On the first night of the Coach House’s new Tuesday night comedy series, comedian and headliner Jeff Gerbino noticed that the turnout was less than overwhelming.

Gerbino, who will be booking the comics for Coach House owner Gary Folgner, wasn’t too disappointed by the sparse opening-night crowd in the San Juan Capistrano nightclub, though.

“I told Gary when I walked in, ‘I feel like Martin Luther King: I have a dream. I’ve seen the promised land, and someday, very soon, this room will be full,’ ” Gerbino said.

It may be no small task to realize that dream, considering that about 70 people showed up at the 380-seat club. It didn’t help that the comedy premiere on June 2 coincided with the first game of the National Basketball Assn. championship finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics. The turnout was even smaller this week, when comedy night conflicted with the fourth Lakers-Celtics game.

But Gerbino, who has been coordinating comedy shows since he began his own performing career in Minnesota about nine years ago, isn’t worried. All it takes, he said, is knowing what works and why, a little patience--and a little promotion.

“I feel like we’re competing with the Lakers right now, and it’s a losing proposition,” Gerbino said Wednesday from El Paso, where he is performing this week. “I’m just glad (the championship) will be over soon--it should be over Thursday. Either way, it won’t hit us again.”

The success of the comedy series, according to Gerbino, will depend on promotional strategies--but not the kind the Coach House normally uses for its rock shows.

“We had some promotion, but not the right promotion,” he said of opening night. “I think this has to be promoted like you would a show at a comedy club.”

On weekdays, he said, successful comedy clubs survive by waiving cover charges, giving two-for-one admission coupons and other customer come-ons known as “comps.” The rationale is that it is better to sacrifice some income at the door to attract a larger crowd, one that will buy drinks--and come back.

By the second Tuesday night comedy show, the Coach House was giving patrons two-for-one discount cards on its normal $5 admission.

Gerbino said he has a few more promotional tricks. The ideas, while foreign to rock clubs, are common for comedy clubs. They include business-card drawings for free admission for the winner and a group of friends, plus radio show appearances by comics to plug their upcoming performances at the club.

But that’s still only part of the battle, the comedian acknowledged: “After a while, it really hinges on how good the show is. In an area like this, which is kind of isolated, word-of-mouth is very important. So, it does come down to the quality of the show.”

And on that score, Gerbino has stacked the deck. Comedians scheduled on future Tuesdays may not be the high-profile comics one would see on, say, “Late Night With David Letterman.” But most are familiar names on the comedy club circuit, and Gerbino is making the lineups top heavy with talent, booking some comics below the level they’d work elsewhere.

On opening night, for example, Gerbino was the headline act in a show that featured Jeff Wayne, a bona fide headliner at many other comedy clubs, with opener Hugh Fink, who normally is a strong middle act.

Such uniformly solid bills are exactly what club owner Folgner had in mind when he turned over the comedy series to Gerbino. “I like the idea of having a comic who’s a bit of an entrepreneur, because you get really good (performers) that way,” Folgner said in a recent interview.

“He knows the guys; he knows who needs work and who is decent. I mean, if he’s running the comedy night, he’s not going to throw anybody bad on the bill. Whereas, an agent will; he’ll sell you anything just to get an act a job no matter what the quality is.”

It is not the first time the Coach House has tried a comedy series. Folgner tried it four years ago, when the club was a “Top 40” dance spot. “The quality of comedians was always really good,” Folgner recalled. But the shows never found an audience, so comedy nights were scrapped after six weeks.

This time around, Folgner thinks the prospects for success are much brighter. “Now that we’re more of a concert venue than a dance venue, I think we have a better chance,” he said, adding that a renewed interest in comedy across the country has created an audience for stand-up comics that didn’t exist before.

Comedy lovers beware, however, because the third comedy night will be postponed next week because of a longstanding prior engagement for singer-guitarist Bonnie Raitt on Tuesday. The comedy series will resume June 23, with Larry Wilmore, Scott Novotne and Stephanie Hodge, followed on June 30 by the comedy troupe Moving Violations, Roger Reitzel and Don Bradley.

The first two comedy nights in July feature “Wild” Bill Bauer, Joey Gaynor and house emcee Jamie Monroe on July 7, with magician-comedian Nick Lewin, Tim Rose and Jamie Monroe performing on July 14.

Gerbino conceded that with the increased interest in comedy, the Coach House series is up against some serious local competition. Some Orange County nightspots are presenting comedy performers at least one night a week. And scheduled to open later this month is the Irvine Improvisation, an all-comedy club that will be competing with another full-time comedy club, the Laff Stop in Newport Beach.

But Gerbino said he hopes that “we’ll be able to do our own thing quietly down here. I really hope this catches on--and I think it will.”