The brains behind the Stephen Talkhouse music machine were in overdrive one recent afternoon over drinks in Amagansett.
Peter Honerkamp, who has owned, operated and obsessed over the East End’s tiny temple to music for the past 21 years, sat at the bar with the club’s co-manager, Nick Krause, and put some final touches on another season of world-class music at the smallest venue of its kind in America.
Mr. Honerkamp was reminiscing about the club’s impressive musical past while both he and Mr. Krause kept a close eye on the very near future, as summer was rolling up the gangway this Memorial Day weekend.
“Live music isn’t as easy as most people think,” Mr. Honerkamp said, shuffling through papers with one hand and feverishly working his Blackberry in the other.
Much like its owner, the Talkhouse is an original, according to a handful of musicians who have performed in Amagansett on an annual basis since 1987, the year Mr. Honerkamp, then 32 years old, turned an established nightspot on Main Street into a house of live music with lofty aspirations.
Since that reanimation, the club has hosted performances from such big-time artists as Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, Sting, Van Morison, Taj Mahal, Buddy Guy, The Band, and many others.
But it has been the lesser-known performers, musicians who have also managed to cross borders and generations with their talent and their influence on musical history, who have truly shaped the living history of the Talkhouse, Mr. Honerkamp said.
“I’ve played in bars and clubs all over the world, and really there’s no place like it,” said Terrence Simien, a zydeco musician and Talkhouse regular from Louisiana who won a Grammy award this year for Best Cajun or Zydeco Music Album, a category he and his wife, Cynthia, helped create.
Mr. Simien made a special trip to Amagansett last summer to celebrate the club’s 20th anniversary and considers Mr. Honerkamp a close friend. While the crown prince of Cajun is not yet officially booked to play the Talkhouse this summer, he promised an appearance at some point in July or August, a night he is already looking forward to.
“Here you are in the middle of all this grandeur of the Hamptons, and you go into this place and you’ve got this down-home feeling,” Mr. Simien said. “It’s got that great vibe, and for 20 years ... to still have that energy, and for the staff to still be smiling and still enjoying what they do, is amazing. They’ve got that look of pride on their face, and that’s something that money can’t buy.”
Bluesman John Hammond was the first big “national” act to play the Talkhouse in September 1987. Tickets were $10 and the place was packed, according to Mr. Honerkamp, who saw from the beginning that there was a real need and appetite for a live music club on the East End.
“It is the smallest club certainly in the United States, and maybe even in the world, that has the kind of talent that we get,” Mr. Honerkamp said. “Lots of the acts come back ... and obviously they come back because we ask them to come back and we pay them to come back.
“But having said that, I am not paying any of the major acts the kind of money that is on the top of their scale. They come back because it is an extraordinarily comfortable environment.”
Many of the artists who were interviewed for this article said they return to the Talkhouse every season, in large part, because of the treatment they receive.
“Peter is very in tune with the traveling musician’s mindset,” said Steve Forbert, a folk musician who will perform at the Talkhouse on June 27, having played the club every year since 1989. “It’s a very pleasant place to be.”
Loudon Wainwright III, who was the fourth live performance ever at the Talkhouse in the summer of 1988, called Mr. Honerkamp a good friend who “takes very good care of the artists.” Mr. Wainwright has had an accomplished recording career, and said during an interview last week that the Talkhouse has been one of his favorite venues to play over the course of a 40-year career.
“It’s a small club, it’s intimate,” said the singer and songwriter, who will play the Talkhouse on July 26. “I play clubs of all different sizes, and it’s certainly one of my favorites.”
Charlie Baty, who was described years ago by the Village Voice as playing “as much guitar as Eric Clapton and Buddy Guy put together,” also played the Talkhouse in its early days with his band, Little Charlie and the Nightcats. It was the summer of 1988, and the band’s first album, “All the Way Crazy,” was enjoying critical success. The Nightcats, who Mr. Baty said were happy to play anywhere for pay at the time, were booked for a $5-a-ticket show at the Talkhouse.
The Nightcats were joined that night by the famous blues guitarist Albert Collins, who was one of the first musicians to play on the sidewalk on Main Street during a show. Mr. Baty said the night was so memorable that his band decided to return to Amagansett almost every year since, despite having scored commercial success.
“Peter took a chance on us—I think that night we slept on Peter’s floor,” Mr. Baty said during a phone interview from his home in California. “It was a packed night with all these really nice people. It was like we were playing in somebody’s living room. If I can see the whites of people’s eyes, you get a better chance to see what they’re feeling.”
“So I never stopped enjoying the place,” Mr. Baty continued. “I feel like music is created in small venues, the innovation, the ideas, the great solos always happen when you’re up close with people. When you play a small club, it gives you a chance to be free.”
Derek Trucks, who is known across the world as the heir-apparent to the southern guitar tradition of Duane Allman and the improvisational virtuosity of John McLaughlin, was also a regular at the Talkhouse, performing at least twice a year with the Derek Trucks Band until recently.
During a previous interview with The Press, Mr. Trucks also referred to the freedom he enjoyed while playing at the Talkhouse. “If there’s some new stuff that we want to work on,” the guitarist said. “The Talkhouse is a great place to try it.”
Mr. Honerkamp said he and Mr. Krause always start every year the same way, by filling the schedule with artists who “have played here religiously and who make sense financially,” like Martin Sexton, Dave Mason, Richie Havens, The Radiators and Toots and the Maytalls, all of whom are scheduled to play this season.
Mr. Sexton’s show this Saturday night has become a Memorial Day weekend tradition—just like his perennial bookend gig on Labor Day weekend—and the Radiators will follow with a performance on Saturday, May 31. Mr. Mason, a founding member of the British rock band Traffic, will play June 20 and Mr. Havens will perform on Sunday, July 20.
Both of the club’s co-managers agreed that filling the summer schedule can be difficult. Some acts, like Derek Trucks for example, are now too expensive for the Talkhouse to afford, while many of the old regulars, like folk legend Dave Van Ronk, have either passed away or are no longer touring in the vicinity of Eastern Long Island.
“I know I am not a destination,” Mr. Honerkamp said. “There are places that can pay three, four and five times the amount of money I can give. So I have to try and plug in the people I know and then wait and get the leftovers.”
The “leftovers” the club owner speaks of are often quite impressive as well. Local and regional performers have also helped define the musical culture at the club.
In 1987, it was Eddie MacNeil, Klyph Black, Jeff Silverman and Peter “Bosco” Michne who made up the club’s original house band, Rumor Has It, laying the foundation for what Mr. Honerkamp described as a great symmetry between local and national talent that would often share the same stage on the same Saturday night.
But regardless of their notoriety, it seems that most artists who step onto what might be the most unexpected big-time music stage in the country know they are in for a unique and memorable experience, and maybe even a treat.
“It’s not only the same fans that would come see us, it was the same staff, the same soundman, the same bartenders,” Mr. Baty said while discussing the Talkhouse. “For years, every time I was finished, I would turn to my right and there was a martini waiting for me—shaken just the way I liked it.”
For more information about the summer schedule at The Stephen Talkhouse, or to buy tickets, visit www.stephentalkhouse.com or call 631-267-3117.
on May 20, 2008