CLUB PASSIM
Club Passim has been a fixture of Harvard Square since the 1960s, when it used to host folk musicians like “Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Bonny Raitt and everyone else you can think of,” according to music operations manager Matthew H. Smith.
Founded as Club 47 in 1958 in a 125-capacity basement on Palmer Street, between Eliot and Church Streets, it was immensely important in fueling the ‘60’s folk movement. Joan Baez and Bob Dylan played their first public gigs ever at the Harvard Square joint.
In 1969, new owners, Bob and Rae Anne Donlin tried to convert the space, which had been run on a non-profit educational charter, into a bookstore called Passim. But the demand for folk music never died down, and they soon found themselves “forced into booking music again,” according to Smith. The Donlins were soon doing so well, they at one point turned Bruce Springsteen down for a gig.
Club Passim has been open in its latest guise since 1994 as a folk and acoustic music haven. Like House of Blues, it has concerts every night, as well as a Sunday brunch show. But at Club Passim, all the shows are meant to be enjoyed over a non-alcoholic vegetarian or vegan meal.
The Club’s special feature is its Tuesday open mike sessions, to which regularly featured artists and green high schoolers alike regularly sign up, according to Smith. Names can be put down beginning at 6:30 p.m., and the order is then drawn at random at 7 p.m.
Smith said the open mikes are extremely popular—one night, 83 people out of a maximum seating capacity of 125 signed up to sing.
One of those who signed up a few weeks ago was that week’s Wednesday night headliner, folk singer Christopher Williams, who said he used to go to open mikes before his career started taking off.
“One of the coolest things about the club is that they support people’s careers really early on,” said Williams, who used to volunteer ushering at the club before they gave him his first smaller concerts.
Wiliams says he is giving a part of the proceeds from his last album, Side Streets, to Club Passim in recognition of the influence it has had on his career.
During his sold-out concert, it was apparent that the virtuosic guitar, African drum and harmonica player had a very chummy relationship with the club, when the manager kept shouting out to him periodically throughout the show.
“You two look so good together, should we leave the room?” he yelled at one point when Williams chit-chatted briefly with a girl in the audience.
And the venue has a low-key feel by the nature of its set-up, with a window right on street level through which passers-by often crouch down to look in on the concert. At one point in his gig, Williams invited in some people he knew who had held up signs in the window cheering him on.
“There are definitely a lot of regulars,” Smith said. “It’s got that everybody-knows-your-name atmosphere.”
—Staff writer Eugenia B. Schraa can be reached at schraa@fas.harvard.edu.