Woodstock Times
Thursday, July 28, 2005

The Woodstock regeneration
Renovated Joyous Lake is a glimmer of hope for younger music crowd
by Zac Shaw

Last Thursday we visited the Joyous Lake to see if the Woodstock music scene had made any progress since being atrophied by the exodus of young artists who found little community support for their musical talents. Those who didn't board the first bus for New York City stuck around to help build scenes in neighboring towns like Kingston, Tivoli, Rosendale, New Paltz and the like. To be fair, Woodstock can no longer claim a current tie to the spirit of the music of Woodstock beyond a few tie-dyed shirts and some framed ticket stubs. Seeing how local residents would deny the kids in Woodstock a desperately needed skate park because skateboards are kinda noisy, imagine what will happen when those kids pick up guitars and drumsticks.

We sat down for a drink as the bartender emerged from the kitchen and teased us with a shameless display of "beef petite filet," one of the specials featured on the impressive new menu. Luckily for our shallow wallets, we had eaten at Catskill Mountain Pizza across the street. Sometimes we feel like the Woodstock bedroom-community types are forever walking right past the place as if it were another bourgeois backwoods pizza joint. Your upstate slice may still cost as much as a Metrocard, but look at the value: a damn good piece of pizza, a pinball machine, sporadic music performances, laid-back staff and an outdoor patio that's perfect for sipping a beer while catching up on your people-watching.

Speaking of beer, Joyous Lake has a lot of it, and the good stuff too. We always gravitate toward the Keegan Ales, of which the Lake has all three varieties. Not only are Keegan pints exceptionally tasty, but three days a week the people at the Keegan brewery in Kingston host an amazing free beer-tasting and social mixer in an art gallery with an outdoor patio. Oh yeah, and they put on great concerts inside the facility on a stage built from beer kegs. How cool is that? We almost didn't want to tell you about it; we didn't want to have to share the coolness. Drop by Thursday or Friday between 3 and 7 p.m. or Saturday, noon to 7 p.m. and witness this minor miracle in person.

But enough about the beer and back to the Lake, where there was plenty to taste, but much more to see and hear. The inside of the bar and restaurant is wall-to-wall custom woodwork. Some of the wood forms into the shape of musical instruments, while other pieces curve and contort abstractly as if still alive and rooted in the ground. It's all quite suitably organic for the Woodstock natives.

Thanks to the hard work of Janet Morra, Scott Hoffman and crew, the atmosphere, food and drink are all top-notch. The final and most important piece of the puzzle - the music - is finally starting to fit itself into place. Problems with the live sound-mixing and promotional difficulties notwithstanding, the venue has begun to attract quality talent after building up steam with a series of benefit shows and local rock, funk and blues band performances.

We'll have to admit that while Scenery has been sporadically checking up on the Lake, we waited until an awesome show came along to spill the beans. When we were told that Johnny Society was added as a last-minute opener for Mellodrome last week, we jumped at the chance to catch one of our favorite New York-based acts right down the street from us.

Under hypnotic lighting, the band was helped on stage by Mark McKenna, manager of Allaire Studios and long-time Johnny Society supporter. Frontman Kenny Siegel immediately took to pounding organs and guitars while bassist Gwen Snyder and drummer Brian Geltner locked into a dynamic rhythmic pulse. As Siegel belted out the melodic gems culled from the band's critically acclaimed discography, Snyder and Geltner would occasionally converge in massive three-part harmony, letting verses and choruses hang tentatively in the air before nailing them down into a deep pocket of soulful rock grooves.

The audience that assembled for the last-minute gig was intimate but enthusiastic. The sound mix bounced unevenly around the custom carpentry, but it's nothing that a few more bodies in the audience wouldn't cure. There were kinks to be worked out, but good music transcends technical and logistical difficulties. We only hope that some of the residue of Johnny Society's musical genius was left at the Lake to inspire more memorable performances.

It's a start. Until things heat up, we'll still be taking Metro North to New York City clubs much more ugly and depraved than the Lake and the Colony to pay twice as much for half the intimacy. Look at how low we have stooped, driven by local apathy to become reverse weekenders! We could use a few more Johnny Societies and Joyous Lakes, but ultimately the music needs to find its audience. Or, in the case of Woodstock, the audience should put down the New Yorker, get up out of their chaise longues and go find the music. If you've got an SUV, you might even be able to jump those concrete blocks in the parking lot - provided you don't make enough noise to disturb the neighbors.

