Knickerbocker Cafe / Knickerbocker Music Center
In December 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, America’s nearly 14-year experiment with prohibition ended with passage of the 21st Amendment, the Roosevelt administration having decided that its desperate need for taxes trumped further attempts to legislate temperance. And earlier that same year, one of New England’s jumpin’est, swingin’est, rockin’est and most historic live-music venues opened in the quiet coastal town of Westerly, Rhode Island: the Knickerbocker Café.
Though it presented mostly blues, R&B and soul acts during the 20th century, “the Knick,” as it’s called, expanded its roster significantly in the 21st following a four-year shuttering in the early 2000s that resulted in new ownership, major renovations, a fresh commitment to serving the local community and a revised name, Knickerbocker Music Center. Now, over 15 years after the revitalization, the 350-capacity, roughly 180-seat venue is at least as popular as it’s ever been, renowned for its retro ambiance and for hosting some of the most regionally, nationally and internationally celebrated artists on the scene today.
OPENING, LOCATION, ROOMFUL OF BLUES
The venue’s history begins with brothers Paul and Albert “Aggie” Vitterito, whose family opened an ice cream shop at 35 Railroad Avenue in Westerly in 1929. Following Congress’s passage of the Blaine Act in February 1933 (which proposed a constitutional amendment to end prohibition) and its passage of the Cullen-Harrison Act in March (which relegalized the manufacture and sale of up to 3.2% by weight beer and wine), they were convinced that a dine-and-dance club would be more profitable, especially given widespread rumblings that all booze would be relegalized later in the year. They renamed their shop the Knickerbocker Café (after the Knickerbocker Express train that ran from New York City through Rhode Island on its way to Bangor), and it soon became the area’s premier spot for live music, dancing and authentic Italian cuisine.
Westerly’s location being between New York City and Boston made the Knick the perfect place for touring musicians to play while traveling between the two and a bevy of top blues artists and acclaimed big bands appeared in the ‘30s, ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s. In 1967, Roomful of Blues, founded that year by guitarist Duke Robillard and pianist Al Copley, landed their first gig at the venue; they wound up playing there practically every Sunday for some 15 years and being the house band, backing artists including Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Big Joe Turner, Roy Brown, Big Mama Thornton, Red Prysock, Helen Humes, Sil Austin and Big Walter Horton. According to Mark Connolly, the Knick’s executive director, Paul Vitterito’s son, Paul Vitterito Jr., told him that when Robillard and Copley initially approached his father and uncle about booking a spot, they said the band wasn’t popular enough to play on Fridays or Saturdays, but eventually allowed them to a appear on a Sunday. “That became a big part of Knickerbocker lore,” he told Susan McDonald of The Providence Journal. “The owners originally turned the guys in what later became Roomful of Blues down when they asked to play. It turned into a huge event and they played every Sunday night for a long time. People would climb through the windows when the shows were sold out.”
Among the hundreds of acts that appeared at the Knick in the ‘60s and ‘70s were Count Basie, Albert Collins, Gatemouth Brown, Roosevelt Sykes, Junior Wells, Johnny Copeland, Coleman Hawkins, The Shirelles, The Coasters and Stevie Ray Vaughan (with his band Double Trouble, first in November 1979, four years before his debut album, Texas Flood, made him a star). The ’80s and ‘90s included shows by Carl Perkins, The Belmonts, Tiny Tim, The Platters, The Sun Ra Arkestra, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Sugar Ray & The Bluetones and Rolling Stones tribute band The Blushing Brides, to name a few.
DECLINE, CLOSING, NEW OWNERSHIP, RENOVATION, REVIVAL
By the early 2000s, the Knick had lost much of its former luster, with business at a low and the venue struggling to compete with other area clubs, notably the blues-focused Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel in Providence. Adding insult to injury, The Station nightclub in West Warwick burned to the ground in February 2003 following a pyrotechnics mishap, which resulted in 100 deaths, 230 injuries and local authorities requiring all venues with capacities over 100 to update to new, much stricter fire-safety standards. Unable to afford doing so, Vitterito Jr., who running the Knick at the time, shuttered the space in 2005; it remained closed for the next four years.
In 2009, a group of music lovers from Westerly and Watch Hill established Westerly Blues LLC and raised a reported $1.5 million to purchase the Knick, renovate it and make it current with the new fire-safety regulations, reopening the club in May of that year as Knickerbocker Music Center. In 2011, Westerly Blues asked Connolly and his business partner Jon Kodama, each of whom had spent years working in the restaurant business, to run the Knick and initiate a new era for the venue. Connolly said their approach was two-fold: to make it more community-based and attract a much younger crowd. “I wanted the place to become a musical community center,” he told Rachel Philipson of South County Life in December 2023. “When I got there, it really wasn’t that. A lot of people had come when it was really big in the late ‘70s and into the ‘80s but by this time they were in their 60s, they didn’t want to go out that much, they didn’t want to stay out late and they didn’t want to spend that much money. When you are a venue, you can’t really stay alive with that type of clientele, so we needed to get younger people in there and we needed more of the community involved.”
