SLOPPY SECONDS: Easy's new owners will clean up |
It’s official, the Big Easy has been sold. New owners Eric Murray, Ken Bell, and Anthony Hernandez have purchased the Big Easy from previous owners Billy and Jim O’Brien for an undisclosed price. (The O’Brien brothers, who owned the place for a little more than six years, are exploring non-club businesses, related to seafood and waste management, we’re told.)Dollars and cents aside, the related changes being made to Portland’s melting pot of local musicians are slight at most. According to Murray, the former owner of Free Street Taverna, cleaning is a pressing matter in shaping up the Big Easy, which will be keeping the familiar moniker. Murray and company will place a VIP room in the far corner of the small music hall, and repaint the interior so when we’re all crammed in sweating our faces off singing to The Awesome’s rendition of “Hungry Like The Wolf” we can absorb the strange new colors emanating from every wall.
“Music wise, nothing’s going to change,” says Murray, who adds that he intends on bringing in more national acts and also wants to “beef up Wednesdays and Thursdays.” The usual lineup of Zion Train every other Wednesday and Sly-Chi every Tuesday will stay the same, Murray assures us. Friday and Saturday will still be home to big local bands that can fill up the place, like past regulars The Awesome, Loverless, and Pete Kilpatrick.
Though there will be new folks in the sound booth (Wally Winslow from The Horror) and handling booking (Justin Hendrickson), the old familiar bartenders will be working the rails, and the focus will remain on local music, as it has for more than a decade.
Topics:
This Just In
, Justin Hendrickson, Jim O'Brien, Josh Schlesinger
