INTERVIEW: Pull up a chair at the Smoke Jazz Club in NYC
Photo: The Smoke Jazz Club is co-owned by Paul Stache and Molly Johnson. Photo courtesy of SJC / Provided by AMT PR with permission.
The Smoke Jazz Club, located on Broadway at 106th Street in Manhattan, is ready to welcome a host of impressive singers over the next few weeks. As the Big Apple soldiers on through the snow-less, but freezing winter months, the Smoke Jazz Club keeps things buzzing along with jazz professionals at their best. The coming weeks include visits from the Laurin Talese Quintet (Feb. 8), the Peter Bernstein & Kurt Rosenwinkel Quartet (Feb. 9-12) and Lezlie Harrison (Feb. 14-15), among many others.
The club hosts a 7 p.m. dinner show every evening (with seatings between 5 p.m. and 6:15 p.m.), with second and third sets added in as well.
At the center of the club are the co-owners, Paul Stache and Molly Johnson, who persevered during the COVID-19 pandemic, even when in-person performances at Smoke were shut for two years. They recently exchanged emails with Hollywood Soapbox about the exciting plans for 2023. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
What are you most excited for at the club in 2023?
STACHE AND JOHNSON: The music lineups in 2023 are probably our strongest yet and are a great combination of legacy artists and jazz legends, Smoke regulars, and incredible artists who never performed at the club before — Smoke premieres, so to say! Some of the artists coming in are people we’ve dreamt of presenting for many years, and we finally have them on the calendar. We are really excited about it! We also really look forward to hearing some of our pre-Covid regulars in the improved acoustics of the new space!
The room sounds so much more balanced now, and the sight lines are really improved. It’s been a busy and at times exhausting but really amazing ride since the reopening because the response from the audiences have been so positive. We feel very fortunate!
When did you first fall in love with jazz?
STACHE: In Club Quasimodo in Berlin, Germany, 1989, while watching Eddie Harris. My dad started taking me to this club in my hometown when I was old enough to walk! I saw Miles and Dizzy and many others there, but that particular Eddie Harris show was the fist concert I went to without my parents. And Eddie’s show kinda blew my mind and got me hooked.
Do you find that your audiences are jazz aficionados or jazz newcomers?
JOHNSON: They really are a combination of both, which is great to see! It’s wonderful to welcome both our Smoke regulars of many years as well as people just getting into jazz, or who come into the lounge or for dinner and hear the music and end up enjoying it so much they return. We have seen a real uptick of younger and more diverse audiences as well which is so important for this music. There is a new excitement that we didn’t always see in the past.
For the 7 p.m. dinner show, what’s the experience like?
JOHNSON: The idea is to offer a unique experience and make it a fun evening out! Our guests are encouraged to arrive early to enjoy dinner, drinks and conversation with friends before the show, and then be ready to enjoy the music by the time 7 p.m. comes around. The listening room is very much music focused, but we want our customers to have time to get together and connect before the show starts.
STACHE: Molly is being modest. The part that’s new and unique here in the new Smoke is her dedication to the food! I never quite envisioned it this way before the pandemic, but Molly really believes it’s possible to combine music and food lovers in a small room like Smoke and not have them be competitive crowds. She was right with that vision, and we see the it confirmed every night.
Do you feel there’s a lot of competition in New York City amongst the other jazz clubs?
STACHE: A lot of legendary venues have closed over the years. There used to be so many jazz rooms in NY, and the history is so deep, you can still feel it in the city. But then also new clubs opened, which is a testament to the great power of this music! The pandemic was brutal on the musicians and the clubs.
Those venues who managed to survive the pandemic consider ourselves very lucky. While we all run very different venues, we feel a close bond and camaraderie.
How much did COVID-19 impact the club? How much has the livestream option helped?
JOHNSON: We took a very cautious approach in an effort to keep our customers, staff, musicians, our community safe, so it impacted us greatly. We were closed to indoor concerts for almost two years, and during the height of the pandemic only had sidewalk concerts and livestreams. The livestream concept was a labor of love, never a true business model, but it allowed us to keep the musicians working and stay connected with our community!
Frankly, it was food for our souls while the room was empty. It kept us inspired and motivated in the darkest of moments, and the response to the livestreams gave us the nudge we needed to find a way to reopen and continue. I was moderating the livestream chat at the time, and the group of regular and international viewers who came together every Friday and Saturday night online to share live music together was a reminder of how this music can unify and connect us in a way not many other things can, when we are unable to be in the same room together.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Smoke Jazz Club is located at 2751 Broadway in Manhattan. Click here for more information and tickets.
