COVID claims a local music venue. Will more be forced to close?

In just over a decade, Cosmic Charlie’s withstood the impossible — specifically, two changes in venue location along with all the physical and audience rebuilding such leapfrogging entails. In the end, though, a pandemic did it in.

The popular Lexington music club will close for good on May 31. We can’t say “shut its doors” because they’ve been shut to the public since mid-March when lockdown conditions were put in place to contend with the mounting COVID-19 outbreak. Still, despite a newly visible online presence through live streaming performances, Cosmic Charlie’s has become the first local music venue to fall — at least, in part — to the coronavirus.

“COVID is definitely the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Cosmic Charlie’s co-owner Mark Evans, “It’s impacting every live music venue. But I guess you could say we were like an at-risk person.”

“At-risk,” in this case, references an unplanned move from its location on National Avenue, which it relocated to in 2016 after a seven-year run on Woodland Avenue. Noise ordinance complaints and violations forced the club to move again in 2018 to its final home on Loudon Avenue.

“We were a victim of COVID and we were a victim of a loose Lexington noise ordinance that got us to get kicked out of National Avenue,” Evans said. “That really, really damaged us. It’s hard to bounce back from something like that. We were trying our best to come back. We were doing it, but it was just too hard. With COVID, it just sank the ship.

The down time between the National and Loudon locations lasted nearly nine months, which Evans said understandably hurt Cosmic Charlie’s visibility in Lexington. The Loudon locale saw the club becoming part of the ongoing redevelopment of North Lexington. But that meant distancing itself further from the University of Kentucky campus area audience that had been faithful to its Woodland and National locations.

“We were excited to be part of was happening on North Lime and Loudon,” Evans said. “But having to be closed for nine months, canceling and postponing a large amount of shows, gave a lot of momentum to our competitors. There are totally no hard feelings along those lines, but that’s the reality of it. Having to be asleep for nine months just killed us. But before that, re-opening further away from campus… I mean, a lot of our regulars were closer to National Avenue than to North Lex.”

Evans is proud of the legacy he, co-owner John Tresaloni and the club’s staff established over runs at the three Cosmic Charlie’s locations. He attributes that to a simple “do it yourself” work ethic that placed a love of live music ahead of a drive for business.

“Everything was very organic,” Evans said. “What we had was made possible by people who love and care about music. We weren’t businessmen who decided there was this opportunity to make money. That certainly wasn’t the case. Instead, we were people who were passionate about music. We wanted to share and bring live music to town. I think that’s the only way any of this could have worked.”

Although audiences couldn’t visit Cosmic Charlie’s in person in recent months, the venue, in essence, went to them. The club became one of the first regional venues to stage regular live streaming performances as lockdown conditions were established. Evans credits the husband and wife team of Eric and Kayti McMyermick — the venue’s co-audio engineer and manager, respectively — for taking Cosmic Charlie’s to cyberspace.

“Kayti and Eric jumped right on that,” Evans said. “They were live streaming before stay-at-home orders were in place. I honestly think we were one of the first venues in the country to do it. It was all their idea.”

The couple will also be the primary working force behind Cosmic Charlie’s last hurrah, a final streaming event on May 31 dubbled “a living funeral.” While details, including a start time, are still being finalized, the shape of the event was outlined in an obituary-style post last week on the club’s social media pages.

“A living funeral will be live streamed on Sunday, May 31,” the post read. “Due to Covid-19, there will be no visitation or public services held. In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to Cosmic’s staff on Venmo to @spacechucks.”

“There will be some pre-recorded content unique to the event,” Evans said. “A lot of bands we have history with, mostly local and regional, are recording performances. Some may just be sending a video note. I think a band or two may live stream at the end from Cosmic Charlie’s. It just a celebration of our life. We’ve been reaching out to everyone who has performed there and giving them a chance to say goodbye.”

Perhaps the saddest news surrounding the end of Cosmic Charlie’s is the overall grim future predicted for independent music venues. Cosmic Charlie’s may be the first COVID-related demise of its kind in the region, but it will likely not be the last.

“Unfortunately, we’re the first of what will probably be many,” Evans said. “I sort of hope us closing is a little bit of a wake-up call for music fans to support the other venues that are still open while they still can.”

This story was originally published May 26, 2020 at 12:00 PM.