A MECCA FOR THE ARTS
THE JOYOUS LAKE RE-OPENS
September 10, 2004

Janet Morra and Scott Hoffman – partners in life and passionate advocates for music – will re-open Woodstock’s Joyous Lake in mid-October as a host of the Woodstock Film Festival.
 
The Joyous Lake is coming back with a roar. "I want to create a place where people who really love music can listen to the best -- everything from blues to rock ‘n roll to funk to jazz," says Morra. "And while they’re listening I want them to be eating really good food – nothing fancy, but everything high-quality and priced right. " This’ll be a menu to talk about.

In addition to musical acts from the national stage, a five-star chef and a sophisticated bar, there will be ongoing music-oriented art and photography exhibitions starting with authentic posters from the Avalon Archives, The Psychedelic Years, plus ongoing displays of sixties art, albums, posters and underground comics. Plans also include dinner theater, festivals and an early-morning coffee corner.

For decades Morra has been professionally supporting the arts, especially music. "That’s what I want the Lake to be about – the healing power of music, of joy, of art, of dancing, of coming together." She pauses. "There’s a lot of love in the Lake. Jump in!"

WOODSTOCK - Live music will once again fill the halls at Joyous Lake when the club reopens today featuring guitarist Rennie Cantine and his band.

The new owners of Joyous Lake, Janet Morra and Scott Hoffman, will open their doors after months of extensive renovations to the club, including the installation of a new 2,800-watt sound system.

"We are very excited. So many wonderful people from the community have contributed," said Morra on Monday. "All the people in town are so excited."

Morra said much of the original '60s artwork and posters have been restored at the club and custom paintings have been added. The club will display music-oriented art and photography exhibitions with authentic posters from the Avalon Archives, "The Psychedelic Years," plus ongoing displays of '60s art, albums, posters and underground comics.

"I've just been involved with the music scene, it's my passion," said Morra, who purchased the club this summer with Hoffman. Morra has a history in the music business, having worked with the New York Blues & Jazz Society in Westchester County and having booked bands for the South Street Seaport Blues Cruises in Manhattan for American Express.

"We're doing our lifetime dream," said Morra, who added that music has played a large part in their relationship, as the two met at the Poconos Blues Festival. Both reside in Woodstock.

The club will provide music ranging from blues, rock 'n' roll, and funk to jazz, as well as dining featuring foods by five-star chef Jack Sullivan. The menu includes a wide assortment of eats, from Maryland Mambo crab cakes to vegetarian chili, as well as a kids menu.

Morra has high hopes for the club.

"I just want to bring it back," said Morra. "That's what I want the Lake to be about - the healing power of music, of joy, of art, of dancing, of coming together." Future plans also include dinner theater, festivals and an early-morning coffee corner.

In the past, Joyous Lake has been host to musicians like Paul Butterfield, The Cate Brothers, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, and John Sebastian.

All shows are at 9:30 p.m. and 11:00 p.m.
For reservations, call (845) 679-8100 or toll free, (888) 679-1969.

Stumbling blocks
New owners of Joyous Lake hoping for a quiet opening get a rather raucous welcome
by Paul Smart

The Joyous Lake, Woodstock's legendary nightspot on Mill Hill Road, was set to re-open for business with a special night of free music by local guitar wiz Rennie Cantine and friends on Wednesday night, December 15. Further bookings for the week included local blues favorite Josh Colow, another Woodstock native, on Thursday night, and several imports, at escalating admission prices, scheduled for the weekend ahead.

On Friday, December 17, the new club will offer up The Shades. On Saturday, December 18, they'll have Baron Raymonde & Friends, featuring Rod Stewart's dynamic sax soloist with a line-up of top touring blues musicians; and on Sunday, December 19, The Burr Johnson Band featuring Ray Charles's innovative jazz/rock guitarist of recent years.

"I wanted a slow opening, to tell you the truth, so we'd have the time to fine tune things a bit," said Janet Morra, the Lake's new co-owner with her partner Scott Hoffman, this week. "This is our life dream to do this..."

It has been nearly two years since the venue, started in the 1970s by Ron Merians as a home-away-from-home for local players and the many top shelf names that used to record in town with regularity, was last open under the brief ownership of Greg Schaffrick who had to give up the business after being arrested for a variety of felony sexual abuse and sodomy charges involving one of his waitresses.

