Towne Crier marks 3 legendary decades

By John W. Barry
Poughkeepsie Journal

It was a journey that would catapult Ciganer into a 30-year odyssey of live music with big names and open mike nobodys on the stage of his club, the Towne Crier Cafe in Pawling.

As he and other club owners from around the Hudson Valley will tell you, there's nothing quite like this business if you love music. But, they add that navigating a tough economy and crafting the art of attracting crowds night after night can be challenging.

''It's very hard to make money at this level of music,'' said popular folk singer Lucy Kaplansky, who called Ciganer an old friend. ''The fact that Phil has stayed in business for 30 years, he's really doing something right.''

Ciganer's three-decade musical journey will make yet another pit stop one week from today, when the Towne Crier Cafe celebrates its 30th anniversary with a concert at the chapel at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie. Scheduled to perform are Kaplansky and other Towne Crier regulars Greg Brown, Kate and Anna McGarrigle and Garnet Rogers.

More of that later. For now, let's get back to the tootbrush.

Three years before traveling with his friend up to Dutchess, Ciganer ran and later sold a tie-dye and Army surplus boutique in Brooklyn.

He left behind the after-hours, late-night jam sessions with unknown guitarists such as Jerry Garcia and Jimi Hendrix.

''Nobody was a big name,'' Ciganer said this week. ''Everybody was just a musician.''

But he had also said farewell to the street-corner murders and repeated robberies of his business.

''It seemed like they were waiting for me to re-stock my store,'' Ciganer continued.

Darryl Bautista/Poughkeepsie Journal Towne Crier Cafe owner Phil Ciganer takes a break prior to the start of a show.

With some money from the sale to open a club and knowledge gained on a North and Central American reconnaissance mission in search of a site, Ciganer had settled on Austin, Texas.

''The only problem I had with Austin was that when I left Austin, I was in Texas,'' he said.

Ciganer had returned briefly to the Northeast before setting out to strike his fortune in the Lone Star State when an artist friend from New York City asked him for help transporting a sculpture of a toothbrush to Dutchess County. The destination was a former general store and inn on Beekman Road in the hamlet of Beekmanville that had been a major stagecoach stop on the route from Danbury to Newburgh.

The owner of this slice of history had just acquired the building and got talking to Ciganer about his plans for Austin.

''Every other word out of his mouth was 'why don't you move up here and do something,' '' Ciganer recalled. ''When I walked into the old general store part, I started vibrating. It was real deja vu kicking in. It was, in my mind, the almost perfect setting I was looking for. And I didn't have to invest a million dollars.''

Ciganer found cases of forgotten inventory, spent weeks re-stocking the shelves and opened the Towne Crier as a coffee house that served cake but no alcohol. Admission was 50 cents and the first show was a performance staged by several of Ciganer's musician friends.

One of the first performers to be booked for an entire weekend, as Ciganer did in the early days, was Louis Killen. But he got stuck on Cape Cod and couldn't make the gig, so he called Ciganer.

''He said, 'Do you mind if I call some friends who might be able to cover for me,' '' Ciganer recalled. ''Five minutes later the phone rings and the person says, 'Hi, this is Pete Seeger. I understand you need help out there. ... He turned out to be one of my very first performers.''

Other performers who followed over the course of 16 years in Beekmanville and the last 14 on Route 22 in Pawling have included Jorma Kaukonen, Suzanne Vega, Richard Thompson, Rick Danko, Bela Fleck, former Police guitarist Andy Summers and thousands of others who performed at what Ciganer calculated to be the more than 5,000 shows he has staged.

''We like the fact that it's small and the fact that you're so close to the musicians,'' said Chris Farrell of Pawling, who tunes the Towne Crier piano in addition to being a paying customer at five to six shows a year. ''It's not like a concert setting where you're 30 rows back. You get the feeling of a living-room style performance.''

