You can’t save the Double Door Inn, but here’s how you can preserve it
When EMMY Award-winning journalist Kim Brattain heard the Double Door Inn on Charlottetowne Avenue would be closing in January 2017, she grieved.
“I was floored because there are very few beautiful, wonderful treasures in Charlotte,” she said. “And by saying ‘beautiful’ I’m not meaning something that costs a gazillion dollars. I’m saying something with soul. And this is something that Charlotte has that is soulful and has been meaningful to thousands of people … and generations.”
So she and her team decided to do something about it. Not save it — memorialize it. They’re producing a documentary called “Live From The Double Door Inn: A Documentary.”
Rick Fitts of Kim Brattain Media pointed out that Double Door has been a Charlotte fixture for 43 years and is the second oldest blues club in the U.S. It has national acts, top-notch local musicians and music about seven days a week. Eric Clapton played here. The Avett Brothers recorded a live album here: “Live at the Double Door Inn.”
“It’s got a national reputation and it’s not going to be replaced,” Fitts said. “I don’t see that happening.”
Chuck Bludsworth, president and creative director of Civilized Films, pointed out that Charlotte has already lost other music clubs like the Pterodactyl and Tremont Music Hall.
“To lose the Double Door — it’s a central thread in the fabric that makes up Charlotte,” he said.
“We’ve got five months to do something,” said Jay Ahuja, who has worked with local media organizations like WTVI PBS Charlotte and WFAE 90.7 FM.
But that doesn’t mean they have five months to save the Double Door — it’s closing Jan. 2, 2017. Club owner Nick Karres plans to sell the property to Central Piedmont Community College for central campus expansion.
“It’s time to hang it up,” said Karres, 67, who is ready to leave the music business. “It’s a good time, after all those years.”
Ahuja, Brattain, Bludsworth and Fitts, who have been going to the Double Door Inn since the ’80s and ’90s, simply want to preserve the soul of this place.
The group described how the same doormen have been greeting visitors for years and how the whole experience is like “Cheers” — but bigger and grungier and reverberating with live music. You walk in and grab a drink and either find a wooden seat covered in stickers, or stay standing. Then you soak up the live acts.
“It was the coolest damn place in town,” Bludsworth said.
Fitts said, “This is still the coolest place in town. When you walk in and you get a sense of all the hundreds of pictures of bands that have played there that are on that wall and it just feels like what a blues bar should feel like. You can’t describe it — it’s intangible. But you know you’re in the right place when you go in.”
Making a documentary is about pride in Charlotte’s past, Brattain said. “We have some history, we have some past. We’re not all new and shiny.”
I told them I have yet to go to the Double Door. But there are plenty of opportunities left on the calendar.
“If you can’t save the club,” Bludsworth said, “and you want to memorialize it, you want to be able to tell the story to somebody like yourself who’s never been there, a documentary film is the most immersive way to do that. … It gives you everything but the smell.”
They want to capture oral histories from Karres and people who have played there since the ’70s, among others, to tell the story of the Double Door through the years. And the group has two weeks left to raise $50,000 to back their project — supporters can read more about the documentary and donate here.
Karres supports the documentary’s creation. “It would be nice to know you were totally appreciated by the city and by your customers,” he said.
“If we don’t get funded, we can’t finish it,” Bludsworth said. “We’ll end up with a lot of groovy footage nobody will ever see.”
Photos: Corey Inscoe, Jay Ahuja
This story was originally published August 29, 2016 at 1:00 AM with the headline "You can’t save the Double Door Inn, but here’s how you can preserve it."