Yet concurrent with the new Joyous Lake's quiet announcements of its opening, via its website and flyers on the building itself, has come controversy.

Beginning last Saturday afternoon, December 11, the long-vacant lot next to the newly renovated club, which many have previously assumed to be part of the Lake's property, sprouted a series of massive concrete stanchions along the previously invisible property line, right in the middle of the egress, rendering the parking lot useless.

It started a number of people talking in terms of such better-known urban battlefields as Jerusalem, Beirut and Berlin.

The stanchions, it turns out, were placed by the parking lot's owner, local restaurateur Ching Ya (Sha) Wu, who owns the Wok & Roll sushi and Chinese food establishment on the far side of the lot. And they represent, according to both Wu and Morra, a sudden breakdown in communications between the two businesses and their owners regarding parking.

To draw added fire to the already hot scene, a number of supporters of the new club picketed in front of the Joyous Lake Sunday morning with placards that admonished Wu, by name, for his actions. The picketing was organized by Dee Hodges who manages the local golf course's Café S and owns Spaces, a construction company that performed many of the renovations undertaken this autumn on the Joyous Lake.

Wu first came to town in the 1970s at the behest of legendary music agent and eventual studio owner and record label owner Albert Grossman, for whom he opened the Little Bear restaurant. Wu later owned a Chinese Restaurant at the old Salvucci's on Route 28, in a location that later burned, and once sought permits, and funding, for the building of a large Japanese/Chinese establishment along the Bearsville flats near the new firehouse. He opened Wok & Roll in the mid-1990s in the building formerly occupied by Duey's, a popular local diner.

EXORCISM, MEDIATION WHATEVER IT TAKES

"I've been in town 24 years and know both Sha Wu and the new owners of the Joyous Lake," said Harris Breiman, getting out of his car to check out the scene. "There must be some sort of communication breakdown for this to have occurred..."

While speaking, an officer with the Woodstock Police drove up pointed west in the east-bound lane. 

"Just remember to keep the public right-of-way open along the sidewalk," said Officer Amoroso.

"I'm sure this can all be mediated," noted Brieman, heading into Wok & Roll to speak to Wu, speaking about how he'd been brought in the month before to perform a cleansing ritual on the old Lake to clear "old ghosts" out from the space and restore its "better vibes."

Later, by phone, Wu explained.

"I put that there," he said. "I'm protecting my own property! It's my right, no more no less."

Wu begged off any discussion of negotiations with his new neighbors. He said he had bought the property "about three years" before, from the same Elwyn family that had originally owned Deanies and noted that for some reason they had always retained the slip of property, and had actually tried to sell it to Schaffrick when he bought The Lake in 2001.

"He didn't want it," Wu said. "I bought it to protect my property. If someone gets hurt I get the lawsuit, right? At this point in time, I don't want to talk anything with those people."

On October 1, Wu listed all his Mill Hill Road properties, located on under a half an acre, according to Ulster County MLS listings, for sale with Coffee House Realty Inc. for $1.5 million as an "East West Restaurant complex." 

Morra, who bought the Joyous Lake for an undisclosed amount after it dropped from an original asking price of $495,000, explained how she and Hoffman had thought a deal for parking was worked out while they were in the process of closing on the property last summer. At that time, realtor Joan Roberts of Country Roads introduced the new club owners to Wu and a handshake deal was reportedly worked out.

"Sha Wu said that if we paid for his insurance and maintenance it would be fine," Morra said. "But after we purchased the property he said 'that was then and this is now' and the next we knew, he wanted us to be paying the taxes, too."

Morra said no exact amount was ever worked out with Wu regarding such a tax payment, although her own research determined the amount was about $530 a year.

"That was not a problem, and he said he'd get back to us in 10 days and never did," Morra continued. "When Scott saw him after that, in recent weeks, he said, 'Sha Wu, we need to talk,' but he just kept walking."

According to Morra, she and Hoffman received a Certificate of Occupancy from the town building department for the newly renovated Joyous Lake in October, with the only point of concern being that they provide a letter to the town outlining the handshake deal regarding a shared point of "egress" along a shared driveway and curb cut between their property and Wu's.

"No one thought it would be a problem because he can't use the property without such an agreement either," Morra said. "We spent a lot of money having a survey done, but then we learned Sha Wu wouldn't even read the paper because he thought we should be offering him money, now, to rent the property."

