Concert Club War Heats Up : Music: The 600-seat Rhythm Cafe is to open in Santa Ana, challenging San Juan Capistrano’s Coach House.

Orange County’s concert club wars, in which the Coach House has survived all challengers since 1986, are about to heat up again after a lull of more than a year.

Rhythm Cafe, with almost 600 seats, is slated to open in late October in the building that for 18 years housed the Harlequin Dinner Playhouse. The room was converted into a concert club once before, called Hamptons, but shut down in 1990 in the wake of booking problems after six months.

This time around, the building is the same but just about everything else is different. The operating partners and management of the new club appear to be deep in both capital and booking experience, two areas in which Hamptons fell short. The club itself is undergoing a major face-lift, with new sound and lighting systems and a redesigned kitchen, among other improvements.

Michael Feder, one of three partners in newly created Musicsphere Entertainment Inc., said in an interview recently at the club that he foresees the Santa Ana location as the flagship of a national chain of Rhythm Cafes. Already, the owners are in the process of buying Sound FX in San Diego, previously known as the Bacchanal, and a third undisclosed location, Feder said.

The plan is to handle all booking and other administrative decisions out of the Santa Ana club. Feder said the ability to offer artists a string of engagements would give the Rhythm Cafe a booking advantage over venues that can offer a single date at one club.

“The concept’s really very simple,” Feder said. While several comedy chains, such as the Improv and Funny Bones, have found some success with the chain idea, Feder said there are currently no national concert club chains, although “a lot of people have talked about it.” Locally, Coach House owner Gary Folgner also owns the Ventura Theatre and often books artists into both venues; also, the 2,500-seat Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim has a sister venue in Phoenix.

Starting a string of concert clubs is not cheap. Total cost for the first three clubs (including remodeling and other costs) will be about $2.5 million, estimates Curt Olson, one of the Rhythm Cafe partners.

Olson is an Orange County commercial real-estate developer who helped found Nexus USA Equities and was a half-owner before leaving the company in 1989. He is a newcomer to the music business (although he and partner Scott Burnham bought Corona del Mar’s Port Theatre in 1987). “My part is to bring some business philosophy,” said Olson.

Feder’s entertainment background includes experience in the television industry and work with actor Steven Seagal. The third partner is Rich Meany, until now a talent buyer with the music promotion giant Nederlander but now leaving to work with European concert promoter Marcel Avrum. (Avrum promoted the European leg of Michael Jackson’s current tour).

Meany will book the Rhythm Cafe along with Jeff Gaulton, who owned the Bacchanal for seven years. Rounding out the team on the marketing end is Nathali Waterhouse, who has worked with Gaulton for several years.

In a group interview, the principals downplayed any potential rivalry with the Coach House, the 490-seat concert club in San Juan Capistrano that is currently the county’s only venue for national club-level touring acts, saying only that the Rhythm Cafe was in a “better location.”

It appears certain, however, that the two clubs will be bidding for some of the same talent. In interviews, Rhythm Cafe owners won’t specify who they plan to book, except to say they will pursue national touring acts in pop, rock, blues, comedy and jazz--”any act that sells tickets,” in Gaulton’s words. They may book country acts as well, which could pit them against the Crazy Horse, Santa Ana’s 275-seat country showcase.

In its application for a conditional use permit for the Santa Ana club, Musicsphere listed examples of the type of acts the club’s roster “may include”: America, B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, Gallagher, Kenny G., Natalie Cole, Pat Benatar, Waylon Jennings and Blood, Sweat & Tears, . Several of the acts listed have played the Coach House or the Crazy Horse.

Ken Phebus, concert booker for the Coach House and Ventura Theatre as well as for the Strand in Redondo Beach, said he already has come up against the Rhythm Cafe in trying to book acts, although he declined to name specific performers. “(They’ve) brushed up against us a couple of times . . . and those situations have yet to be resolved,” Phebus said.

“We’re going to use every tool we have,” Phebus said, referring specifically to artist relationships the Coach House has built up over the years. “We intend to book aggressively.”

Phebus said the Coach House may have an advantage in booking some acts that also play Los Angeles, because of its distance from the city (the Coach House is about 60 miles from L.A., the Rhythm Cafe about 30 miles). Feder, however, said that would not be a factor, saying both clubs are considered by agents to be in the same market.

Principals in Musicsphere say that the addition of a new concert club in central Orange County will be a boon to music fans, who now must drive to Los Angeles or San Juan Capistrano for many acts. Phebus, however, warned that the competition for a limited number of touring acts could drive up ticket prices and “turn the public off to coming to concerts.”

“Unfortunately, it creates a competitive market, very similar to what exists between the Pacific Amphitheatre and Irvine Meadows,” Phebus said. “Artist fees go up and ticket prices go up accordingly.”

Stephen Zepeda, talent buyer for the 300-seat Bogart’s in Long Beach, said he is unsure whether the opening of the Rhythm Cafe will affect his club. “It depends on their booking policy,” Zepeda said. “I do mostly alternative rock.”

Zepeda did say that the economic recession has cut down on the number of national touring acts available, which has prompted Bogart’s to concentrate more on local talent. He added that the idea of opening a chain of concert clubs is a good one, in principle: “If you have several clubs, what that gives you is booking clout with agents. You’re able to offer these people more dates with less fuss.”

A series of challengers to the Coach House monopoly on the local concert club market have risen in recent years, only to fall by the wayside. Michael’s Supper Club in Dana Point booked B.B. King as its opening weekend headliner in 1988, but ran into trouble with fire officials and had its capacity cut in half.

Club Postnuclear in Laguna Beach, which also opened in 1988, never met its potential as a concert club, largely for lack of a liquor license. Peppers Golden Bear in Huntington Beach opened with fanfare in August, 1990, but closed by the following April because it created too much noise for the adjacent cinema.

Hamptons took up the challenge in December, 1989, and gained positive notices from critics for the amenities of the converted dinner theater itself.

After about six months, though, announced bookings began falling through and the club quietly closed. Meany blamed the failure on the club’s owners, Al and Barbara Hampton, who tried to handle the booking themselves despite a lack of experience in the music business. “They didn’t know how to buy talent,” Meany said. “It’s very expensive to learn in this business.”

The club had been locked and not maintained for about a year when Feder first entered the club. The sound and lighting systems had been removed, and he even found 200 pounds of rotting meat in an unplugged freezer. “It was a wreck,” Feder said, but “the bones of the building were fantastic.”

Feder said the basic layout will remain similar to Hamptons, a multitiered plan that he described as more like “a Las Vegas showroom” than a typical pop concert club. Eight private boxes will be available at balcony level in addition to the tables at floor level.

The club will have a new sound and lighting system, in addition to a redesign of the kitchen and a general remodeling of the lounge area outside the showroom. Unlike most clubs, the Rhythm Cafe will offer a full restaurant menu. Also, the club’s lounge will be open for desserts, cappuccino and drinks after the end of shows.

“Most nightclubs, when the show is over, start putting the chairs on the tables and kick you out the door,” Feder said. Keeping the lounge open is part of an overall strategy of putting more emphasis on the restaurant operation: in discussing Rhythm Cafe, Feder is as likely to compare it to such hip nightspots as Planet Hollywood and Hard Rock Cafe as to other concert clubs.

The idea is to build an upscale club that offers a complete night on the town, rather than strictly a concert experience. Many of Orange County’s remaining well-to-do, after putting work before all else in the “go-go” last decade, are ready to “spend more time with friends,” Olson said. “We’re not chasing the greenback as hard as we all did in the ‘80s.”