Dan Dougan at Little Brother's in 2007

In the two-plus years since Little Brother's closed, Dan Dougan, the man who ran the Short North music hub and its North Campus forebear, Stache's, has kept a low profile. Now he's easing back into the public eye.

Dougan is hosting a radio show, Almost There, in a trial run for 90.5 FM, WCBE. He's blogging about his days in the music biz at DanDougan.com. And he's booking a Thursday night music series at Bristol Bar called Listening Hours at Bristol, starting tonight with two sets from The Sun's Chris Burney.

I ran a few snippets from my interview with Dougan in today's paper, but we discussed much more including the closing of Liquid, the bar that replaced Little Brother's, his ambition to open a cafe in Westgate and his wife Tracy Zollinger Turner's role in promoting "the cottage industry that is me." Full text of the interview after the jump:

Dan Dougan at Little Brother's in 2007

In the two-plus years since Little Brother’s closed, Dan Dougan, the man who ran the Short North music hub and its North Campus forebear, Stache’s, has kept a low profile. Now he’s easing back into the public eye.

Dougan is hosting a radio show, Almost There, in a trial run for 90.5 FM, WCBE. He’s blogging about his days in the music biz at DanDougan.com. And he’s booking a Thursday night music series at Bristol Bar called Listening Hours at Bristol, starting tonight with two sets from The Sun’s Chris Burney.

I ran a few snippets from my interview with Dougan in today's paper, but we discussed much more including the closing of Liquid, the bar that replaced Little Brother’s, his ambition to open a cafe in Westgate and his wife Tracy Zollinger Turner’s role in promoting “the cottage industry that is me.” Full text of the interview after the jump:

Alive: So are you serious about wanting to open a café?

Dougan: Well, we need one over there on the West side. I mean, there’s nothing to do. It’s a good little neighborhood, Westgate, where we live. It’s a classy little place. It looks like Beaver grew up there. Anyway, Westgate has nothing to do over there. It really doesn’t. There’s a lot of tattoo shops. There’s some nice little mom-and-pop pizza shops. I was going to some meetings with Josh Quinn of Tiger Tree, and that was the general consensus, that someone needed to do that. I’m like well, I could use a job, so we’ll see what we can do. It’s a matter of money — I need someone to lend me money in times like these. That’s what I need to do. And we’ll see.

But for now I’m going to focus on these couple things that I assume we’re here to talk about, which is the radio gig and the Thursday night listening hours at Bristol. And remember, it’s not “The” Bristol, it’s Bristol.

No, absolutely not. It’s the opposite of Ohio State, where it’s “The” Ohio State University. But not “The” Bristol.

(Laughing) That’s right. And they can’t say “The” Ohio University, can they?

No, they make a big stink about that. Though at OU they have a bunch of hoodies that say Ohio: “The” State University.

Nice.

So how’d you end up doing the radio show?

Well, keep in mind, I’m not official yet until they, one, find a place for me on air, and two, it’s contingent on positive feedback from listeners. And that’s by e-mailing wcbe@wcbe.org. This has come through a series of conversations with Dan Mushalko, the general manager.

Did you approach him or did he approach you?

Yeah, we approached him, that maybe there would be room for this, I don’t know, “classic” CBE? I hate the word nostalgia, but we all love nostalgia itself. And I recall a day when, in the heyday of Stache’s or at some points at Little Brother’s where, in my world, as much as 101 [101.1 FM, WWCD] has influenced the music scene, I’ve felt more of a sense of community with WCBE in my place.

Columbus has expanded, and there’s lots more options right now. And that’s a good thing, but I think there was a time when there was more of a sense of that community. And you still get it, especially when you go to Community Festival —ComFest — but that sense of belonging, or being “there.” And “there” was the phrase that we often used with Stache’s and then Little Brother’s. With Stache’s it was “Ya been there?” So “there” is an abstract sense of belonging. Like when you’re watching a really, really good show. For me it might be Steve Forbert, for others it could be the Decemberists. It could even be Nashville Pussy. But it’s that moment when you sort of transcend your surroundings and all that matters is what’s going on right at that moment right around you.

When you say “classic CBE,” what were they doing back then that was so tied in with what you were doing? And how do plan to revisit that?

Well, a lot of acts like Jonathan Richman or Southern Culture on the Skids — they were playing them, and the acts were coming to my club. And it’s not that that doesn’t happen now. It does happen now. But for a lot of us who’ve settled down with the kids, as I say, we all look at nostalgia. We all look back. And I look back to a time, say, the 90s. And a lot of people have said this too, that sense of there being more of a collective sense back then.

I don’t want the show to be entirely nostalgia. It’s just a starting point. Like on the Thanksgiving show, I played Monsters of Folk. Well, they didn’t play Little Brother’s for sure, but M. Ward was there a number of times. So I’ll be playing stuff that will be contemporary for people who were there.

