PITTSBURGH MAGAZINE

Hip To The World

Club Cafe Owners Seek To Plug Local Music Into Internet Audience

By Christine H. O'Toole
Photography by Blaine Stiger

"We love what we do. Just plain love it," says Barney Lee, a co-owner of South Side's Club Cafe with Marco Cardamone.

That might be expected of a former rocker with 20 guitars to his name -- and a musician who's still writing and performing songs with wife Paula Cardamone. But this pair are also savvy business partners who nurtured a local media

firm into a worldwide Internet enterprise and have returned to the music scene with a vision to bring local live performance to a worldwide audience.

In the quiet block where Bedford Square mutes the bustle of East Carson Street, Club Cafe's funky neon sign has glowed unchanged for the past 50 years. But in its latest incarnation, the tiny club defines itself as "an Internet wired nightclub and content creation environment." It's a '60s coffeehouse fast-forwarded to the millennium, with martinis, good food (from Cafe Allegro, a Cardamone project across 12th Street) and a cyber-vibe.

The renovated club opened in its new incarnation in September 1999, after being shuttered for two years. Cushy banquettes and small tables flank a sparkling bar on the first floor. Patrons might never notice the remote control, low-light robotic cameras that perch above the halogen lights and steel ceiling, quietly feeding a state-of-the-art digital recording facility on the second floor. This is one way that Cardamone and Lee have married their business interests and avocation.

After they sold their first firm, Electronic Images, to USWeb (now Marchfirst, a global leader in Internet professional services) in 1997, Cardamone and Lee traveled to its offices worldwide.

"We rode the crest of that wave, learned about the whole world and the Internet," recalls Lee. "Then we started to talk about doing our own thing, where our passions are, and we got a core group of people and rebuilt Merging Media," continues Lee, executive vice president and chief operating officer.

Still housed in Terminal Way, where the duo first joined forces in the late '80s, the firm (with co-founders Dennis Loughran, CFO, and Clay Kiser, executive vice president of digital media content) focuses on digital media services in the music and entertainment field. Club Cafe, says Cardamone, is the main content-creation component of that overall vision.

"We had a very good idea of what a great venue would be. We kept it small and intimate," Lee explains. But the half-million dollar investment in digital technology allows them to "grab things at a very high level, digitally" without detracting from the club's cozy feel. Ceiling-mounted cameras are robotically controlled from a control center upstairs, where the performance can be mixed for recordings -- allowing for crowd noise to be controlled for the final product.

Once captured, the distribution possibilities for those performances are boundless. Paul Simon playing live to 100 lucky fans? You'd catch it online, or on radio or TV, file it for screen later, or play it on DVD.

"We're bringing Club Cafe to the world, not the world to Club Cafe," explains Cardamone.

Thanks to the owners' Internet credentials and investment, Club Cafe is positioned to share performances on its starry little stage with the world. But as they see it, the technology exists to serve the community, both artists and music lovers.

Locally, that means a wide embrace of Pittsburgh acts, from raucous Irish fiddling (The Wild Geese), rockers like Too Tall Jones, blues guitarists, singer-songwriters, poetry readings and performance art. The Club also hosts a steady stream of national acts, like Dave Edmunds, Janis Ian, Christine Lavin, Alex Chilton, Dexter Freebish, Robert Randolph, John Mayer, and Dave Carter & Tracey Grammer among others.

"We're exposing Pittsburgh artist to national artists," explains Karl Mullen. The intense, Dublin-born creator of the Karl Mullen Band (formerly Ploughman's Lunch) handles bookings for the club in addition to his packed performing schedule.

"It's not here today, gone today," he explains of the Club's diverse six-night-a-week lineup. "It's artists who have something to say."

"We have the stage, the forum for musicians," Cardamone agrees. "People want to sing as much as we want to listen."

Music has been a passion for Cardamone and wife Paula since they were "playing for sushi in sushi bars" 20 years ago in Manhattan. The pair met at Dolphin Studios, a New York computer-animation pioneer beginning to explore entertainment applications. Lee also has musical roots, including stints in various bands, plus time behind the sound board, producing a large number of local bands, including The Clarks, Joe Grushecky, the Corbin-Hanner Band, Bill Deasy and Billy Price.

The soft-spoken Cardamone sees no disconnect between the club and the family's restaurant business. "It's a different transport -- here food, there music," he explains over dinner at Allegro. And he takes fatherly pride in the young Allegro staffers who perform at and promote the club. Performance painter Kevin Wenner hosts at Allegro, and Sean Enright, a graphic artist, creates club playbills as well as waiting on tables at the restaurant.

The South Side collaboration among Merging Media, Cafe Allegro, WYEP-FM (which has broadcast live performances from the club) and local musicians is "the little ecosystem within the larger ecosystem," says Cardamone.

During a raucous CD release party, Wild Geese bass player Jason Nash paused off-stage to praise Club Cafe's ambience. "It's arguably the best venue in town, for the sound system and sound quality," he notes. Out-of-towners are taking note, too. Karl Mullen reports that Philadelphia Phil Roy left his first gig at the Club and e-mailed "everyone he knew" to rave about the place.

"The artists who play here carry the word to others," says Mullen. "What's been surprising is that artists I've booked elsewhere tend to give a different kind of performance here -- it's that intimate. It lets the artist open up."

Opening up to a global audience is the Club's "ultimate goal," says Lee. He envisions a "Pittsburgh City Limits," similar to the Austin-based PBS show, with club performances streamed via the Internet and television.

As broadband capabilities and DVDs become as common as TVs in American households, suburban stay-at-homes or downtown workaholics who can't get out every night will eventually be able to share the Club Cafe experience through webcasts -- an extension of its musical community.

"We know that, inevitably, broadband will be a reality," says Lee. He admits to being frustrated with the technology's slower-than-expected adoption. "It will take a little longer, but by the time it's ready, we will have amassed an incredible catalog."

Boomers "have a special place for music in their lives," Cardamone says.

For him and Lee, both of whom graduated from Mount Lebanon High School in the '70s, the kick of the club is less financial than spiritual.

"To hear a musician praise us -- to know that not only do they appreciate it, but that they let everyone they know that we're truly passionate about what we're doing -- that's the reward."

Club Cafe, 56 S. 12th Street, South Side, 412/431-4950. www.clubcafelive.com  Monday-Saturday, 7pm - 2am.

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