VOL. 8 | NO. 31 | Saturday, July 25, 2015

With a national partner found in Live Nation Entertainment, the New Daisy Theater is getting all dolled up to host nearly 200 musical acts annually.

The job doesn't just call for a new coat of paint to cover the decades of graffiti: the historic theater at 330 Beale is getting a complete overhaul.

"People like the New Daisy,” said Steve Adelman, who bought the venue with his partner J.W. Gibson last year. “They like the history. They like the vibe, but it hasn't been touched in 35 years."

Adelman and Gibson, whose company East Beale Development Project, recently announced an exclusive booking partnership with Live Nation Booking, one of the largest producers of music events in the country.

East Beale is also renovating The Palace, a nightclub down the street from the New Daisy at at 380 Beale.

When construction is completed on the New Daisy in September and The Palace shortly thereafter, Adelman said the two venues will make Beale a regional destination for touring acts.

"The only way this is going to work is if people travel around the country and say Memphis was the best room we played at," he said.

The New Daisy has been known as a well-loved, albeit grungy, destination for rock and alternative music. When it was built in 1937, the building was an early cinema house. Adelman hopes to polish the classic features, such as the raked floor, balcony seating and iconic marquee sign, to return the building to its previous elegance.

Adelman said that Memphis firm Archimania immediately grasped his intention for the space. "We want to make it comfortable and contemporary and relevant,” he said. “We're not turning it into a sweet modern Miami-looking place. It just doesn't warrant that, so we'll play homage to the history. Archimania just translated their aesthetic. They were a perfect fit."

The new design is evocative of the building's storied past. The marquee has been secured and the original theater-style doors have been restored. The box office lobby is getting the red carpet treatment with art-nouveau style wallpaper and vintage lighting fixtures. The balcony will feature cushy theater seating.

The main hall is nearly unrecognizable. Three full-service bars buttress the entrance. Close to the stage, VIP seating areas are adjacent to both walls. The floor has been newly carpeted except for the white oak dance floor that's been prepped for many more decades of enthusiastic concert-goers.

Local designer Sarah Spinosa Interior Designs will bring the elegant and contemporary flair that's been her trademark at restaurants like Hog & Hominy and Porcellino's.

The top floors are being converted into a VIP club. To be dubbed The Big Star Room, the lounges will fit in with Live Nation's existing premium seats program. Businesses and individuals can sign up for the three-tier membership program and gain access to box seats, reserved seating and a complementary bar.

More than 600 memorabilia items will be on display to hearken back to the days when the likes of Bob Dylan, Nirvana and Memphis titans Big Star took the stage. The club will be able to fit 250 people and membership proceeds will go towards a fund to benefit musician health insurance.

The ceiling fans have been removed from the main room, and six giant chandeliers illuminate the 10-foot tall lighting tressing along the stage, which has been expanded from 18 feet long to 32 feet.

On July 14, the lighting done by Nashville-based Bandit Lites was on display for the first Live Nation-sponsored show. Nearly 700 people attended the Theory of a Deadman concert to get a sneak peek of the space and test out the state-of-the art sound system, installed by Chicago-based Sound Investment.

Adelman said the evening was more of a test-run of the facilities in preparation for September's grand opening

"We can't change it more than we changed it," he said.

Another sneak peek is set for Friday, July 31, when the Chris Robinson Brotherhood will take the stage.

The infrastructure updates run deep. Every wall is being repainted, sheet rock replaced, floors recovered, plumbing redone, electricity rewired and roofing patched up.

Seven contractors are working to bring the design to realization. Chris Eubank and his company We Build it Contractors have been working for a couple months on overhauling the building.

Most of the original layers are being kept intact, Eubank said, to keep up with efforts to get the structure on the historic register. Eubank frequently performed in the space with his band Empire City, so he's been invested in the New Daisy throughout its career.

"It was always so busy that renovations weren't even an option," he said. "Now that the Memphis music scene and everything else has been leveling out here, it seems that it fell on its face, and it almost presented the opportune time to go in and do something like this. I think when people come in and see something like this, they're going to fall in love with it all over again."