About 16 years ago, a friend hooked me up with an interview at The Masquerade. The Ybor City music venue was hiring security, and something in my brain figured that all 165 pounds of me, with 19 years of life under my belt, could pass muster and control crowds who flocked to concerts in the historic district. So I found myself in front of Tom DeGeorge, Masquerade’s general manager. I’m pretty sure he pursed his lips, both tucked under his wiry black beard, when he looked me over. I can’t remember the line of questioning, but I got the job.
The next item of business for DeGeorge—who’s on the cover of this week’s issue, with a slightly grayer beard—was giving me a nickname. I told him that I had unusually large nipples, but “Big Nips” wasn’t appropriate to him. So DeGeorge called me “Hawaii,” after my birth state. I worked at Masquerade, which is now The Ritz (what it was called before Masquerade), for less than two years.
As a teen who spent entire paychecks at Sound Exchange and someone who took Greyhound buses to see shows in cities like Jacksonville, being at Masquerade was heaven. I didn’t have a car and often slept at HART bus stops after my shifts when I couldn’t bum a ride (that never bothered me, but I did learn that it’s dangerous to fall asleep in the streets).
Soundchecks happened when I was putting liners in trash cans. I put wristbands on band members, and I worked the back load-in door when Jimmy Eat World played the room in January 2005. I remember seeing Tim McTague—whose band Underoath was on the verge of releasing a 2006 album with a single that got a Grammy nomination—in the crowd singing along to all the Jimmy Eat World songs I knew.
Masquerade is where I met No Clubs’ Tony Rifuguato, who would always eat edamame at the front door while concertgoers filed in. It’s where I first saw Shawn Kyle play with his band the Beauvilles, and it’s where the Infinity Room played host to countless metal and hip-hop shows, plus kinky Fetish Con happenings. I got to work and meet-and-greet when Damageplan played Masquerade in October 2004. Some guy walked up to be before anyone got there and introduced himself by saying, “Hi, my name’s Darrell.” I had no fucking clue who he was at the time, but I remember reading about how Dimebag was shot dead at a Damageplan show two months later.
I can’t tell you how many local music scene figures I got to talk to, but I know that my days as an employee there—and the countless more I spent in clubs like Crowbar, which DeGeorge opened in 2006, nine months after Masquerade closed—introduced me to a community that would eventually be my home away from home. The people I worked with, in so many ways, raised me. Seeing their faces when I go to a show, lifts my spirits.
That time at Masquerade eventually led me to every writing gig I ever had. Hours in the clubs led me to a full-time job at CL, where I sadly just had to edit Josh Holton’s story about how venues like DeGeorge’s—which all got shafted when it came to federal aid—are in real danger of not opening back up in the wake of the coronavirus fallout.
Crowbar, Orpheum, The Ritz, The Bends, Skipper’s Smokehouse, Hideaway Café, Jannus Live, New World Brewery, Lucky You Tattoo, Hooch and Hive, The Ale & the Witch and countless other clubs across the country all closed first. All of them—save for the ones that are also restaurants—will be the last to reopen. Some may not open back up at all.
In exchange for a lifetime of memories, Tampa Bay’s indie live music venues need five minutes of your time.
Visit nivassoc.org to tell your elected officials why live music venues are indispensable. Send them Holton’s story if you have to.
I can wait until it’s safe to go see a concert, but I can’t imagine not having a nightclub to see one in.
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This article appears in May 14-20, 2020.