HOW IT BEGAN

In the early summer of l987 The Stephen Talkhouse had been closed because the current owners were in litigation with each other. Since it opened as a nightspot in l970 The Talkhouse always exemplified a hip, wild, but unpretentious place. I had always loved the Talkhouse. It was the best place to drink and the best place to meet women, especially if you weren’t looking for someone who was born on third base but thought they hit a triple (not my line).

I had just given up on making it as a novelist, a quest I had pursued for about 7 years and l,700 pages. I hated the job I had. One night when I was feeling especially low the writer Clifford Irving asked me if there was ever anything else I wanted to do. I mentioned owning a bar and he suggested buying The Talkhouse. In that moment I decided to do it. It took about five days to raise the money from the original investors. They were Jerome Schneir, my father-in-law at the time, Adrienne Schwartz, my aunt-in-law at the time, her friend Robert Pinto and my new wife Marcie Schneir and I. We opened in about two weeks on or about August l, l987.

The first and smartest thing I ever did in business was to drive up to the Sea Wolf where Larry Wagner was working the door. He had done the same in my years going to the Talkhouse. He was the most consistently personable bartender I had ever met and there was no one I was more hopeful would come on board. He did, teaming up with Michael Gochenour, aka Frampton, who possessed ample amounts of southern charm and humor as well as good looks that left him. Phillip Vega, the unflappable, ever-friendly and ever-oblivious Puerto Rican was one of my next important free agency acquisitions. I got him from the Sea Wolf, the other great bar of that era that was run by the ever distracted, but always good humored, Wolf Reiter. It was from Wolf that I briefly snagged Kevin Finnigan who had worked

In the ever-changing world of the too-often snobbish Hamptons nightlife we were to become a welcome institution.

The first musicians to grace the Talkhouse were Cliff Schwartz (aka Klyph Black) and Eddie MacNeil (aka Eddie Mac), with Klyph on guitar and Eddie blowing the harp. They played together one night in September of l987. Their band, Rumor Has It, was to follow sometime that fall and that band was to become a fixture, the ultimate house band, for the next ten years. It featured Jeff (aka Pepto) Silverman on drums, Peter Michne (aka Bosco) on guitar, and John (?) On bass.

Shortly after Klyph and Eddie started playing weekly two friends of mine, George-anne Roberts and Ali Cole (who tragically died last year), put me in touch with the bluesman John Hammond. John had lived out in East Hampton for years as his kids still do. I had met him at Georgie’s earlier that year and he agreed to play that October for $750. We charged $10 and the place was mobbed. John became a fixture at the Talkhouse in the early years. With his show the concept of bringing national talent to the tiny Talkhouse was born.

Other acts that fall included bluesman Mose Allison, folk singer Eliza Gilkyson, folk trio Uncle Bonsai (with the classic “Boys Like Sex In The Morning”), and many others coming to play. Late night bands followed the national acts on weekends. Taj Mahal played on a Wenesday night in January, our first $20 ticket and it seemed like everyone in town was there. The crowd was totally silent and mesmerized. In early February I wrote a letter to Billy Joel, inviting him and then wife Christy Brinkly to come to a show and saying how we’d love it if he’d come in and play. My friends thought that was pushing. Billy & Christy showed up at a Loudon Wainwright III show in early February of l988. Richie Havens played his first show in February, the only time he would ever perform with a band.

This was back before the Stephen Talkhouse expanded. We had a stage that was about six feet deep by eight feet long at the time. The soundboard was a six channel board that Klyph operated from the side of the stage, squeezed in by the patrons around him. But, remarkably in retrospect, it worked. People were able to see great talent, close up, and if the prices were steeper than in New York City you were still seeing them in a venue no bigger than some living rooms. And you didn’t have to drive to NYC and pay parking. Perhaps most importantly, you could go into a show and know a significant number of people in the audience. You were watching a great show with your friends. I believe that’s one reason the audience vibe (and hence the artist’s response) was as good as it is here.

