Local music champion Tremont Music Hall closes with a final weekend of shows

In the mid-1990s as alternative rock was taking over the mainstream, the closings of Charlotte music venues like the Pterodactyl, 4808 and the Park Elevator left a void for midlevel touring acts playing places bigger than the Milestone, but smaller than arenas. Musician Penny Craver decided to try to fill it.

Craver had co-managed the Milestone, toured as drummer for the girl group the Blind Dates, and worked as a sound engineer. So in March 1995 on the outskirts of a then rundown South End, she opened Tremont Music Hall.

Twenty years and two other owners later, the venue that allowed locals to catch acts like Blur, Maroon 5, Green Day, the Jonas Brothers, Jewel, Creed, and Matchbox 20, before they were playing for thousands and brought in revered international acts Iggy Pop, Elliott Smith, Fugazi, the Roots, and Stereolab, will close.

“I was hoping it would be there in 20 years,” says Craver, who opened Dish in 2002 and sold Tremont to Mooresville’s Dave Ogden in 2004.

Friday and Saturday marks Tremont’s final shows. The bills consist of local acts that have a connection to the place, musicians who worked there, and a one-time reunion.

Saturday’s all day, 17-band bill features hip-hop, metal, punk and alternative rock. Antiseen, the notorious 32-year-old Charlotte punk band that celebrated its last three anniversaries there and held its guitarist’s funeral service at the club in 2014, will be the last band on Tremont’s stage per singer Jeff Clayton’s request.

“For 20 years, it’s been our home,” Clayton says. “I’m sure it will feel like losing part of the family.”

Competition isn’t what’s killing Tremont. The building has been sold and will be developed much like the property on Camden Road where Common Market is located. Yet it’s remained a haven for all ages, punk, metal and indie hip-hop shows; a home for the folks that don’t fit in elsewhere.

Tremont is now one of many Charlotte clubs, and after Craver’s initial run, often seemed like the underdog in a corporate town given increasing competition for shows and a gradual move toward less mainstream acts. Like a hardscrabble character, it adapted and survived Amos’ expansion, the growth of NoDa and Neighborhood Theatre, and the deep pockets of LiveNation’s Fillmore.

“If you were dropped off at Tremont in high school and got out of your mom’s car, and saw the kids dressed differently than the prep kid at school, that’s when you knew you were different,” says Ogden. “You knew you’d found your home.”

That feeling extended to the staff, whom all three owners credit with keeping the club running at the most dire times – when the stage broke during an Insane Clown Posse set or when the barricade broke during Gwar, or when a tour manager almost had the whole staff in tears.

“When you worked at Tremont, it was like being in a battle, you were in the trenches,” Craver says, recalling a recent conversation with former bouncers Steve Miller and Brian Rowe (Rowe co-owns the Diamond).

It wasn’t easy dealing with promoters, agents and rising costs in an unpredictable market where a band could sometimes have a radio hit and still draw fewer than 200 people.

But for fans and local musicians, especially green bands who went on to tour nationally and internationally in bands like Scapegoat, Hopesfall, Sugar Glyder, the Verdict, Hrvrd, and Campbell, the experience was immeasurable.

On Sunday, current and former employees and their families will gather for the annual reunion that’s been held there since 2013. The club may be closing, but according to Hayes that isn’t the end.

“What I’ve told the fans is the building is going away, but there’s a community, the family aspect of those that grew up there, worked there, and the fans. Those relationships don’t go away,” says current owner John Hayes.

This story was originally published December 17, 2015 at 1:30 PM with the headline "Local music champion Tremont Music Hall closes with a final weekend of shows."