There are legendary concert venues such as the Fillmore (East and West) and CBGB whose names elicit a moment in time. Others are known for hosting career-making performances – U2 at Red Rocks, Elton John at the Troubadour.
Then, there’s the Wetlands Preserve whose influence spread far beyond its doors. Over 13 years, the venue nurtured talent while simultaneously working towards making a difference in concertgoers’ everyday lives.
In 1989 Laura Bloch Bourque worked alongside her then husband, Larry Bloch, to bring Wetlands from an idea to a reality at 161 Hudson St. in the Tribeca area of New York. Despite a lack of experience as a club owner, he pursued his vision of promoting concerts and spreading the joy of live music while using the site as a catalyst for grassroots environmental activism. She has compiled the venue’s monthly calendars and Village Voice ads from 1989-2001 and added assorted memorabilia and photos to chronicle Wetlands history in her book, Wetlands NYC History: A Visual Encore. On Saturday December 27 she will be signing books at the Blues Traveler show, which will take place at The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, NY—this is altogether fitting as Blues Traveler was the club’s unofficial “house band” in its early days and The Cap is owned by Peter Shapiro, who purchased Wetlands from Bloch in 1996].
“For a lot of the music people they may have missed the whole environmental activist side,” she said. “You could easily walk in there to the music and not understand that we did this other thing. So, I tried in this book to weave it altogether.”
Bloch Bourque recalled a particular campaign that began at Wetlands. “The biggest one from the early years took two-and-a-half years of protesting at the New York Times to get them to stop killing the last old growth forest in Canada. After about a year, everyone was saying, ‘What are you doing? Why don’t you give up?’ And we’re like, ‘No.’ There was constant protests going on there and the New York Times finally threw in the towel. That felt like true victory to Larry. It was like…‘When you get the New York Times to change…’”
The Wetlands Activism Collective continues to carry out grassroots advocacy. “Adam Weissman still continues all that activist activity. And, because I believe Larry would have done it, I plan to give a buck a book to him for his organization, whatever they want to use it for. I feel like they deserve something because Larry would do that if he was here.”
She added, “I heard from so many people that said, ‘I never would have known how to participate or what to do if I hadn’t walked into Wetlands to see a band.’”
While Wetlands NYC details the daily exploits at one particular location, it ends up presenting a history of the ‘90s music world as well as the birth of what became the jamband scene.
“The booking policy was to try and develop bands rather than just, ‘Who will bring in money tonight?’ If you look at the calendars there are so many interesting stories there. You see Dave Matthews playing on a Monday night…for free. Then, he works his way to Wednesday night and awhile later he gets a Thursday. Then, he’s gonna open for someone on a Saturday that’ll expose him to other people. It was all planned. The bands really appreciated it. They got to develop followings rather than just having a gig.”
Emphasizing that open-minded policy towards booking, Bloch Bourque put together a list of the over 3,700 bands that played at Wetlands. It includes: Phish, Pearl Jam, Bob Weir, Widespread Panic, Umphrey’s McGee, the String Cheese Incident, Gov’t Mule, Midnight Oil, Robert Hunter, Rick Danko, Maceo Parker, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Keller Williams, Ween, Run-DMC, Nils Lofgren, Dispatch, Joan Osborne, G. Love and Special Sauce, Blues Traveler, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Zero, Spin Doctors, Aquarium Rescue Unit with Bruce Hampton, Robert Randolph, Steve Kimock, Donna the Buffalo, Charlie Hunter, DJ Logic, From Good Homes and Biz Markie.
Being band and fan friendly wasn’t a plus for everyone. “Larry was always saying, ‘No, we’re not going to close. If people want to keep playing, we’re gonna stay open.’ There was a lot of frustration for the employees. You’re getting off work at 4 and you end up there ‘til 7.”
Bloch Bourque also recalled how she’d be caught in the middle due to Larry’s belief that DJing deserved as much respect as the live act playing that night.
