Lexington, KY - Not everyone is in the mood for a loud, brash rock-and-roll show every night of the week.
Sometimes the ideal setting to catch some live music comes in the form of decidedly more intimate surroundings.
Natasha's Bistro and Bar, a centerpiece of downtown Lexington's independent marketplace for several years, is now stepping up to provide perhaps the city's foremost offering for live, intimate performances, music and otherwise.
While primarily recognized as a new age restaurant and bar, it has also forged ahead as one of Lexington's premiere arts-and-entertainment destinations of choice with its hip, elegantly earthy atmosphere that regularly features both theater and music performances.
In order to keep the proceedings honest, Natasha's has gone out on the proverbial limb and adopted a policy that is designed to keep the integrity of live performances intact, especially for its many musical performers. When featuring a national headlining act, Natasha's has the wait staff bus off all tables and tabs before showtime and advise the audience that food and drink service will cease completely during the performance. They also ask patrons to turn off cell phones and refrain from chatting while the show is in progress.
It's a deceptively gutsy but effective move in holding steady to the venue's dedication to be a viable player in the entertainment market. As Natasha's owner Gene Williams insisted, "Intimacy is an extremely important ingredient here Ö I definitely think this move plays to our strength as a venue."
Williams said that fellow venues implementing policies such as these might be faced with certain difficulties, but he believes that the particular success they've experienced has been largely indebted to their approaching it from a hospitality frame of mind.
Art Shechet, who handles Natasha's booking, has high hopes that venue moves and envelope pushes like this one represent the tipping point for what may be the maturing attitude and sophistication of Lexington's music/entertainment scene. People do not generally enjoy being told what to do, but in this case, the audiences and performers alike have been uniformly appreciative, he said. In a smaller venue such as Natasha's (their capacity ranges from 140 for club shows to 200 for freestanding events), there is a certain "bond in a space like this between the audience and the performers," suggested Shechet. Performers, such as recent headliner Richard Shindell (who personally heaped praise upon the venue) have found respite in Natasha's setup and are relieved to not be "playing over the roar," of less accommodating concert halls, said Shechet.
So what does this mean in the cosmic scheme of things regarding Lexington's music culture? Any music/entertainment scene in mid-market areas such as Lexington simply cannot thrive, and more importantly flourish, without a palpable sense of diversity. Both Shechet and Williams agree that an important element of their new moves is to positively differentiate Natasha's from the city's other entertainment venues, and they've set their sights on attracting a little bit of everyone, from the young professionals to middle-agers to headbangers and even country music enthusiasts. While the local music community is vital to our scene's success, it is also imperative from a commerce angle that Lexington consistently attract big-time national talent into our hallowed music halls to keep them sustained and surging.
Christine LaBuz of Ann Arbor, Michigan's Fleming Artists, an intercontinental talent booking firm that has represented national-level touring artists for 30 years, champions the value of secondary markets like Lexington's. LaBuz and Fleming Artists were notably responsible for recent blockbuster shows such as the Spring Standers at Natasha's and the infinitely popular Ani DiFranco at Buster's. She also concluded that venues such as Natasha's are tailor-made for some of their singer-songwriters who 'need and want to connect with audiences' in more intimate settings. Word is obviously getting out that Lexington can run with the big boys and, in many cases, provide unique doses of ambience and atmosphere that are simply not provided in major cities.
With Natasha's adjustments to conventional thinking and other venues continuing to exercise progressive decision making, Lexington can ultimately become one of the "must-gig" cities in our region. Many Lexington music seekers were more than nerve wracked with the demise of the Dame, yet it almost appears that the backbone of Lexington's music/entertainment scene has leaped fervently from the erstwhile ashes of that venue's previous glory with a growing desire to up the ante.
LaBuz even goes so far as to say that music markets in Lexington and the like are "absolutely vital" to the success of their artists and their own enterprise and are a "huge piece of the convoluted puzzle that touring can be." She, too, supports the decisions made by Williams and Shechet at Natasha's to devote the venue to the intimate nature of its space. LaBuz also offered a very poignant thought from the perspective of the performing artist.
"Basically, that's your life," she said, "and it's no fun when nobody is listening to you."