Photo via The Coffee House/Facebook
The Coffee House
If folk music is the sound of the people, what to do when people can't congregate to hear it? Such has been the dilemma for The Coffee House, Milwaukee's longstanding acoustic music and poetry venue.
“We shut down quickly in March of 2020 along with everything else. We haven’t had an in-person concert since the pandemic broke out," says Paul Smith, a board of directors member of for the Coffee House, whose physical location has most recently been at Plymouth Church United Church of Christ (2717 E. Hampshire St.).
How much that physical space will be used for The Coffee House’s 2021-22 season, running from September to May, remains to be seen. With COVID-19 still a concern, other provisions have been made for patrons to get their fix of folk.
“John Webber did quite a bit of the research needed to figure out how to stream our shows and hooked us up with what I believe is the state-of-the-art,” Smith says. Webber is a member of the Coffee House’s emergency response committee (and son of local musical couple Tom and Barb Webber) who hosts the venue’s livestream-only shows, Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. “During a show, John has the ability to switch between multiple performers at remote sites, to stream his conversations with the artists at their sites and to post comments from the audiences to the stream,” Smith explains.
The first Coffee House show to be livestreamed in late March of last year saw John Webber operating from his home studio for his parents. “I believe we have had roughly 20 streamed shows, many of them archived on our website,” Smith noted prior to its current season.
Virtual Tip Jar
Though Coffee House performances are free to experience either as they occur or archivally, viewers may still contribute to the venue and the artists hosted there online. “We leave the virtual tip jar open for each show for several days after the show, and people can watch the archived stream and donate later if they want.” Smith says. Singers and players get their share of the take for any given weekend, “We can always take donations, but there has to be a window around the time of the actual show for us to be able to give the performers their appropriate cut.”
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The Coffee House may yet open for in-person shows later this season, but, as Smith notes. “That decision depends on our host organization, Plymouth Church UCC. We will respect their decisions, of course, and I don’t expect us to push them at all. When they tell us that they’re ready, we will reopen.”
Streaming has been successful, but he concedes, “some of our faithful audience is shut out by the online-only format. We will certainly be back in person again when the fates allow.”
That fateful allowance would extend the presence of a Milwaukee music space that can rightly be deemed an institution. As Smith declares, “The Coffee House has been hosting concerts every year since 1967. We can’t be sure, but we think that we’re the longest continually operating coffee house in the U.S.”
