The Pour House in Charleston, SC, Is Plugged In and Live Nightly

Operating a live music venue is one of the most encompassing jobs in the industry.  Operating with a level of success that includes impressive show lineups, loyal customer bases, long-term employee relationships and innovative advertising, Alex Harris is making a name for his venue in Charleston, SC, day-by-day and band-by-band.
    The Pour House might bring in $7,000 on a good Saturday, but more importantly, it sends out a much larger message that live music has a home in Charleston and that owning a bar isn’t all about the bottom line.
Cuban Food and Contagious Sound
    Harris took over The Pour House in 2002 when it was no more than three pool tables in a large room with a band playing on carpet in the corner. In 2005, the move to the Maybank Highway area put The Pour House on the top of the proverbial list for catching a great live show in Charleston and the South in general.
    “We own this spot, the property and did about four months of renovations,” Harris says. “Once we get going, we will be able to do shows that sell out at about 500 tickets.”
    Harris’ attitude of looking towards the next big night is contagious, but most of his loyal music fans, who on average range from 21 to 34 in age, would argue that The Pour House has already “gotten going” in a major way.
    The new space has a large stage in front of the main room with a 30-foot L-shaped bar and plenty of room to dance.
    Connected by a common wall, the venue’s restaurant, El Bohio, serves up authentic Cuban food six days a week for lunch and dinner with a menu designed by Harris’ wife Vanessa, who holds a culinary degree from Johnson & Wales University and a true sense of the country’s vernacular tastes, being Cuban herself.
    Harris and his team of 11 employees book about 28 shows a month to maintain the reputation as the place to catch live music on the South Carolina coast, and in addition to jumping behind the bar or the grill, Harris personally books every band. Crowds inside the Pour House have enjoyed mid-level to large national touring acts such as Rose Hill Drive, Tishamingo, Jimmy Herring and Leon Russell in an intimate setting with a high-energy vibe.
    “We stay pretty booked up,” Harris says. “What is good about it is, the bands  out and try to put themselves up there. We have got a band submission form on our Web site, and we get hundreds of bands wanting to play.”
    It is a different scene for many of these heavily touring acts than it was 20 years ago, however. Today’s live-music marketplace is a picture of bands being pointedly pushed towards the highway since the onset of iPods, free downloads and satellite radio. Where the late ‘80s and ‘90s saw a move towards MTV and electronic sound, the millennium music scene is a reincarnation of the old-room philosophy of the legendary haunts like CBGB and the Village Vanguard –– where the live experience is the ultimate appeal.

Broadcasting It All
    For operators of current live-music venues, it is still a hard road, and to stay on top, Harris is implementing new methods to attract a music-thirsty customer base.
“We used to do radio,” he says. “But now I have taken my advertising to the Web.” In addition to a MySpace.com site, a photography-laden Web site and the occasional split ad blast on the popular site Jambase.com, Harris’ marketing plan since inception has included work with one of the city’s newest entrepreneurships –– CharlestonCrystalBall.com.
    CharlestonCrystalBall.com, started by locals Matt Bass and Richard Brendel, has been an outlet that helps to put Charleston’s prolific music scene on the worldwide map. Live-stream video is broadcast from inside of The Pour House via a camera aimed directly at the stage. While the Web site also shows live video from cameras broadcasting a few of Charleston’s other DJ-driven clubs, performance theaters and even a surf camera on the nearby Folly Beach, the Pour House camera became a perfect host for the cornerstone of the Web site’s aim –– bringing great live music to the masses.
    The camera broadcasts at an astounding 16 to 20 frames per second, and it costs Harris very little to install and maintain, since the CharlestonCrystalBall.com pulls its revenue from advertising dollars on its site. Viewers can pull up the Web page and watch a live band at The Pour House, check out the crowd, or in Pour House bartender Mark Davis’ case, check to see if he needs to come down to help on a busy night off.
For Harris, it means cost-effective advertising that reaches not only his customers but the bands he books and their agents –– all in the grassroots, technology-based format that is very appealing to his overall demographic of 21- to 34-year olds.
    “I think it increases awareness in other parts of the country about us,” Harris says.
    “I think that for a grassroots venue like us, it is great because bands and booking agents and other people in this business, in this kind of scene, can see what we are doing from all around the country and really all around the world. They can decide if it is somewhere they want to play or whether it is somewhere they want to book a band.”

A Necessary Love
    Starting this spring, Harris and his crew are adding a deck with an additional bar and an awning. With the patio, The Pour House’s ticket allowance will rise to 500, making it a destination for even larger bands and an earlier crowd. “As soon as it gets warm enough, we will start doing Bluegrass afternoon shows,” Bartender Mark
Davis says. “It will definitely increase Happy Hour.”
    Being a club owner, sports bar operator or lounge manager, loving the music a DJ plays is a bonus. Being a live music venue operator like Alex Harris, loving the music the bands play is a necessity.
    “I am never satisfied. I get one show, and it leads to the next for me,” he says. “I am always looking for better things to do to keep me interested and keep the people that come here interested. The biggest challenge I have is maintaining my integrity and still getting people to come out.
    “All of the bands I have loved in my life, The Allman Brothers, The Grateful Dead, Widespread Panic, they have all toured for a living. They built their fan base through playing plain places like mine. There is something that is really honorable to me about owning a place like this.”                                     NCB