There were some memorable nights that first year. They included:

(1) Jesse Colin Young April show. Three middle-aged intoxicated local women arrived early for the show. They sat at a reserved table and refused to leave. It took awhile but we finally got the two bombed women out the door. The third woman begged to be allowed to stay. She professed that she had a crush on Jesse for over 20years and just had to see. I warned her she had to keep quiet and sit at the bar. Finally, the show began. I retreated to the outside bar only to hear Jesse sings about three words before stopping and saying “Peter, this just isn’t going to work.” Panicked I raced in to see the lady kneeling at his side and clutching at him. Loud enough for everyone to hear she pleaded “But I blew him at Woodstock” as I pulled her off him. Jesse leaned into the microphone and reminded us all “It wasn’t me miss. I wasn’t at Woodstock.” We got her up and out the back then escorted her down the driveway that used to run up the east side of the Talkhouse (where the stage and bathrooms are now). She stumbled away into the night. As I walked back up the alley I could hear Jesse start playing. At that point the latch on the window directly behind the stage snapped, the window crashed down, the wind blew into the club on Jesse’s back and, he again stopped playing. I went over lifted the window up, then realized I had to stay there and hold it up at the latch had snapped off. If I let it go the show would stop again and there was nothing to prop the window up. So there I was, holding up the window on a cold night, in full view of the audience inside, as Jesse finally started playing again. Guess who came back down the street and started screaming at me and punching me, claiming I had stolen her earring? Then the audience started laughing, then Jesse stopped playing. All ended well when we finally got rid of the bozette, propped up the window with a stick and the show went on.

2.) Little Charlie & The Nightcats and Albert Collins. Albert Collins first played the Talkhouse on the first Saturday in June of l987 with his band The Icebreakers. The ticket price was $35 (a new high) and both Jann Wenner and Jimmy Buffett were in the crowd. They told me to set up the TV in the corner so you could see the acts if were blocked in over there. It only took me l6 years to get around to doing that. The Collins show was a big hit and Albert, like so many acts that would follow, fell in love with the place, its vibe and the staff. Hearing that the then unknown Little Charlie and the Nightcats were playing the next night for $5 The Master of the Telecaster promised to come on down and jam for FREE, making one of innumerable great gestures the artists playing here have made to their fans over the years. Albert came down and the place was packed. Little Charlie has been playing here (for $45 now) since, but if it wasn’t for Albert he never would’ve established the fan base he has as quickly. By the way, like Buddy Guy the April before, Albert went out and played on the sidewalk. He would be a Talkhouse fixture for several

Trivia Question: What blues artist played in the middle of 27, then hitched a ride and got in a car that drove him past Windmill Lane?

3.) Roy Buchanan played the Talkhouse only once, on a Sunday night in late June of l987. It was a $20 ticket and the man who turned down the Rolling Stones (after they approached him to play in the band after the death of Brian Jones) was trying to get his alcohol-related derailed career on track with a new album on Alligator.

In those days of the early shows I made a practice of greeting every artists, asking if everything was ok, and assuring them I was the biggest fan of their music in the world, regardless of whether I knew their music or not. That role has since been absorbed by other sycophants or staff who just plain care. Anyway, I bounded up the stairs after softball at Maidstone, reasdy to tell Roy just how much I really loved him and froze the moment I met his colf black eyes starring at me. This was not a man who wanted to chat.

I paid him, said nothing and went downstairs. There were probably 50 paying customers and 20 comps that night with more drifting in as one of THE best shows that ever occurred here unfolded. A drummer, a bass player who looked like he was 12 and acted like he was 30 and Roy just wailing away. He did a Hendrix classic I can’t remember and Clapton’s crossroads and went upstairs. The place went wild. In those days I didn’t know to check with the band to SEE if they had a cutoff to their encores so I let the crowd go 5 minutes or more. Then I ran around the club and upstairs and faced those same black eyes, this time bisected by a joint held between them. “Ummm, is there any chance you could play one more song?,” I asked like I was trying to get a kiss after my first date (actually even worse).

“I would. But I make it a point never to play after I smoke,” he said with unexpected softness.