In addition to providing entertainment for local residents, Poughkeepsie Area Chamber of Commerce President Charles North said the Towne Crier, Bardavon 1869 Opera House, Vassar Powerhouse Theater and other arts offerings can help draw people to live in the region.

''I think that it adds to the menu of desirability when people are thinking of moving here,'' North said. ''It's your appetizer. I don't think it's the main course. It's the final point that a person might say, 'They do have arts and entertainment. That's another reason to come.' ''

Along with the names, big and small, that return to the Towne Crier on a steady basis, there are informal appearances by some top personalities. ''Late Show with David Letterman'' band leader Paul Shaffer frequently travels to the Towne Crier for dinner and a show, but often hops on stage to join whoever is performing. And years ago, Talking Heads founder David Byrne was an unannounced guest who joined Thompson in a performance that was filmed by the BBC.

There were also the ones that got away.

The Rolling Stones inquired about performing a warm-up gig for their 1989 Steel Wheels tour at the Towne Crier, but the stage was too small. The band opted for Toad's Place in New Haven, Conn., instead.

Singer Paula Cole asked Ciganer to free up a night so she could do a warm-up show prior to a concert at Madison Square Garden. But Ciganer turned Cole down because he would have had to bump a local musician. He later turned down The Corrs for the same reason.

Grammy-winning singing sensation Norah Jones asked Ciganer prior to the release of her debut record if she could perform. But the headliner didn't want an opening act.

''A lot of them slipped away over the years,'' he said. ''But my thing has always been to support the local artists. If you're from out of the area, you get second consideration.''

Those local artists include the open mike devotees who hit the Towne Crier stage in the hopes of getting noticed and hitting the big time. That's what happened to Sloan Wainwright, who today is an established folk singer who got her start at the Towne Crier open mike nights.

And then there are the openers.

Union Vale resident and guitarist Frank Carillo in 1999 was given the opening slot for a performance by blues legend John Hammond. The two hit it off as friends and musicians and Hammond, who Ciganer has known since the blues man played Greenwich Village with Hendrix in the 1960s, asked Carillo to join his band.

And don't forget Ciganer's stories.

Early in her career, Kaplansky stopped performing and became a psychologist. After returning to the stage, Ciganer said, she called to inquire about opening shows and he hired her to open for the world debut of the Bacon Brothers, featuring actor Kevin Bacon.

Attending the sold-out show were many of Bacon's celebrity friends, who approached Kaplansky immediately after her set ended and bought up her CDs.

''After her set, 70 or 80 people stood up,'' Ciganer said. ''Merly Streep, Ron Howard, Timothy Hutton, they were all standing in line with $20 bills in their hands, saying, 'Would you autograph this for me?' ''

But along with the stage lights and what some performers describe as the best pastry cart on the folk circuit come the second-guessing and nights of half-empty houses.

Summers, who once played a sold-out concert at Shea Stadium as a member of The Police, played a stunning show of acoustic Brazilian guitar music in September that only filled about half the house.

''You don't quite know what's going to happen,'' Ciganer said. ''You do the best you can, then it just unfolds.''

Ciganer called September, at the turn of the seasons, a ''weird time.'' He said every show in November sold out and most in December.

Valerie Paul, who along with Cameron Rylance co-owns the West Strand Grill in Kingston's Rondout section, quit her job as an attorney to open the club, which last year celebrated its five-year anniversary.

''Five years definitely says something about our success, but it doesn't mean it's any less tough,'' said Paul, whose club has hosted such acts as Keller Williams and The Pushstars. ''It seems like in the last year or so it's been harder to put bodies in the room. I don't know what to pin it on. It's a little disheartening.''

But, Paul added, ''I am the kind of person who needs to be perpetually challenged. And I love the business.''

That's what the performers who play at the Towne Crier say about Ciganer.

''When you come off the stage, Phil is just standing there, with tears in his eyes, he has so obviously been very moved by what's on stage,'' said Rogers. ''To have a guy who is still feeling the music so deeply after all the years of doing this -- you know it's not just about dollars and cents.''