A HORSE OF A DIFFERENT COLOR
Jay Nuccio is open to suggestions.
The new owner of the Crazy Horse Steak House is an unassuming, middle-aged man of medium height and build, with flecks of gray in his wavy hair and furrows in his brow. Last summer, he bought the restaurant and its attached 250-seat concert hall--a darkened box of scuffed wooden planks and floorboards that shines with one of the most gleaming reputations a small concert venue ever had.
After spending seven years in Portland, Ore., operating two Carl’s Jr. franchises, Nuccio not only has a much different business to run, but also a legend to live up to.
On a recent afternoon, he sat on a wooden bench on the wooden walkway outside his restaurant of yellowish wooden planks and reddish wooden posts. Nuccio (pronounced NEW-chee-o) was having his picture taken, which interested a young woman standing nearby. Told that the photo subject owned the place, she greeted Nuccio and gave him some advice: The picture would come out better if he got rid of the pager at his hip. “It looks a little bit pompous,” she said.
A while later, Nuccio waved to the same woman inside the saloon--as the Crazy Horse’s bar and concert hall is known--and assured her that he takes his customers seriously: “I lost the pager for you.”
Far from being pompous or expansive about his plans for the venue that has won the Academy of Country Music’s nightclub of the year award eight years out of the last 11, Nuccio’s tone in a recent interview was modest to the point of cautiousness. He emphasized continuity, while soft-pedaling some important changes he has made in the club’s concert booking.
Nuccio grew up helping out at Little Joe’s, an Italian restaurant in Los Angeles that his family has owned since about 1915. At the Crazy Horse he follows Fred Reiser, who for 18 years ran the restaurant and concert club for its former owners.
Reiser also came from a restaurant background and, like Nuccio, had no experience with the concert business when the Crazy Horse opened in 1979. But with the calm, steady air and tall, big-boned presence of a gentleman rancher, Reiser became a player: friend to Garth Brooks, who played at the Crazy Horse when big arenas were his usual venues, and to many more who performed annually at the small room in Santa Ana because they liked the intimacy of the surroundings and the friendly, solicitous treatment they got from a venue operator who thought that the key ingredient of a successful concert is a contented performer.
The Crazy Horse’s roster of performers--including Brooks, Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Ray Charles, Trisha Yearwood, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, the late Tammy Wynette and Roy Orbison--would be special for a venue 10 times its size.
“It’s legendary, a fixture,” Nuccio said. “It’s made its reputation as the No. 1 country nightclub in the country. My object is to continue that.”
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He took control of the Crazy Horse in September. Reiser stayed on as a consultant for two months, booking shows that played through the end of the year. Since January, Nuccio has been on his own.
For all his talk about continuity, he has not been afraid to make changes. Not radical moves, but adventurous ones that show a far more aggressive booking approach than Reiser’s.
Before Nuccio, who lives in San Juan Capistrano with his wife and three young children, the Crazy Horse trotted along steadily, content with one star attraction a week, usually on a Monday night, sometimes stretching to a Monday-Tuesday stand. Now the booking schedule is wide open, and the attractions are moving through the cozy showroom at a canter, sometimes a gallop.
Two- and three-night stands have become commonplace, and Nuccio sometimes programs two or three artists a week instead of just one. The results are telling: from 1995 through 1997, under Reiser, according to figures supplied by the Crazy Horse, the club averaged 53 concerts a year by major touring headliners. This year it already has staged 25 nights of concerts (as before, acts play two shows nightly), with 20 more booked through the end of July. Nuccio says he expects to finish the year with 80 nights of concerts, a 51% increase over the 1995-97 average.
To hear Nuccio explain it, that growth has been almost happenstance. “I don’t think it’s been a conscious effort. I don’t think there’s any difference [in strategy]. We’re looking for good talent. Whether they’re old or new, we’re going to give them a chance.”
While continuing to attract the big names--the Crazy Horse’s year began with a three-night stand by Haggard and two dates by Nelson and Leon Russell--Nuccio has found room for emerging artists such as the Kinleys, a sister harmony duo, Lee Ann Womack, Lonestar and Mila Mason, all making their first impact on the charts.
If a newer act doesn’t have a big draw, he said, he tries to bolster the crowd by arranging package deals with corporations to buy blocks of tickets and use them for business entertaining.
Where Reiser saw the Monday and Tuesday night shows as a way to raise the restaurant’s profile while pulling a crowd on traditionally slow nights, Nuccio wants to run shows on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays as well. Those, he said, are the nights people not already familiar with the Crazy Horse are apt to try it as a night out.
“Certainly this business is well established,” he said. “But every business evolves. The thinking is the Crazy Horse needs to continue to attract new customers. It seems easier to get people to try our venue on the weekend, on a night more associated with going out.”
