Rock ’n’ roll’s original garage band, the Wailers, wants the beat to go on long after they do in the city of their magical, musical birth in 1959.
Tacoma.
The band’s two longest-tenured members, Kent Morrill and Buck Ormsby, believe they finally have found the perfect home for their dream – The House of Rock and Roll – in a building much older than the oldies they play.
And it doesn’t even have a garage.
Where? The Union Club – built as a colossal clubhouse for the leisurely passions – drink, dining, cards, billiards, bowling, reading, cigars and deal making – of the powerful men building a Northwest boomtown.
Talk about oldies. The building debuted in 1890, the year before the hit song “Ta-Ra-Ra Boom-De-Ay!”
Most recently, the white, five-story wood mansion at 539 Broadway served as Winfield’s, an unsuccessful short-lived billiards club and restaurant, and David’s on Broadway, a successful steakhouse and event space.
The Union Club’s next life could rival Tacoma’s greatest international attractions.
Picture this:
• Intimate concert spaces, the largest for maybe 450, with the technical capability to simulcast live performances around the world.
• A broadcast studio for a new, independent true oldies radio station – hosted by Northwest on-air legend Mark Christopher – syndicated across the country.
• A museum with memorabilia and exhibits dedicated to the foundational Northwest rock movement pioneered by the Wailers, the Ventures, the Sonics, the Kingsmen and others from the 1950s through 1980s. Even Tacoma-born Bing Crosby.
• A recording studio for the garage bands of today’s youth looking for a break and a sound of their own to cut a demo or find history-making mentors through the Fabulous Wailers Performing Arts Foundation.
• A restaurant, bar and meeting spaces for weddings, parties and other events.
Think of it. With the LeMay Museum as an ode to America’s love affair with the automobile and The House of Rock and Roll’s homage to the classics, Tacoma will offer a pairing as popular as wine and cheese.
“This should be a showcase,” Morrill said last week. “Of course, we could say we’re going to put an airport in it, but until anything actually happens, it’s just talk.”
Morrill’s talk should be music to the ears of Tacomans, oldies fans and anyone who wants to understand how the Wailers influenced the course of popular music.
Published reports have noted a bandbox full of popular artists who, when asked to cite their influences, have named the Wailers. Among them Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, Pete Townshend, Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Paul Schaffer.
The House of Rock and Roll – still a complex drawing-board vision – combines for-profit and not-for-profit components. And it falls to Dempster Boyd, a Tacoma music promoter and the project’s manager, to oversee its evolution.
He knows the building well. He had his 63rd birthday party there in June – and the Wailers performed.
In geography, 539 Broadway isn’t far from the garage near South Ninth and Fife streets where the first band members started to create together in late 1958.
About the Wailers, Wikipedia says, “They are often considered the first garage rock group.”
“They called us a garage band,” Morrill said, “because that’s how a lot of bands start. But it didn’t necessarily have to be in a garage. Sometimes it was in a garage. Sometimes it was on a patio. Sometimes it was in a house.”
“We moved around a lot,” Ormsby said. “You had to find the space where you could be loud.”
So The House of Rock and Roll’s loudness won’t disturb its residential neighbors, the development team already has enlisted help from Greg Ristau, a Seattle-area sound engineering consultant.
He will design the acoustics, sound insulation and the broadcast and recording studios built atop a more modern addition to the south end of the original clubhouse.
Boyd is negotiating contract terms for The Union Club with representatives of the property owner.
A preliminary structural report indicated the heavy wood timbers and more recently installed concrete columns under the building will handle the attractions Ormsby and Morrill plan to incorporate.
Now, Boyd said, he has to finish the business plan, devise a formal fundraising strategy, pursue grant applications for the recording and broadcasting studios and amass the memorabilia collection for the museum.
“I’ve got a terrific amount of pressure on me,” Boyd said Wednesday before a walk-through of The Union Club to scout the house.
He knows one thing for sure. The team intends to keep the historic exterior intact, even though the building has no official historic designations.
“As you can imagine, history is important to us,” Boyd said.
Mayor Bill Baarmsa knows a bit about Tacoma history.
“Tacoma, at least back in the ’50s and ’60s, was truly the heart of rock and roll as far as the Northwest was concerned.,” Baarsma said. “Whether (Morrill and Ormsby) can make it or not, of course, is always a question – whether there’s a niche market for this kind of venue. But there may very well be. It’s back to the future, as they say.”
Ormsby, who manages the Sonics and recently toured with them in Europe, says most folks here don’t realize how much the world still loves the sounds born in Tacoma.
“If we do this right, it’ll be a destination,” Ormsby said.
“We know Tacoma is known for its glass museum, and people from all over the world may come here once in their lifetime to see it,” Morrill said.
“The Wailers put Tacoma on the map 50 years ago when we went on ‘American Bandstand,’” he said. “Our city fathers threw a big banquet for us. But they wouldn’t let us play in Tacoma, because they said we were playing ‘the devil’s music.’
“We think The House of Rock and Roll would bring people from all over the world and be a place that puts Tacoma on the map again and again.”
Dan Voelpel: 253-597-8785
dan.voelpel@thenewstribune.com">dan.voelpel@thenewstribune.com
Behind The House of Rock and Roll
Concept: A combination museum, music venue, radio station, recording studio, restaurant, meeting space
Founders: Kent Morrill, Buck Ormsby – members of the Wailers, a band that formed in Tacoma, released its first song, “Tall Cool One,” and appeared on television’s “American Bandstand” in 1959.
Project Manager: Dempster Boyd, Tacoma music promoter and marketing consultant
Notable: The Fabulous Wailers Performing Arts Foundation provides music mentorship to young people. LouieFest, an annual music festival founded by Morrill and Ormsby, raises money for the foundation.
Wailers’ next concert: 8 p.m. Thursday, The Swiss, $10 cover charge, 1904 S. Jefferson Ave., Tacoma
