Easthampton’s Cellar Bar began as a subterranean extension of its glamorous upstairs sister, Venus—as a chic but casual complementary space. Venus, which opened in the summer of 2009, offered high-end, Latin- and French-inspired dinner menus created by graduates of Hyde Park, New York’s Culinary Institute of America and was shepherded briefly by the Apollo Grill’s head chef Casey Douglas. Co-owners Michael Vito, Ann Gancarz-Vito, Lisa Fusco and Heather Robinson have made a solid go of bringing fancy fare to the city for the last two years, and also helped to turn the location into a meeting place for many of Easthampton’s civic and politically-minded movers and shakers.
In the end, it’s the Cellar Bar that seems to have weathered the difficult and often unpredictable commercial climate of downtown Easthampton. The owners elected to call it quits with Venus this past April, pay their debts and cut their losses. Perhaps it’s an indication that the average person is more likely to drown his sorrows in a pint of beer than a ramekin of foie gras, but whatever the reason, the Cellar Bar lives on. Its luxurious woodwork, long, comfy bar and homey gas fireplace remain, as does its beer and wine selection and full liquor license. There has, however, been one significant change: it’s angrier.
It’s angrier because, somewhere in the midst of the chaos of the location’s identity crisis, a man who goes by the name Angry Johnny (and who lives, conveniently, a stone’s throw down the road) stepped in and transformed the place into something more homegrown than has existed in the Valley since the times when you could go to see The Figgs at Northampton’s bowling alley, or watch the bartenders throw ice at the curious cooks who poked their heads in through a door behind the “stage” from the adjacent Chinese restaurant at Mike’s Billiards in Amherst.
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As Angry and I sit at the bar discussing the interior, he gets carried away with the creative possibilities of expanding the place.
“I’d love to knock down that old door,” he says, pointing to a bricked-up part of the wall that once connected the basement to the one next door under Cherry Picked Books. “Then we could have two semi-separate rooms, so you could rock out to a band in one room and sit and sip your drink in another.”
His fantasy extends further as he imagines connecting all the basements along this downtown stretch of contiguous buildings, creating a whole “nightlife underworld,” but then he snaps back and regains his focus.
“I guess I should just try to fill this place up for now,” he grins, petting his bandana-clad dog, Jezebel.
A lot of folks in Easthampton know Johnny; he’s been around for years (in fact, he was born and raised in Easthampton), and in between touring with his band The Killbillies and painting album covers for other local rock stars, he just doesn’t seem to have the capacity to keep his brain idle. Between songwriting and visual art —he’s ventured away from painting to work in sculpture and freakshow circus assemblage as well)—the guy has produced more quality creations than most people ever will. Back when he spent more time in his studio, “Hell” (where he still works sometimes in the building at One Cottage Street), visitors were routinely dumbstruck by the sheer amount of (often decidedly grisly) artwork, as well as by his ridiculously large vinyl record collection.
A good sampling of that material now resides at the Cellar Bar, on the walls, in the newly-designated stage area and generally strewn about every square foot of the joint. In keeping with his general theme, the head Killbilly has visually branded the space as a secret, decadent cavern whose subterranean nature plays into the theme of “Hell,” or, as his Cellar Bar Centerpiece describes it, “just one floor up from Hell.”
There are odd taxidermy collectibles on the walls and above the bar, where Angry’s fellow Killbilly Goatis T. Ovenrude sometimes pours the drinks when he’s not playing the mandolin or guitar. Drummer Sal Vega and bass player Slabs Theilman have also worked to help transform the Cellar, and the band has played monthly gigs there since a double-booking mix-up last Halloween marked the end of its annual theme gig at the Brass Cat across town (which preceded by some weeks that venue’s decision to stop hosting live music altogether). In addition, they’ve managed to book every weekend at the Cellar through the rest of the summer with a great selection of local bands and solo artists, including The Big Bad Bollocks, Ray Mason Band, Rocky Roberts and Friends, Daniel Hales and the Frost Heaves, Fancy Trash, Jerry Brookman and Dan Blakeslee, Jim Joe Greedy, The Sun Parade and even out-of-towners The Grownup Noise and returning Valley favorite Matt Hebert (who now hangs his hat in Austin).
The influx of so much music has made over the previously genteel, after-work martini hotspot into more of a sweaty, pulsing, breathing mini-rock club. Johnny says all the artists who’ve played here so far really dig the space. It’s relatively small and narrow, like a New York City bar, so even if you can only muster 20 fans it still seems like you’re playing to a decent crowd, and the sound is surprisingly good in spite of the space’s largely brick and cement composition (especially with some bodies in it). It’s been a little slow starting—Angry hasn’t made any money from it yet, and the bands play for donations on a pass-the-hat basis. Still, the hat ain’t always so bad: “Sometimes there are tens and twenties in there!” Angry says.
Then he asks a somewhat rhetorical question: “Can you believe people who only put a dollar in there? I mean, unless you’re just stopping in for one beer or didn’t come to see the band, everyone should give at least five—you’d pay that at the door at most places.”
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On Saturday, June 11, The Cellar hosted “Damn the Tornado!!”, a benefit that featured 12 hours of performances (including a last-minute addition of Joe Jackson tribute group Jo Mofo) and a raffle that gave away prizes donated by an impressive collection of area businesses. Thanks to Angry’s quick sign-painting abilities and the extensive organizational efforts of Andrea Kwapien and Bob Richards (whose mother, Kathleen, was on hand to convey her own tornado experience of huddling in a bathtub in Monson), the day raised over $2,700 for tornado victims.
“The best thing about it was that it wasn’t any one person’s effort—it really was the combination of a whole lot of different peoples’ efforts,” he says. “Even these random people at Florence Savings Bank helped me open an account—it was actually called Damn the Tornado—and gave me some temporary checks, one of which will be going to the Monson Tornado Relief Fund. It’s still open if anyone wants to drop a check off at the Easthampton branch.” Stevie Laprade and Jimmy “The Twitch” Johnson, who agreed at the last minute to host, work the door and sell T-shirts and raffle tickets, also deserve kudos, according to Kwapien.
As I’m scribbling notes about the benefit, John slips back into some sort of reverie in which he’s apparently a teenager again, recalling details of a club that existed just a half a block down from where we’re sitting in the Cellar Bar, called Knightly’s Boston Pub—an Easthampton hot spot in the 1970s and ’80s where he “used to stop for hot chocolate on his paper route.” That club closed its doors in 1991, but not before spawning the monster that has become the Big Bad Bollocks, whose original lineup, including John Reily (aka Johnny Memphis) and Patrick Owens, was a highlight of the benefit show.
“I remember John (Allen) and Patrick getting up at some open mic thing and blathering some slurred Irish songs, and then Bob (Richards) got up and started grooving along on a snare drum, and that was it,” Angry recalls. “The Big Bad Bollocks were born.”
Whether or not the Cellar Bar realizes the megalomaniacal schemes of Angry Johnny and his imagined underworld of successive cellar bars filled with bizarre ephemera, cheap beer in a can and rock and roll around every bend of the labyrinth, it’s definitely turned a corner in its short life. With any luck, it will not only continue to be a happening culture hub, but maybe even a cauldron of creativity that might, like Knightly’s Boston Pub 20 years before it, give birth to another Valley mainstay like The Bollocks or the Killbillies.
For a schedule of Cellar Bar shows (and to browse the extensive and obsessive visual world of Angry Johnny), visit www.getangry.com.