Nuccio says that doing more shows hasn’t spread out the concert crowd, but increased it. He said concert attendance this year is running 85% to 87% of capacity, a 7% increase over the already high figure for the last few years.
Customers are paying, on average, higher ticket prices in a venue where fans traditionally have been willing to pay $30, $40 or even $50 to see a big name up close. Nuccio has instituted a “premium seating” policy, where the 60 best seats in the house go for $5 to $10 more than the rest. “They’re always the first to go,” he said.
Early shows now start at 7:30 p.m. instead of 7; Nuccio said the old starting time didn’t give customers time to have a preconcert meal.
Meanwhile, he has kept up Reiser’s tradition of personal attention to performers. Marty Roe, the singer of Diamond Rio, and recent headliner Toby Keith like to golf; Nuccio joined each for a friendly round. When Don Williams and Ray Price got hungry after the kitchen staff had gone home, Nuccio drew on his jack-of-all-culinary-trades training at Little Joe’s and cooked their steaks himself.
Still, Reiser was so strongly liked, and made such an impact as a board member and president of the Academy of Country Music (whose annual televised awards show takes place tonight at the Universal Amphitheatre), that Nuccio may have difficulty escaping his shadow.
“No one could ever replace Fred Reiser. He’s the best guy I ever worked for,” said B.J. Thomas, a longtime Crazy Horse regular who had his introduction to the new regime when he headlined in February. “I’m just getting to know the new owner. I didn’t notice much difference in the club, but you can’t beat Fred Reiser.”
Nashville-based agents who supply the Crazy Horse with most of its talent give Nuccio high marks.
“Those are some big shoes to fill, and Jay’s done well at it,” said Lance Roberts, agent for Thomas, John Anderson, Haggard and others who have played the Crazy Horse since Nuccio became the owner.
“The artists are getting the same level of treatment they were used to getting from Fred Reiser. Fred was known for his down-to-earth [manner], his integrity, his honesty. If Fred told you something, you could take it to the bank. I feel the same way with Jay.”
Nuccio made his first trip to Nashville in September to introduce himself to agents and artists’ managers at an annual country music concert-business conference.
“I had a liking for country music, but as far as understanding how country music actually works from a concert side, I had literally almost no knowledge, and I’m still learning on a daily basis,” Nuccio said. “The people were very friendly, very helpful. Everyone talks about how nice and down-home the people are who are associated with country music. Starting with that trip and forward, they have been.”
Bill Bachand, a veteran promoter who owns two venues in Phoenix, is one source of advice and information for Nuccio. Frequently Bachand’s 800-seat club, Toolies Country, will coordinate bookings with the Crazy Horse to try to make it easier for prime attractions to fill out their West Coast schedules.
“[Nuccio] is a pretty astute guy for being so new to the country music business,” Bachand said. He noted that the fledgling music entrepreneur seems to do his homework, checking radio playlists and poring over statistics in trade publications that promoters use to gauge an act’s track record and potential draw. “When he calls me, I think he just uses me to confirm” what he already has decided.
Other than his contacts with the agents who represent the artists he books, Nuccio hasn’t made any special effort to advertise himself within the country music industry. Bob Romeo, the Omaha, Neb.-based chairman of the Academy of Country Music, said he didn’t realize the Crazy Horse had changed hands.
“I hate to sound stupid, but I wasn’t even aware Fred had sold it.”
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The Crazy Horse won’t add another hat-shaped ACM trophy this year to the large collection encased in the hallway connecting the restaurant with the saloon. In a decision that apparently hasn’t been widely disseminated (Nuccio and Bachand expressed surprise when told about it), the Academy board ruled that, starting this year, for the sake of becoming “more inclusive,” the previous year’s winner in nonperforming categories such as club of the year will be ineligible to repeat. (This year’s ACM award for nightclub of the year, ironically, goes to Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace in Bakersfield, which Owens said he modeled heavily on the Crazy Horse and drew upon Reiser’s experience as a consultant while getting it up and running two years ago.)
Nuccio shrugs at the suggestion that he may be fated, at least for a time, to be overshadowed by Reiser’s Crazy Horse legacy. He shows no signs of the glibness and flamboyance of the high-rolling, ego-gratifying entertainment operator. He paused over questions and gave birth to answers with sighs, pursed-lip looks and other signs of labor; where most others would trumpet having increased the number of shows, Nuccio almost had to be convinced that it was a significant departure from the past.
“We wanted to understate it as much as possible and keep things going status quo,” he said. “Longtime customers have told me that the first six months’ lineup in ’98 is as strong if not stronger than any lineup in the history of the club. I’m very proud of it. I think if we just continue what [Reiser] established and treat the artists with respect, I will become known as the owner of the Crazy Horse.”