Connolly and Kodama immediately updated the interior, which they thought was key to attracting younger patrons. “When I got here, the walls were white. It looked more like a VFW,” Connolly told Nancy Burns-Fusaro of The Westerly Sun in July 2023. After painting the walls dark green, they made a number of other alterations including removing all televisions, updating the seating areas and raising the stage 13 inches to provide a better view of the performers. “It’s cooler and clubbier,” Connolly told Burn-Fusaro. “It had five TVs, heavy drapes and opened at 9am for third-shifters to get a drink. Taking out the TVs made it more about the music and more hipster.” During the course of the renovation, some vintage equipment and memorabilia was discovered in the basement and incorporated in the redesign; the original stage backdrop banner is now hung on the back wall, most of the neon is from the ‘40s and decades-old photos and playbills line the walls.
Over the next few years, Connolly and Kodama expanded the Knick’s schedule and the musical variety of its roster. In 2014, Kodama left the organization and Connolly became the executive director, establishing a partnership with the United Theatre and the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra & Music School; since then, that organization has provided music lessons to RIPOMS students and over 5,000 others enrolled in the Westerly and Chariho school districts.
NOTABLE 2000S APPEARANCES, JON BATISTE, 90TH ANNIVERSARY SHOW
Since the Knick’s name change, facelift and revisions to its business model, it’s drawn a steady stream of household names, popular local acts and up-and-coming artists. Among those who appeared between 2009 and 2014 were Eric Burdon, Al Kooper, Leon Russell, Commander Cody, Delbert McClinton, Buddy Guy, Marcia Ball, The Duke Robillard Band, John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band, Jimmy Vaughan, The Wailers, L’il Ed & The Blues Imperials, Johnny A., Steve Riley & The Mamou Playboys, Ronnie Earl & The Broadcasters, Eileen Jewell, Shemekia Copeland, Poppa Chubby, Spiritual Rez, Carolyn Wonderland, Joe Lewis Walker, Davina & The Vagabonds, Rusted Root, Nikki Hill and Tommy Castro & The Painkillers.
The past decade has seen of acts across multiple genres, including Serbian guitarist-vocalist Ana Popović, Providence-based alternative folk-rock band Deer Tick, Boston-based indie-folk band The Ballroom Thieves and Canadian bluesman Matt Andersen. Others who’ve taken the stage include Greg Piccolo & Heavy Juice, Martin Sexton, Forever Fool, Doyle Bramhall II, Scott Sharrard & The Brickyard Band, Sit Kitty, Ryan Montbleau, Barefoot Truth, Brett Dennen, Ward Hayden & The Outliers, Will Evans, Haley Heynderickx & Max Garcia Conover, Hiss Golden Messenger, Rustic Overtones, Billy Bremner’s Rockfiles, Jamie McLean Band, Dustbowl Revival, Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad, Adam Ezra Group, Ari Hest and Booker T. Jones.
During the Covid pandemic, the Knick became more nationally known than ever when Grammy-winner Jon Batiste, then leader of the house band on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, took up residence and made nightly steaming appearances from the venue. In July 2023, to celebrate its 90th anniversary, the Knick held an event featuring the Grammy-nominated Knickerbocker All Stars, vocalist-harmonicist Brian Templeton and boogie-woogie piano virtuoso Arthur Migliazza.
COMMENTS ON REVITALIZATION, FUTURE GOALS
Asked for his comments on the Knick’s revitalization and about his plans for the future, Connolly said he’s very happy with what he and his partners have accomplished so far but said he wants to do even more, especially in terms of contributing to the local community. “I can see us gaining on our dream and our goals even on a day-to-day basis,” he told Rachel Philipson of South County Life. “The more people you can work with, the more you can have as partners, the bigger [you can get and] we want to keep working on that. We want a lot of people involved. We want people to know this is where you go when you want to hear great music or have a great play or anything like that. Westerly has a lot to offer and we want to be part of it.”
“There will always be an audience for blues music, but it takes embracing change and building new connections,” he added. “We are there for musicians and they see that. We get musicians coming through and they say they are going to tell their managers that we were treated really well here and the vibe of the place is great and that we want to come back. To me, that makes my day.”
(by D.S. Monahan)
