Baltimore’s newest music venue just recorded its first sold-out concert.
One month after it was announced, a Grateful Dead-themed concert featuring local musician Cris Jacobs and three guests from the WolfPack has run out of tickets.
The Feb. 21 concert is the first ticketed musical event scheduled for Mount Vernon Place Church since it was acquired last year by UNITE Mount Vernon, a non-profit group that’s working to activate the historic building as a multi-purpose events venue and community hub. It follows a free holiday concert that drew 300 to 400 people in December.
In addition to Jacobs, this month’s concert will include three musicians who have performed with the late Bob Weir, one of the founders of The Grateful Dead.
“I’m thrilled,” said organizer Martin Knott Jr., a UNITE Mount Vernon board member and Grateful Dead fan. “It’s going to be fantastic.”
Billed as a night of music featuring “the Grateful Dead songbook,” the event is one of the first Grateful Dead-themed concerts held since Weir’s death on Jan. 10 at age 78. It’s also a 50-50 fundraiser for UNITE Mount Vernon and the Rex Foundation, the charitable organization established in 1983 by The Grateful Dead and friends to support a variety of causes.
According to Knott, organizers sold 570 tickets on Eventbrite. Prices ranged from $108.55 to $161.90. The concert will be held in the church’s main sanctuary, which has 19 rows of seats – actually hand-carved wooden pews — and a raised pulpit area that will serve as the stage.
The concert is drawing people from Ohio, New York, North Carolina and Virginia as well as Maryland, Knott said: “People are traveling for this.”
For those who weren’t able to get tickets but want to see the show, he said, it will be shown on nugs (nugs.net and nugs.tv), a streaming service that specializes in live concerts.
Variety of events
As part of its strategy for activating the 1872 church at 2 E. Mount Vernon Place, UNITE has worked to schedule a variety of events in and around the main sanctuary. Besides holiday concerts, it hosted a pop-up book shop by The Ivy Bookshop and was open for tours during Doors Open Baltimore weekend in October. It will be a setting for part of the American Institute of Architects lecture series this spring.
The Grateful Dead broke up in December 1995 after the death of frontman Jerry Garcia, but other members of the legendary rock band have reunited in various forms since then.
Considered one of rock’s finest and most distinctive rhythm guitarists and singers, Weir received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award; an Americana Music Association Lifetime Spirit Award and a Les Paul Spirit Award, and he was a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations.
Jacobs is a Baltimore-based singer and songwriter that Baltimore Magazine has called “The King of Baltimore Rock’n’Roll.” Joining him in Mount Vernon will be Mads Tolling on the violin, Brian Switzer on the trumpet and Alex Kelly on the cello. Their group, the WolfPack, is a string and brass quintet that performed with Weir as Bobby Weir and Wolf Bros, playing the Grateful Dead canon with symphony orchestras around the country. St. Paul Sound Room and Friends is producing the Feb. 21 concert.
Knott listed several reasons why the concert sold out.
First, “Baltimore is a big-time Grateful Dead city,” he said. The band “played nine times at the Baltimore Civic Center. There are generations of people who saw them play here. They performed in 1969 at The Lyric. What Baltimore citizen doesn’t like The Grateful Dead?”
Second, “we’ve put together a group of musicians that’s second to none. They’re super-talented. Cris Jacobs has a big following here.’
Third, the concert provides a good way for Grateful Dead fans to come together after Weir’s death.
“It’ll be a great tribute,” Knott said. “Everybody’s like: Who’s going to sing to me?” now that Weir has passed.
The musicians on Feb. 21 are “specialists in the Grateful Dead songbook,” he said. “They have experience performing with Bob Weir. What more could you ask for?”
The church is an ideal location for a gathering of fans who are in “various levels of mourning” about Weir’s death, he added.
In effect, “we’re all going to church,” he said. “It’s not almost sacred. It is sacred. We’re going to hear music that’s very healing. We’re going to celebrate together.”
The size of the church – with just 19 rows of seats – makes it attractive too, Knott said. Many of today’s concert goers, he said, are looking for relatively intimate settings, as opposed to stadiums and arenas that seat thousands.
They “want to feel the energy in the room,” he said. “It’s really exciting to have a space where you can feel that energy.”
At the Mount Vernon church, “there’s not a bad seat in the whole place,” he said. When people go to a concert, “they want to see magic, and I think this buildng has an opportunity to make the magic happen. That’s why we’re sold out. People know this is going to be a great concert.”
Psychedelic Art exhibit
Knott, who is also on the board of the Rex Foundation, said doors will open around 5 p.m. and the band will play two sets starting at 6 p.m. and ending at 10 p.m., with a break between sets. Another part of the church, a large upper-level meeting room called Davis Hall, will be open for refreshments. On display will be an exhibit of vintage concert posters collected by Glen Trosch, president of the Psychedelic Art Exchange.
In addition, copies of a poster created for the Mount Vernon concert by Baltimore-based artist Owen Murphy of One Drop Design Studio will be sold for $30. It features Murphy’s drawing of a human mouth that’s wide open – a nod to the fact that the concert is the church’s grand opening as a concert venue.
“Came up with this while sitting in the dentists chair,” Murphy wrote in a post on Instagram. “Had to do something WEIRd.”
UNITE board members have said they think Mount Vernon Place Church can be successful as the setting for a wide range of events, including weddings, receptions and spoken-word presentations.
“The whole idea is to bring people to Mount Vernon, bring people to the city,” Knott said. “We have to do more of that.”
Knott said he thinks the Feb. 21 performance will show how well the church works as a sold-out concert venue.
“This is our test for this building,” he said. “I think it’s going to perform well. I think we’re going to find that we have something of tremendous value to the neighborhood…It’s a great gathering place for the community.”
think this is the same space that Jazz in Cool Places-decades back-brought Blue Note legend Andrew Hill to town! A nice series. Maybe before Andie Musik got going down the street. Since the Keystone is now mostly a smooth jazz/r and b tribute club, some jazz bookings would be welcome.