The Evening Muse

The Evening Muse opened for a NoDa gallery crawl on the first Friday of February 2001, at the corner of East 36th and North Davidson. The first band to play it was Tesser, fronted by Wes Robinson. [Queen City Nerve] Joe Kuhlmann founded it with Robinson and Robinson's soon-to-be wife Lea Pritchard. Kuhlmann had been a touring performer and recording engineer before he was a club owner, and fewer than two months passed between signing the lease and opening. [Queen City Nerve] The corner had previously held Living Art, a coffee shop open mostly on the first-Friday gallery crawls. [Queen City Nerve] The musician Rodney Lanier, who founded Sea of Cortez and worked at the club as a jack-of-all-trades including running sound, died of cancer in 2011. [Queen City Nerve] Laurie Koster began booking for the club in 2014, and in January 2017 she and Don Koster became co-owners alongside Kuhlmann. [Queen City Nerve] Its landlords are the NoDa gallery owners and art patrons Ruth Ava Lyons and Paul Sires, described as committed to keeping the venue where it is. [Queen City Nerve] It closed to live performance in March 2020 with the rest of Charlotte's venues, and was carried by a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan and an award from Charlotte Center City Partners' Innovation Fund, which paid for cameras, lighting and computers to livestream. [Queen City Nerve] The twentieth anniversary was marked with a livestream on 10 April 2021 — recorded performances and messages from alumni including Jonathan Spottiswoode, Susto, Jim Avett and Sam Tayloe, and a raffle of a painting of Keith Richards that had hung on the club's wall. [Queen City Nerve] Its first live concert after the shutdown, two sets by Jason Eady with Adam Hood opening on 19 May 2021, sold out in under four hours. [Queen City Nerve] Acts it has held include Sean Lennon, the Avett brothers, Lake Street Dive, Time Sawyer and, as a frequent booking, the jazz guitarist Stephane Wrembel. It took Queen City Nerve's 2019 Critic's Choice for best music venue, and its booking has widened to include hip-hop, poetry and comedy. [Queen City Nerve] Kuhlmann named it as a play on "evening news". [WFAE] He was 26 when he formed the idea of owning a small room that would be the best-sounding in Charlotte, and 41 when he said so in 2016. [WFAE] The room has no greenroom by deliberate choice. The country musician Charlie Louvin, who played it before his death in 2011, remarked on it. [WFAE] Every show carries a cover charge, open mics included, and the club is the meeting place for the NoDa neighbourhood association. [WFAE] The folk-rock duo Shovels and Rope first played Charlotte at the Muse before moving up to the Neighborhood Theatre down the street and then the Music Factory, and credit the room from Charlotte stages. [WFAE] WFAE gives the room's capacity as 80 seated and 120 standing; Queen City Nerve refers to a seating capacity of 120. The two do not agree and both are recorded. [WFAE]

“It was really quick, and down and dirty” [Queen City Nerve]

“It's that ongoing lesson of not taking yourself and others for granted. He's continued to teach us since his passing.” [Queen City Nerve]

“The Muse wouldn't be here today still if Don and Laurie hadn't come along. They brought in a lot of knowledge and discipline.” [Queen City Nerve]

“Evening Muse...evening news…I've always been a news hound. As a kid I always enjoyed knowing what was going on around me. The term Evening Muse was the idea to come here, get your daily dose of inspiration and kind of seeing people that are out there in the world pursuing their life's passion” [WFAE]

“He was one those people that was like 'really? No green room?' And I was like, 'no I think it's important that you are out there with the audience and the people' and he was, 'like well I'll be, more places should probably be like that,'” [WFAE]