“I mean, I’m willing to pay, I, er….”

Before Roy could answer the adolescent bass player piped in. “How much?

“Five hundred dollars,” I said. Now understand, I couldn’t look into those eyes and say less than that. But that was $500 to a band playing for $2,000.

“Roy, we gotta take it,” the bass player insisted, stepping forward.

Well let me tell you, if I thought I had seen a withering stare earlier that day I knew nothing. Buchanan glared at the kid till he stepped back and slowly and methodically ground out the joint.

“You still don’t know anything about the blues,” he said dryly. “If a man in a joint this small in a room that empty paying you this much already asks you for one more song you do it for free.” He got up and went downstairs, band in tow, and played 45 minutes more. He didn’t take a dime.

I thanked him when he left, he nodded, and two weeks later he was arrested for public intoxication somewhere in Virginia (I believe). He committed suicide in jail by hanging himself by his belt. I never saw eyes like that and that gesture, as much as any other made by the performers here, is with me today.

4.) Terrance Simien & The Mallet Playboys. I am guessing as I am on all these dates but I believe it was July l4th, l988 and I believe it was a Thursday that the band of bands, Terrance Simien & The Mallet Playboys first played the Talkhouse. As much as I am ignorant of music and music genres I can’t say there were one in 20 people who came in the bar then and thought they did who knew what zydeco was. And most of those that did know knew it from seeing their cameo appearance in movie The Big Easy. After Terrance & the boys came to play that night, lots of Amagansett did.

With tiny Earl on washboards and Terrance on accordion both in and out of the Club I can still remember Ence Baxter and Linda dancing in the streets with Michael Cain. Paul Simon, Lorne Michaels and others were there. In the 50 odd appearances that Terrance 7 The Mallet Playboys have played here and in Florida since there is no performer I consider as good a person or a better friend.

5.) Lots of vignettes fill the visual mental landscape of that first year…a bombed Buddy Guy stumbling past Mick Jagger waiting to greet him at the front door, then hearing that he was there and playing Satisfaction after he had already left. My deaf partner leading the blind Doc Watson to the stage.

Loudon Wainwright III playing to an ever so silent audience his tribute to John Lennon called “Not John” on a frigid February night. Drinking champagne with Donovan at 3 am (his show had ended at l0PM) on an August night while his stepson played “wild Horses” then learning his stepson’s natural father had been Brian Jones of the Stones.

It’s easier to focus on those nights over time than the day to day reaction with the patrons who became friends here, but it’s hard to make that meaningful if not interesting to everyone else.

1987-1992 THE EARLY YEARS

There are the performers and there are you, our audience, but the other essential ingredient in the Talkhouse soup is the staff.

We look on the Talkhouse as a kind of church, a sanctuary, where people can go when they feel fragile and ever so alone, or to commiserate, or to rejoice. The continuum of the people who serve you here, for however many episodes it lasts, is part of the magic at the Talkhouse. There have been so many people who worked here over the years. We're proud that no one ever quit. People moved on with their lives after the season's end, but no one ever walked out on their fellow pirates while on a summer mission. 

The early priests and priestesses included Marcie Honerkamp who joined long time Talkhouse fixtures Kevin Finnigan, Michael Farrell, Michael Gochenour, and Larry Wagner as the bartenders. Those four had all worked at the Talkhouse for years. The waitresses were Robyn Kuntz, Debbie Kennedy & Debbie Reuterschan. Susan Bochroch followed soonafter. Philip Vega came on board to work in the kitchen with our first chef, "Boom Boom" George Bengston a few months after we opened in July of l987. Paulino Collado, who is as hard a worker as anyone I've ever known, came on as the guy who cleaned up the destruction of the night before. James Pellow came on board around l990 and has looked up to Phillip ever since. Dionne Moore was in there as well and she has looked up to James ever since.Finally, Klyph Schwartz became the soundman, operating a six channel board from the side of the stage.