One thing I like about CBE is that they play a lot of new music. There’s a lot of stuff — it’s not been completely abandoned. They spin it now and then.

So the focus of your show is kind of revisiting a lot of the acts that played at Stache’s and Little Brother’s over the years?

Exactly — and that had a connection with CBE, mostly, or were played on CBE.

And you’re doing some trial runs right now?

What I’m doing right now is a series of holiday shows to see what the public thinks. We aired one on Thanksgiving at 2 p.m. We pre-recorded it, so I was actually cooking a turkey at the time and nervously mashing potatoes. Then the other shows will air Christmas Eve at 1 p.m. and New Year’s Day at 1 p.m.

I did more of a theme for Thanksgiving, sort of — well there was food, and there was (ed: adopting twangy accent) America. And then Monsters of Folk song was that lead-off tune, “Dear God.” So a little bit of higher power there too. But mostly I tried to convey a gratitude sort of attitude.

I don’t think I’ll do a Christmas-y thing. There’s more than enough Christmas stuff out there. People will be doggone sick of Christmas by then. New Year’s Day we’ll emphasize change, transition. So it’s more of in an abstract way that we’ll focus on the holiday, but we’ll try to establish a little bit more about what the show is going to be, the sense of “there” that the show will give.

I also tell stories. Like Thanksgiving Day was about Sun Ra at a Thanksgiving dinner in the neighborhood where Stache’s was. And the irony of it was it wasn’t that wild, crazy or insane of a thing. Quite frankly, it was a pretty normal Thanksgiving dinner, it just happened to be with extraterrestrial musicians. So that was the story for then, and I’ll figure out something for the other shows.

Ideally the CBE show would be in the evening and on the weekend, but we’ll see.

So what’s it called?

Almost There. And if they didn’t hear it, there’ll be podcasts at almostthereradio.com and links at the 19 other spaces where you can find me like LittleBrothers.com, Facebook — and DanDougan.com, don’t forget that.

That just started recently, right?

DanDougan.com? We just started to put a few things there. We’ve kept LittleBrothers.com going the whole time.

Is there anything new over there?

Well, not much. Just information about this. But there’ll be links at LittleBrothers.com and DanDougan.com to tell you where to go to please send an e-mail to CBE.

At DanDougan.com, you’re reminiscing as well, right?

That’s where the blogging has been. How could I go past that? Yeah, I’ve told a series of stories right now, to this point, about Stache’s and Little Brother’s. And I will continue. About once every week to 10 days I plan on putting something in there that would hopefully entertain people about circumstances that happened at either of the nightclubs. Of course there’s lots of crazy things that go on.

Seems like there’s an interest in that kind of stuff. There was a lot of interest in Bela Koe-Krompecher’s blog.

Right, absolutely. Well, Bela’s is a different thing because it’s a personal story of his pre-recovery days. Especially with Jerry and Jen, who was a childhood friend of his. Way back. But his is more like personal memoir thing, you know? Which I suppose you could call my blog in the memoir area. But I like to think it’s one of those hopefully entertaining showbiz-y kinds of things, sort of like Paul Shaffer’s book. Which I’d like to read, by the way. I love those kinds of books. Like Ray Charles, did you ever read Brother Ray? Or Dr. John has Under a Hoodoo Moon. Oh, man. Somehow Dr. John played all those years in New Orleans, etc. etc. — was apparently on junk all the time — remembers everybody. Everybody! Their mom, their dad, their nicknames. But I digress.

And again, Tracy’s editing that stuff too. She’s producing the radio show. Plus she’s also doing a children’s segment on the radio show. It’s called “Culture Cycle.”

You’ve been giving her a lot of credit for spurring you to do all this stuff.

Not only do it, but she uses her editor skills. And on the radio show, she’s the one who took the time to learn to use ProTools and that application to actually engineer the show. I’m used to looking over people’s shoulders when I’ve recorded my music before. But I haven’t learned — bottom line is I’m almost a luddite when it comes to technology. Not like I’m going to take a wrench to it, but I just didn’t embrace it. You can ask anybody who ever worked for me at Little Brother’s. Christ, I just learned how to type a year or so ago.

Part of that was taking a computer class. I took some classes at OSU for a couple years. But I don’t know, being a college student — I still have a long way to go because I was picking up from just one year at Kent State back in the 70s.

Is that something you’re still working on, college stuff?

No, it’s too much money, actually. But I did get a little bit further down the line if I ever decide to get a degree.

What about the series at Bristol?

It’s called Listening Hours at Bristol. Every Thursday starting December 3.

That’s the one with the Sun, right?

Yeah, Chris Burney. Chris is going to do two sets. One’s with the Sun, and the second is with Courtney Jacobs. (ed: Burney is collaborating with Jacobs in a new band called Adult Fiction). So two sides of his musical projects right now. It’s only $3.

How’d it come about?

