Here we encounter the first philosophical dilemma concerning what does and doesn’t constitute Columbus proper. The rule of thumb I eventually decided upon is that if a suburb at least touches the 270 outerbelt, then it’s still part of the city in my book. Therefore Hilliard and Dublin are fair game, say, while I wouldn’t really say the same about Pickerington, or Canal Winchester. In this spirit then Gahanna makes the cut, which means we can discuss the Alumni Club in our little historical canon.
For a spot this far removed from our typical stomping grounds, it’s safe to say we have collectively visited the Alumni Club far more than any other destination this distant. Located at the absolute northeast edge of town, at 395 Stoneridge Lane, there’s nothing all that remarkable about this establishment, and the location itself is just your average humdrum strip mall. Still they have managed to craft a charming enterprise here, one which always entertains for a variety of reasons.
For many years, the always entertaining cover song specialist AJ Angelo held court here, and he was a steady draw, as he is everywhere, not to mention that he’s great with the fans and in general seems like a genuinely cool dude. Aside from that, unique for a place like this, they also hosted an open stage acoustic jam night. Not only that, but patrons were encouraged to and often did run on stage with cash, which they would hand to, throw at, or stuff into the pockets of performing musicians. I’ve actually never seen this anywhere else.
The possibilities here begin clicking into place on a blustery Tuesday night, in mid December.
AJ Angelo is running his Tuesday night acoustic/karaoke extravaganza up here, and as it’s been about a year since we’ve visited, it seems that the timing is right. His sleek, curly black hair tucked into a ponytail, well dressed as always in a business casual kind of way and smiling basically non-stop, our entertainer for the evening knows how to charm the pants off a crowd, but he also appears to genuinely love what he does, tipping the scales away from cheesy huckster status. His stage banter, ease at working the crowd when strolling about the room, and really just general aura, all of it adds up to a guy who knows what he’s doing in and is having a blast doing so.
As this is something of a classy, upscale club, what this means is AJ here still substitutes actual song lyrics with some ribald phrases of his own, but nothing too filthy. He could probably get away with a little bit more than usual tonight, however, for it would seem that even as far removed as they are from OSU or any other major college, this place is experiencing a bit of a holiday downturn as well. Though tucked out here in this innocuous strip mall, the Alumni Club normally boasts a strong crowd regardless of the day or the week, but not now. Our initial visit, for example, the doorman hassled everyone in our party endlessly before permitting entry, though we all possessed valid IDs, and yet tonight we just breeze on in, have a seat at the enormous, gleaming wooden bar.
A friendly, thirty-something lady serving drinks immediately takes our orders, depositing beers in front of us in no time. Otherwise, there’s nobody anywhere near us except for a couple other drunk yet – naturally – well-dressed middle aged guys a handful of seats down, in the direction of the stage. These two strike up a conversation with us, as it turns out they are brothers and, as chance would have it, one is named Frank. The other is Larry, and, oh yeah, they just happen to own this place.
“Either one of you guys play?” the more talkative – Frank of course – of the duo asks us, as AJ is strumming and singing the latest tune alone onstage.
“Yeah, I play a little,” Damon tells them, then nods at me and adds, “and he plays keyboard.”
Frank turns his attention to me for a split second, before focusing on Damon once more. This is perfectly understandable as there’s no keyboard here and, well, I’m not all that good. Damon’s being overly modest, on the other hand, and it’s possible these guys picked up on that vibe instantaneously.
“You have to get up and play!” Frank slurs, and, when Damon demurs, insists, “come on! Play for us!”
He still isn’t sure, though, and it’s not just false modesty leading him to decline. Despite his talents and his experience on stage, an ability to come across as outspoken and extroverted in certain situations, others such as this have him dragging his feet.
“Play for us!” he continues, then, to the barmaid, Karen, says, as he flails an arm to indicate us, “get these boys something to drink! Whaddaya want?”
Damon and I grin at one another and order another beer, deposited in our mitts again basically the instant we have killed our first. Larry and Frank pull him into their midst for a little pow-wow, the effect of which they’re gradually winning Damon over in their efforts to lure him onto the stage. I’m not complaining either, however, for if the free drink weren’t enough, Karen is just hanging out for an audience of no one but myself, leaning against her side of the bar in front of me as we watch the action.
“I like Tuesdays much better than the weekends,” she says.
“Oh really? Why’s that?”