Who were the early performers who defined the Talkhouse (and in many cases still do)

Among the many great "regular performers of those early years are many who are now deceased. Dave Van Ronk was one of the early visitors. When Talkhouse staple Tommy LaGrassa asked him how he felt about his first Talkhouse gig, Dave replied, "If I knew 30 years ago when I started playing I'd wind up singing in a bar in Amagansett----I'd do it all over again."

Dave with his signature "blackest voice in a white man's body", raspy voice loved playing here.

As did Rick Danko of the band who played there solo or in a duo straight through the 90s. He also joined with Levon Helm and Garth Hudson as The Band, reuniting three of the five original members of that great group (watched Levon playing here with a local band a few years back, playing as hard and true as ever, recovering from a severe illness, and thought it was as beautiful a sight as I've ever seen). Rick was the most consistently affable performer imaginable. He always had time to talk to anyone who engaged him. He could listen to people ramble on about anything and never made a fan feel that whatever he was saying wasn't the most worthwhile bit of news in the world. He would get up there on stage, get the crowd singing "Take the load off Fanny" and just smile. One signature night when the power went Rick played on acoustically by candlelight as Glen Tilbrook would years later.

Toy Caldwell, whose picture still adorns the wall behind the main bar, was as good a friend of the bar as anyone from l988 till his death is February of l993 at the age of 45. Toy had been a guitarist with the Marshall Tucker Band before taking a three year break and then hitting the road with his own band. The first time he walked upstairs (before we built the addition you got upstairs by walking down the driveway and climbing stairs on the side of (the building) I came out of the office to pay him---always pay the bands first so money never hangs over anything. Toy pushed me down on the couch and said, "Pay me later---let's have a drink." He was a big, burly, affable unaffected guy who played forever. We charged $15 to see him and I remember one night when a guy sat down next to me at the bar and complained about the $15 cover. I did not let on that I worked here. After a few minutes the guy turned to me again and said. "Hell it's worth $15, that guy sounds just like Toy Caldwell." He went on how much of a fan he was till I let him know it WAS Toy Caldwell. Anyway, people always ask what were your favorite

nights, but most of them just blur together. But in my pantheon was my birthday, either l990 or l99l, when I got to sing "Can't You See" with Toy on stage.

Albert Collins played here with his band The Icebreakers on the first Saturday in June of l988. It was a $35 ticket which was $15 more than we had charged to date. The Master of the Telecaster played forever and (like Buddy Guy that April) went outside and played guitar on the street. Before the show he had found out how new we were and also learned that a then unknown (not to Albert) band called Little Charlie & The Nightcats were playing the next night---for $5. He had an off day the next day and announced from the stage that he'd be sticking around to play with Little Charlie & The Nightcats the next night. Well, Albert played for free and the $5 cover meant the place was packed. That show exposed the East End to a great band that has since become a fixture, probably playing here more than anyone other national performer except for.... 

Jorma Kaukonen (on stage 4 hrs later) first performance was also the occasion of my being hit for the first and not last time. He was playing solo acoustic and it was February of l989. It was one of my first encounters which has to be one of the most frustrating parts of hosting acoustic shows: telling customers to please stop talking. I'm still regularly astounded at how oblivious people can be to their own behavior. It amazes how two people can stand at the bar and bab;le on in a loud conversation surrounded by people who are obviously there to see the performer. Anyway, on this particular night I got one particularly loud buffoon out who had crudely propositioned a woman. Michael Cain had recently come on as our new doorman 

Sidebar: Michael arrived for his job interview at Estia wearing a long black coat and a tie. He began the interview by assuring me he would never drink on the job. I told him I couldn't hire him. He asked why. "You wouldn't fit in," I replied. "I can drink on the job," he assured me. And he was right. 

Anyway, Michael followed me and the bozo outside. He refused to leave. I told him we would have to call the police. "Don't mean dick to me, I've been arrested twenty times." I turned to Michael and said "We got a winner here". By the time I turned back the fist was in my face---I just got my chin up or I might've had a broken jaw. I had the pleasure of making a citizen's arrest in McKendry's when we tracked him down later.

DOG