“I can’t tell you how uncomfortable I used to get when he would do this. He believed so much that DJing was an art and…most clubs at that point would throw on a tape between bands but he was DJing to the crowd. He had a few big shot bands that took the stage in the middle of the long song that he had planned out — he would plan his DJ sets for hours — and he had the song that was on that was supposed to lead into that band getting onstage. And if they got onstage early, he was not going to cut that song off. It didn’t matter if it went three, four more minutes. The bigwigs in the industry would be getting rather pissed off and it would get very uncomfortable. But Larry would say, ‘Hey! They took the stage before the song ends. Too bad.‘”
The grind of running a club eventually got to Bloch Bourque. She ended up divorcing Larry and moving to New Hampshire.
“I was never trying to take my son out of his life. I was just trying to make my life easier. So, he made an agreement to move up here within two years. That’s exactly what he did. Larry’s a man of his word. He knew that within two years he’d have to get up here. You’d be surprised how long the hints were going on in the Village Voice ads. He would slip in a little one liner that said, ‘Steal This Club,’ because he was willing to give it to whoever would continue it in his way and there was one buyer before Pete [Shapiro] that got pretty serious before we found that they were gonna ditch the whole environmental thing as soon as they could. So, Larry got out of that deal and then Pete was found, finally. In the book it says, ‘First whispers of someone willing to take over by the rules.’”
In 1996 Bloch sold it to Shapiro, who continued Wetlands Preserve’s original approach towards music and activism. He ran the club until its closing on Sept. 10, 2001.
Bloch Bourque credits Dean Budnick’s 1998 book, Jam Bands for inspiring her ex-husband to start collecting the various parts that now make up Wetlands NYC History.
“It goes back to Dean giving Larry a copy of Jam Bands, she said and then reads the hand-written dedication. “Larry, I hope this book, and particularly the Wetlands essay, rekindles some pleasant memories. Thank you for all your help with this book but, more importantly, on behalf of many people, thank you for the Wetlands. P.S. I hold out the hope that one day you will write a book.”
A few years later, Budnick [who founded Jambands.com and currently serves as editor-in-chief of Relix ] directed the documentary, Wetlands Preserved: The Story of an Activist Rock Club.
“ Wetlands Preserved, the documentary, helped capture the club’s complete story. Larry had a dream and I helped set the scene. These memories are for and about the folks that made the dance come alive,” she said, “but anyone into the developing live music scene of the 1990s would find this entertaining and informative.”
Between those acknowledgements of the club’s importance and the Wetlands VW Bus, covered with hundreds of band stickers, displayed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Larry realized that there remained a high degree of interest in what he started. His initial move — posting old calendars on Facebook — received an enthusiastic response.
“He was telling me how much he thought a book of just calendars would go over. I said to him, ‘Larry, the place has now been gone almost as long as it was alive. Do you really think…?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, because of the response I get.”
Despite fighting pancreatic cancer, Larry continued work on the project until his death in 2012. The book idea was brought up again. Bloch Bourqe remained skeptical until, she explains, “When I heard that there was going to be a 25th anniversary show at the Capitol Theatre celebrating Wetlands, and there was a lot of excitement about it, I thought, ‘Okay, maybe he was right.’”
A Kickstarter campaign earlier this year exceeded its goal and she set out to complete what Larry had started.
Using his personal archives, which included a collection of calendar ads copied from the Village Voice after ’97, allowed Bloch Bourque to include its entire history.
“I had all the material and Larry really wanted me to share it. He wanted to give credit to everybody who ever had anything to do with club. And that’s basically what I’ve tried to do in this book was make sure I got all the information I could into it.”
Despite being forced to shut its doors in favor of condominiums, the seed from Wetlands had been planted and the club’s spirit lives on in the numerous bands that continue to crisscross the globe — attempting to capture lightning in a bottle each night – and by Shapiro whose gone on to become publisher of “Relix” and Jambans.com and promote events at his venues — Capitol Theatre and Brooklyn Bowls – as well as co-found the Lockn’ festival. Just as he’d done at Wetlands the aim continues to be to make concertgoing an experience rather than just a night out.
“There’s been a lot of writing, a lot of music that’s come out of there,” said Bloch Bourque. “Larry and I had one son together, and we also constructed Wetlands together. We used to joke that Wetlands was equal to having 12 children. I feel that grandmotherly feeling towards it. I love watching what Pete’s doing and knowing that I added a little bit of fertilizer in the beginning to that.”
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Wetlands NYC: Visual Encore is available online and at the Capitol Theatre and Boulder Theater. Laura will be signing copies at The Cap this Saturday, December 27.