“Well,” Karen sighed, “the guys in here on the weekend are all after the same thing”
Now that they’ve gotten Damon cajoled into gracing the stage, there’s nothing for him to do but anxiously await the metaphorical green light announcing his set has arrived. “Man, I wish I brought my harmonica. I don’t know why but I hate getting up and playing acoustic without it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it just kind of makes me feel funny. I don’t know why that is, I like to hide behind that harmonica.”
Once his moment finally arrives, AJ departs the stage. Though he strums his acoustic along with whatever song anyone else wants to sing, and fills up the blank spaces on his lonesome, Damon’s solo performance without Angelo is the only of its kind, at least while we’re here. Tonight’s crowd is skewing older than expected, certainly much more than our other visit, so his choice of song is perfect as he slides into that dimly lit chair – just a pair of Neil Young songs, Harvest Moon and Hey Hey, My My, sung in his soft, slight drawl, as he strums along beautifully. The crowd goes absolutely bananas, roaring with ear splitting applause after each tune, and some folks even rush the stage to throw money at him.
“I need this to buy beer,” Damon jokes into the mic, as he stuffs cash into his pockets. The crowd chuckles heartily and then he exits the stage.
As we’re all telling him he did a great job, and even AJ is gracious enough to drift past with some effusive praise – not at all common in his line of work, for sure – this Frank guy is nearly apoplectic, he’s so wound up.
“That was incredible!” he says, continues, “listen. I own a few bars around this area, and I’m looking at putting something together like this on Mondays at one just down the road.”
“Really?” Damon replies. He appears more polite than all that interested, yet this doesn’t deter his would be benefactor here.
“Yeah. If you’re interested, you know, I’d pay you real well and all, you know. Here,” Frank fumbles around and secures a pen, some paper, scrawls his digits down and hands the slip to Damon, “give me a call tomorrow if you’re interested, and, you know, like I said, we’ll talk about it. I’ll pay you real well.”
By now we’ve somehow tired of all this hoopla and just want to get out the door. Having seen him play countless times, I know he’s good, but like anything else, after a while you just start to take this for granted and maybe even tune it out to some extent. Still, I think even Damon would agree the reaction here was a bit bizarre, more extreme than anyone could have anticipated.
“If you guys aren’t here next week, I’m kicking your ass!” Frank calls out, in jest we hope, as the two of us are headed for the door.
“Whew,” Damon says, as the cold hits us in the face and we trudge toward his truck, “I certainly didn’t expect anything like that!”
“Ah, you sounded good, man,” I confirm.
“I don’t know if I wanna run his jam night or not,” he ponders, as we cruise west now along Morse, “I guess it all depends on how much money he means by I’ll pay you real well.”
We drive on in silence for a minute and then Damon suggests, “I think the reason I went over so good is that it’s a mostly older crowd, same people every week, you know, all regulars, and here this kid comes in, it’s a new face, you know.”
“Well, yeah,” I counter, “but you did sound good.”
“Okay, well, yeah, it’s probably a combination of those things. You know what I’m saying, though – you’d have to agree it at least had something to do with it.”
I’m actually not sure if Damon ever bothered calling Frank. At any rate, he never took him up on the offer of running a jam night. We didn’t show up again for quite some time after it, to some extent even sort of forgetting about the place. But finally, a few years later, during a stretch where I’d rented an apartment just off of Morse and Damon eventually wound up being my roommate there, yet again, the Alumni Club enters our repertoire again, in earnest, as we will visit it more now than at any other time in our lives.
This place would appear to have a better reputation than you might expect for a place that doesn’t exactly advertise everywhere, nor cater to the younger, OSU campus laden clientele. For example somehow Damon and I once met a pair of strippers up in Mansfield who decided to drive down the next weekend to hang out with us. Barely of a legal drinking age themselves – and even that might have been suspect – these two nonetheless suggest the Alumni Club for some reason, before they even made the drive down. We’re not sure how or why they chose this hangout, when a million others would have seemed better suited to their demographic, but what can you say, the Alumni Club has always been a happening spot, and the best Gahanna has to offer.
The four of us hung out there all night…well, at least up until the point they followed us back to our place, got pulled over by the cops somewhere around Morse and Cleveland, before b.s.ing their way through it somehow and finally arriving intact. To, among other things, write their “names” in bleach on our living room wall, claiming that it would only show up under a black light. Ixnay on both fronts, in case you’re wondering.
