From where I live, I can travel to a few cities for good music. The best, though, is when I can stay in my hometown and rock out, which I’ve been doing for quite a while now. This week I learned that the Southgate House in Newport, Kentucky, (out of state but under 5 miles away, so I’m still calling it my hometown) will be closing at the end of the year.
A year out of college I went out with some friends to see a friend of a friend’s brother’s friend’s band play. Or maybe the brother’s friend worked with the band. Either way, it was a distant relationship. We got terribly lost going to the Southgate House in that pre-Newport-on-the-Levy era, parked too far away and walked through some open lots covered in grass. I’d been to show before, but the group of friends I went out with that night was not your typical indie rock show crowd. They would have all been more comfortable seeing the Dave Matthews Band at an outdoor venue. We all made do, though, helped along by shots of tequila.
The band, a brother and sister dressed all in red, black and white, came out and did a pretty good job. The crowd was about 20 people but the music was good enough that I bought an album and the everyone was pretty entertained. A year or two later I saw an article about The White Stripes with pictures of the singer and drummer in red, black and white and about shat myself.
Stories like that are what make the Southgate House so awesome. Seeing small acts there gets you all sorts of indie cred without even trying because so many small acts that have played there have turned into big acts. And some big acts have just honored their crowds by performing at small venues, like Guided by Voices. Thanks to the wonderfully anal retentive concert filing system of Wonder Boy, I am able look back on most of the shows I’ve seen at Southgate House, in reverse chronological order:
- 6/14/2011, Sondre Lerche
- 10/15/2010, Guided by Voices (the Classic lineup), Scott Hutchinson (of Frightened Rabbit) solo acoustic set
- 10/10/2010, Minature Tigers
- 5/6/10, Frightened Rabbit, Maps and Atlases
- 6/11/09, Bonnie Prince Billy, Bachelorette
- 5/28/09, Camera Obscura
- 5/21/09, Those Darlins, Dexateens, The Features
- 11/4/07, Josh Ritter
- 08/31/07, The Ditty Bops
- 4/7/2007, The Long Winters
- 4/16/07, Yo La Tengo, Times New Viking, David Kilgour
- 4/5/06, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Brunettes
- 5/17/05, Rilo Kiley, Neva Dinova
- 9/15/2000, White Stripes
