Club and Tech Review
Thursday 24 October 2002
Czar's 505
505 Pleasant, St. Saint Joseph, MI
By Red Ron

Czar's is a basement club located in down town St. Joe among other restaurants and nightclubs. The public entrance is well marked and easy to find; an arty decorated stairway leads you down to the club. Once inside, I was captivated by the layout, which has many rooms and sections, almost maze-like. There is a lot of exposed brick with some murals and a lot of graffiti everywhere. The bar will give you fluorescent markers to leave your mark, and lots of hidden black lights make the scribbling stand out. Linda took shameless advantage of this, leaving Red Elvises and WYCE markings in many places, and noting the fact that it was her birthday!

Although the main stage room is rather small, Czar's does have closed-circuit TVs in almost every room, so no one has to miss any of the action on stage. There are two bars with a very good staff that kept our drinks full and even let us run a tab. For food they do offer pizza; even though I didn't have any, it did look quite tasty They have a rear entrance for the bands, and they do not have an elevator, but the stairway is well lit, wide, and not too steep. The green room at the base of the stairs is more of a storage room that goes through an office and into the kitchen; it's not the most private, but adequate.

The stage is a nice size, cut across the corner of the room, maybe 30 feet across the front with a drummer's riser in the corner. The sound system and lighting are excellent, and were run by a true pro, who knew the room and what the musicians needed. The system has 4 EV full range arrays and 2 large subs on each side of the stage, with a delayed signal going to the house speakers throughout the club, thus giving excellent fidelity throughout the club without the reverb distortions common in many a large club. Good job!

The stage monitors are plentiful, six across the front and a large array for the drummer. The raised sound booth in the center of the club, with nice acoustical treatment behind the booth, is one of the best setups I have seen in quite a while. Did I mention that the soundman was excellent?

On the down side, there is no particular place set aside for bands to set up their merchandise, and Max had to perch his wares on a narrow ledge and a small round table, not the best possible arrangement for sales.

This was the first time the Red Elvises played St. Joe, and the Thursday night turnout was modest, but the people who were there were very enthusiastic, had a good time, and I think would bring more friends if the RE play there again. I hope they do; it's a nice club, nice size, and the band sounded GOOD! I recommend it!

Addendum: the club put the band up at a very nice motel called the Park Inn, in Stevensville. The walls of the lobby had many 8x10 photos of the bands, both big time and "working", that have stayed there. When we explained that we sometimes have a few people up for drinks after the show and asked for a room with no neighbors, they gave us room 200,which is isolated from the rest of the rooms. It was obvious upon entering that this was the after-hours room, quite large (more like a small conference room), with two queen-sized Murphy beds, fridge, microwave, desk, table, coffee tables, and extra chairs. And they were nice enough to give us the special "with the band" rate.