Morra said that news came from Cantine, the guitar player who was set to open the club Wednesday, who offered his services as a mediator in the situation on Sunday night because he knew all parties.

Morra said she and Hoffman have been paying insurance on Wu's property since August and had drawn up plans to have gravel placed on the rutted lot, along with extensive landscaping...at their own expense. 

Wu, for his own part, said something about not being treated right, and then ceased comment.  "I said enough," he concluded. "This is my land. That is theirs. No more story."

Later, on Tuesday, December 14, Cantine said that he had talked to both parties and seemed to have reached an accord. He said Wu hadn't realized that Morra and Hoffman had purchased insurance for his lot, which he had originally wanted. Morra and Hoffman didn't realize that Wu didn't know they had the insurance.

Cantine added that it seemed all differences would be settled, and the stanchions removed, as soon as Wu got actual insurance papers in hand and a meeting was held at which a rental price for the parking lot could be arranged.

"I've known Sha Wu since I was 15 and washing dishes at The Bear. He's a good man," said Cantine. "I really trust the new people...they're honorable and really good folks. We seem to be moving towards a resolution on all this. There were some misunderstandings..."

Those, Cantine added, included Wu's belief that the one sheet of paper Hoffman presented him regarding the curb-cut "egress," as required by the town, was a release form for the entire property.

"The picket happened a bit too quickly," he added. "The signs are down. It's really looking like it can be worked out..."

WELCOME TO WOODSTOCK

Morra said that she's been surprised at the number of problems she's encountered in Woodstock since initiating on the Joyous Lake project, from purchasing and renovating a home last April to dealing with a local engineer's attempt to sell a sound system bought off E-Bay for $13,000 but offered up weeks later for double that.

"People were coming to us saying there had been curses put on the place," she continued, speaking about the number of locals who had tried to take advantage of her and Hoffman, "because all they could see was that we were coming in with money." 

To add to the fun, the building needed numerous major repairs... many, she says, because of Schaffrick's poor maintenance.

"He took out an air conditioner without covering the hole it left, causing damage to an entire wall and the kitchen roof," Morra said. "The basement was a mess because all the beer taps had been emptying straight onto the ground."

Morra added that she and Hoffman are now proud that they've "done everything right" by renovating the historic building as fully as possible. 

"We're being mindful of the neighborhood," Morra noted, explaining how the old Joyous Lake had seeped sound because of poor design and incomplete structural work. In addition, she added, she was booking acts to be finished playing by midnight, with all late sets to be acoustic... for the benefit of the venue's neighbors.

"Look," the new club owner said. "All we want to do is focus on what's ahead and not the horrible past of this place. We've got many supporters in this community already, and have met and worked with many more good people than bad."

She explained how she was booking bands in tandem... for every outside, name act, there would be a local band or player to reap benefits. And vice versa, if the local band had the right sort of following.

She and Hoffman want to keep admission costs low, in the $10 range as much as possible, and make the menu equally affordable... and accessible.

"We're not about ostrich," she said. "We'll serve local beers and decent wines at $5 or $6 a glass."

She's planning to pick up acts from the same circuit of clubs that includes Piermont's Turning Point, Saratoga's Café Lena, Pawling's Town Crier, and several spots around Albany.

She's been telling local acts she doesn't want the Joyous Lake to compete with The Colony... but she will book them, when the time is right.

On the venue's website, much mention is made of a special sneak preview Open House held at the Joyous Lake on Halloween, at which over 8,000 pieces of candy were handed out, several bands played, and those in the flow of the town's big parade got to come in and check out the place.

The reason for the many delays in opening?

"The liquor license took much longer than expected. Legal things," Morra explained. "We got word we were okay the day before Thanksgiving and picked up the paperwork the day after."

So will it all work out?

Sha Wu didn't want to comment, pending a compromise.

Morra spoke about having performed the ritual to clean out all the ghosts from the building, then laughed at the welcome she and Hoffman's have received in the last week.

"You know, there's a part of me that loves all this town stuff," she said. "Now I'm finding out how everybody has their own truths on anything. You just have to work to sort it all out. Thank God, I've got a quick learning curve."

"Look, I just feel honored to be asked to play opening night," Cantine said. "I tell everybody involved... I'm just a guitar player. And we're planning to make this fun."

"Well," concluded Morra, separately. "Welcome to Woodstock..."