Outside the Concourse, Knoxville, Tenn.
There’s a big difference between a venue that has an old spirit and one that, literally, has old bones. When Brian Coakley realized there was an opportunity to revive a 107-year-old venue with a long musical legacy in Knoxville, Tenn., he jumped at the chance. His hard work will pay off on June 5 when the building most recently known as the Valarium/CiderHouse reopens as The International/The Concourse.
“I worked there for three years, mostly in marketing and talent buying after I graduated (from University of Tennessee, also in Knoxville),” said Coakley, 28. “I’d been building my own production company, Midnight Voyage, which was focused on dance music, which I did for a year after the Valarium closed.” The Valarium shut down in November 2012, then was open for a year again beginning in March 2013 before it closed its doors again on March 1 of this year. Coakley saw an opportunity to fill a needed niche in the Knoxville market, so he gathered some investors and took the leap.
With help from operations manager Jennifer Barlow and some financial partners, he started discussions with the building’s owner last year about leasing the space and refurbishing it.
“He [the building’s owner] knew I had a lot of passion for the venue and he knew me from when I worked at the Valarium,” Coakley said. Coakley is now getting ready to reopen the 1,200-capacity International and the 400-capacity Concourse, housed in a 70,000-square-foot space with an adjoining 65,000-square-foot parking lot where he’d like to host outdoor shows.
The original Concourse structure opened in 1907 as the International Harvester Branch House, intended as the regional headquarters for the tractor/truck company. IH built the space that’s now the International in the 1920s as a truck repair facility. In the 1930s the Branch House became the Great Atlantic Shoe Company, a business owned by the brothers behind 7-Up (and later Mountain Dew), Barney and Ally Hartman.
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The International, Knoxville, Tenn.
The space has changed names a number of times over the past few decades, from the Orpheus to the Electric Ballroom and Valarium, the latter booked by local powerhouse AC Entertainment.
To get ready for the free, all-ages opening night housewarming party on the 5th featuring cover band The Pop Rox and local funk act Baseball. The first official show in Coakley’s ongoing Midnight Voyage Live series will take place on June 20 with Canadian EDM duo Zeds Dead.
Before any of that, though, Coakley is giving the venues what he described as a $250,000 “cosmetic” makeover aimed at increasing functionality and sprucing up the interior. Among the changes are moving the ticket window and clearing up congestion at the front doors to accommodate bigger events, resurfacing the floors and installing new bathroom stalls, countertops and sinks. For now, he’s not going to upgrade the line array and house sound system, an EAW rig, he said, is plenty loud, and perfect for a venue with standing room audiences and shows featuring loud bass drops.
“We’re planning to do around four shows a week, sometimes more, sometimes less,” said Coakley, who hopes to have both rooms open on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights whenever possible in order to cover the $5,000-a-month rent he’s paying. For now, Coakley is booking all the shows himself, but he said he’s in talks with some “top-notch” bookers to help him carry the load in the future.
“It feels really natural to be doing this now, we’re not having to force it,” said Coakley, who is among three full-time staffers, along with Barlow and a marketing director, as well as one part-time graphic designer. “Even though Knoxville is a big college market and it’s weird to open in the summer, there’s a big enough local community to support the shows over the summer and give us a chance to work out the kinks before 20,000 students come back in August.”
Coakley also feels like his two rooms will fill a much-needed niche in the city, with a space smaller than the 600-capacity NV nightclub (where he has booked many dance shows in the past) and the kind of standing room that’s not available at the seated 1,600-seat Tennessee Theater. “We’re going to use radio, social media and word-of-mouth to get the word out there,” he said.
Contacted for this story: Brian Coakley, (423) 413-7518