That’s a good question. Somebody recommended that I talk to Todd Anderson at Bristol. He had a falling out with his partner at some point. He owns the building. He’s been running the bar with the help of his manager. And it’s mostly been like a boutique disco or something. But he had an interest in doing some live music. I spoke to him last winter, and it seemed like he decided not to do it.

Then he called me this fall and said, “Hey, I want to try this once a week. Let’s do it on Thursdays.” I had spoken to him quite a bit back then about how we would do it, what it would look like, how we could do it. And all along he asked me what I thought I might do if he gave me one night, and I said I thought I would do “listening music.” And he looked at me like, “Isn’t all music listening music?” Well, no. Again, back to that “being there” kind of feeling at certain shows, it’s really—I think I missed a lot of good music at my own place because I didn’t shut my big mouth. Just shut up and listen up, you know? Just focus and let it absorb.

You know, you can chat. I don’t want to be some Nazi running around telling people to be quiet. That happened one night when Iris DeMent’s manager asked me to make sure everybody was quiet. People still hate me for that, 'cause then they couldn’t even talk at all.

But it’s just a matter of giving your attention to the stage and to what’s going on there. So if you want to yell at each other over your beer, there’s another room where the bar is. You can go in there. Or I’ll give you your three bucks back, and you can head on down the road. But primarily what we want people to do is come in and listen. So I want to emphasize the dynamics. I don’t want to blow people down. I don’t want to go back to the harder, faster, louder rock ’n’ roll days.

So it’s going to be mostly on the quieter end?

Yeah. That doesn’t mean everything has to be all the time. Like I said, it’s more of a dynamic. It’s more of having that ability — where people are attentive. And that was the good thing about both my rooms. Most everybody that was there was there to hear the band, and they generally understood that.

Why choose Bristol as opposed to anywhere else?

Again because Todd asked me to do it. The guy basically asking me to do what I want to do. And it’s a nice room. It’s not that I couldn’t go to other places. What I like about this is that the room doesn’t have a live music identity at this point. It’s basically a clean slate, fresh canvas, whatever term you want to use. There will also be some spoken word mixed in. I’m going to kick that off. My friend Christopher Appel’s going to do one of them. Expect to see musicians like Megan Palmer. Chris is doing his thing. Eric Nassau’s one of them. Todd May of Peloton Records is the third week. The three weeks that are booked so far are Burney, Nassau and Steve McGann’s Peloton Records thing with Todd May playing that night. I also am going to do the Alwood Sisters, who I think are great. If there’s one act in this town that I think would be perfect for what I’m trying to do, it would be them. And of course it’s not just the Alwood sisters, it’s the Karcic brothers. I think they really epitomize the idea of what I’m trying to get across. You miss a lot while you’re yelling at someone over your beer. Not that that doesn’t have its place to. It’s just not going to be at this place. Do you have any thoughts about Liquid closing?

Yeah, thoughts about it that I’m not really surprised. They spent a lot of money, I realize, and I don’t think they had a clue what they were up against. They had an idea, and lots of people do. But the landlord took advantage of them as he’s that kind of individual, it seems. Their falling on hard times doesn’t do me any good. And I’m not wasting my time with hard feelings towards those people or their business.

I’m not sure that Little Brother’s as it was was going to work. I had a lot of faith in the guys that were going to buy me out a year before we closed because they were going to adapt a little bit more than I was. I think they were going to go some pre-recorded music and/or disco, dance club, whatever you want to call it. Push that avenue a little bit more. Pump up specials, happy hour, things of that nature. I was going to stay to advise in the live music. But to this day I really think that the landlord really put the kibosh on us with his absurd 40 percent increase after face to face telling me we could have 15 percent. But that’s history, but that’s not such an entertaining story that I want to even go into it on the blog.

But overall there’s an aspect of the local music scene that hardly exists now, and that’s that there are popular local bands, love ’em or hate ’em, that drew between 150 and 400 people on any given Friday or Saturday. I think Ekoostik Hookah and Spikedrivers are the only two I can think of that are capable of that, if you want to call Hookah local. That aspect of the music business started to disappear some time after the millennium. It hasn’t come back. I don’t think it will. And that was a big part of our business. Those were nights I could count on where we weren’t putting up big guarantees. People have no idea how many nights I had 200, 300 people there and still lost money with national acts.

That’s not to say the national acts were failing. Quite frankly, the national acts were taking care of themselves like they always did. You win some, you lose some, keep rolling. But not having those local heroes — there was a point at Stache’s where I had Greenhorn and Mary Adam 12 and Pica Huss, and Ray Fuller was still drawing a crowd on the weekend. Stuff like that. I had tons of bands that would pull in 300 or 400, and that didn’t exist (anymore). That’s my point that a lot of people don’t realize that. I’m not sure that Little Brother’s could survive right now if you can’t get that kind of thing going, and I don’t see that happening.