One of Toronto’s most beloved music venues closed its doors over the weekend, potentially for good.

Hugh’s Room, a 200-person capacity club and restaurant on Dundas St. W. that was known as Toronto’s “ best listening room” and as a hub for roots musicians both local and international was shuttered Friday — hours before a local James Taylor tribute was to take the stage.

Venue owner Richard Carson says he had no choice but to make the difficult decision to put his 16-year-old business on hold, cancelling a week’s worth of shows immediately and putting the venue’s remaining future shows in jeopardy.

“I’m basically insolvent and I’m going to be taking the next few days to figure out what my options are,” said Carson when reached by the Star.

“I have not filed for bankruptcy. I would like to figure out a way to continue. I don’t know if that’s going to be possible, so I just need a few days. Right now, I don’t feel it’s fair to go on in the dire current situation that we’re in.”

Carson says the business has “been a struggle for years.”

“It’s difficult and I’ve got two tough businesses — a restaurant and a music venue,” he said. “Up until this last Friday, I’ve been able to sort through it and do what I can to continue on. But it really was on Friday where I called the line. I can’t continue until I can answer some questions.”

Carson, who opened the venue in 2001 and posted a statement on the Hugh’s Room website Sunday afternoon announcing his situation, said his decision affects 35 full and part-time workers.

He’s holding off cancelling more shows until he figures out what the immediate future holds, and that includes determining whether customers will receive refunds to any cancelled shows.

“Everything’s on hold right now until I can have a couple of days so I can find out what my options are,” said Carson. “If I knew more to say more, I would. I have never been through anything like this before. I made the decision on Friday and this weekend it’s hard to reach anybody that can give me any kind of information.”

The first rumblings of a potential crisis occurred Friday afternoon when local promoter and graphic designer Michael Wrycraft, who was to present Sweet Baby James, a local multi-artist tribute to James Taylor that evening, received a call from Carson saying the show was cancelled, despite healthy advance sales of 125 tickets.

“My show got cancelled six hours beforehand,” said Wrycraft. “Ticket sales were fine; 135 seats filled at Hugh’s Room makes Hugh’s Room happy. Anything above that is gravy and good. We always have walk-up.”

Wrycraft said he wasn’t given a reason for the cancellation, but was told there was some “internal issues” that needed to be dealt with.

He said the cancellation affected 20 musicians.

“I had to basically apologize to them all for stealing away Friday night’s income,” he admits, adding that each musician lost $200 for the evening, with the total factoring in free dinner and drinks.

Wrycraft said he had a special arrangement with the club and could not see how switching the show to another venue would work.

Jory Nash, a local musician who was to stage the 15th edition of his four-day multi-act Gordon Lightfoot tribute this weekend — one of the club’s most popular annual bookings — said he heard about Wrycraft’s cancellation from one of his own artists and first heard from the venue on Saturday night.

“They give me a guarantee to put a show together,” Nash recalled. “I’ve promised all the artists money, so I let the artists know — there are some things happening, the hydro’s off — I wasn’t told the full story.”

Nash said he followed up with Carson on Sunday morning and said he needed a 50 per cent deposit in order for the show to continue.

“Some of the artists live out of town — one is flying up, so for us to do the show without any kind of financial safety net made no sense. So I asked the owner (Carson) for 50 per cent up front. He told me that he didn’t have any money to pay us. So we couldn’t do the show.”

Nash, who says the 14 musicians he hired to play over the four nights are now collectively out $4,500 per night — $18,000 altogether

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— said he’s saddened and shocked over the situation.

“It’s sad what happening,” he said.

“In my opinion, it was the best listening room in the city.

“Fifteen years ago, there were 50-seat venues like the Free Times Cafe and C’est What, and then there were like 500-seat venues like the Glenn Gould Theatre. There was nothing in-between. That mean for people too big for one or too small for the other, they would never come to Toronto.

“Somebody like Richie Havens never played Toronto, but when Hugh’s Room opened, he’d drop by once a year.”

Nash said Hugh’s Room gave a lot of local musicians their start.

“Lots of young bands got their start and moved onto larger venues — Serena Ryder, for example. It was a room built for listening — it had a great sound, great sound people — the sightlines were really good for everybody. It was comfortable being on the stage. You got paid a decent wage — it was a percentage of the door. And if you filled the place, you did well.”

Carson, who christened Hugh’s Room after his late brother Hugh, who died of cancer in 1999, lamented that the business is his life.

“It’s been everything to me,” says Carson. “It’s not so much what it’s been to me. I’ve been amazed in the last couple of days all the support I’m getting from people. Everybody’s upset, but I think the club has meant a lot to a lot of people.”

Veteran promoter and publicist Richard Flohil, who estimates he’s presented “hundreds” of concerts at the venue over Hugh’s Room’s 16-year history, echoed Nash’s sentiments.

He says its potential closure represents “a very serious loss.”

“There’s nowhere for acoustic music to appear for a listening audience — an audience that comes specifically to listen,” said Flohil, whose Hugh’s Room promotions have ranged from folk singers Mary Gauthier and Maria Muldaur to Leon Redbone and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.

“A lot of stuff worked in Hugh’s Room. And now it’s apparently gone.

“The difficulty is that we’ve lost a venue that promotes acoustic roots music in the biggest music market in the country and there isn’t a replacement. It’s a major musical loss.”