Cultural critic Ted Gioia has gained a good deal of attention in recent years with his gimlet-eyed views of contemporary culture. In a typically jaundiced assessment last May he charged that “in the 21st century, creative stagnation is aggressively promoted by entertainment and culture businesses.”
But Gioia is hardly a pessimist, focusing equally on the long view and the cyclical nature of cultural innovation and decline. In a recent column on his Substack “The Honest Broker” he highlighted a countervailing force girding humanity against the torrent of formulaic pablum.
“When people hear music in a group setting their brainwaves start to synchronize,” he writes. “The body also releases the hormone oxytocin, which makes them more trusting and willing to bond together. That’s why so many couples, over the course of centuries, have discovered their romantic attraction at a dance or nightclub.”
I read this column, titled “The Glorious Future of Live Music,” a few days after talking with Dan Vado about the imminent closure of his San Jose club the Art Boutiki. It struck me that the sad corollary to Gioia’s celebration of the singular power of music to bring people together is the fact that musicians need amenable spaces to work their alchemy.
Music’s future looks a whole lot less glorious in the South Bay with the Art Boutiki’s last gig on New Year’s Eve marking the loss of irreplaceable venue where jazz acts, rock bands and singer/songwriters have communed with listeners while audiences connected with each other.
In a conversation that occasionally turned emotional, Vado described the difficult decision to shutter the Art Boutiki, which moved to its current location in 2013. He singled out the double whammy of thin post-pandemic audiences and inflation for forcing his hand.
“Attendance at shows is down 20 percent this past year,” he said. “Expenses have been up even more, most dramatically the utilities. In the summer we have to run the air conditioning and it was costing $3,000 a month. More than once we did GoFundMes just to stay open through the end of the year.”
Describing the Art Boutiki as a labor of love doesn’t quite capture the nature of the enterprise. The venue has been a family project from the start. His wife, Michelle Vado, is on hand most shows working at the café.
His older son, Dustin Vado, set up the sound system and can usually be found working the club’s sound board. And his younger son, drummer and vibraphonist Dillon Vado, has been a regular at the venue with various combos, most recently Heart Matters, his collaboration with San Jose-reared vocalist Amy D.
“It’s been a DIY family effort,” Dan Vado said. “Our space is perfect for midsized touring jazz bands, but whether it’s punk show one day or jazz show the next day people come away saying it’s the best sounding venue.”
In many ways the Art Boutiki exemplifies the oversized role played by independent venues, which disproportionately provide space for local artists and touring acts that might not fit neatly into genre-specific clubs. San Jose drummer Wally Schnalle, who recently played a sold-out Art Boutiki double bill with his fusion band Idiot Fish and the prog jazz combo Raze the Maze, noted that the venue’s closing “will leave a cultural void in San Jose.”
Working in a variety of musical settings, San Jose drummer Gabby Horlick has thrived at the Art Boutiki, one of the few spaces in the area capable of hosting her 7th Street Big Band, which plays a final gig at the venue Dec. 7.
“It’s the venue we played at the most by far since we launched 12 years ago,” she said. “There are not a lot of stages we fit on, other than the Tabard Theatre, which closed in 2023. Nothing compares to it. For local bands, they make you feel like a professional with a nice stage, good lighting and unmatched sound.”
Horlick also leads the Sick Ones, which she first assembled for a one-off cover show. But the band evolved into something of an Art Boutiki house band with quarterly shows devoted to themes like “country music, low-rider oldies, and No Doubt’s ‘Tragic Kingdom,’” she said.
Booked for New Year’s Eve, “we get to be the last band to play the Art Boutiki,” Horlick said. “We’re reprising shortened versions of all those themes, and Dan’s going to sit in with the band to sing on one of them.”
Vado launched the Art Boutiki as a showcase for comic books published by his Slave Labor Graphics. Fittingly he turns the venue’s final Drink and Draw session Dec. 18 into a book release party for his concise but Proustian memoir, “My Diecast Life.” It’s a series of vignettes sparked by memories of playing with Hot Wheels and other diecast cars he rediscovered in the attic of his childhood home.
The Art Boutiki would already be a memory but for Vado’s determination not to cancel any previously scheduled gigs. The prospect of a white-knight music fan riding in to save the day seems to have flickered and faded.
“We made an announcement early hoping that someone would come and say we’d like to take over,” Vado said. “But when they look at the details they see it’s probably not a good idea.”
In a notoriously difficult business, Vado leaves the field after sowing countless encounters between artists and audiences, experiences that will continue to resonate for a long time.