Tampa Bay concert promoter No Clubs marks 40 years of scene building

“Forty years as an independent concert promoter—it’s wild,” muses Vicki Huddy, sitting in a large, otherwise empty, room at The Factory in St. Petersburg. On Jan. 1, 2025, she became the third partner in No Clubs Presents, joining founders Tony Rifugiato and Dave Hundley, who are affectionately known to music-industry people and scenesters as “Tony and Dave.”

“They’ve made such a wide-ranging contribution,” Huddy continues. “I want to see them get their flowers.” That bouquet takes the form of “Live Since ’85,” an art show held at The Factory showcasing the flyers, photos and memorabilia from the No Clubs archives. The opening night party is Saturday, Jan. 3, and the show will run until Feb. 28. There’s no cover for all of it.

No Clubs has staged a staggering number of concerts over four decades—340 of them from 1985 to 1995. Tony and Dave were the prime drivers in the early development of an alternative music scene in the Bay area by booking punk and hardcore acts in the ‘80s. Butthole Surfers, Circle Jerks, Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth, Black Flag, The Damned, Corrosion of Conformity, 7 Seconds (10 times)—that barely scratches the surface. 

They soon began to stretch out and include in their slate such acts as Fela Kuti and King Sunny Ade (probably the first African-music shows in Tampa Bay), Pearl Jam, Richard Thompson, Marilyn Manson, Ween, Cocteau Twins, and even an artist as obscure as Mississippi bluesman R.L. Burnside. In more recent years, No Clubs has presented early-career concerts by Lady Gaga, Chappell Roan, Shaboozey, Kendrick Lamar, and a fledgling Dua Lipa.

Most No Clubs concerts have been in venues with capacities of 200 to 2,000—many of them in St. Pete at Jannus Landing and the State Theatre (now The Floridian Social). The duo owned and ran the State Theater from the late-‘90s until 2018. Tony, 76, and Dave, 70, never broke into the big venues, other than a few shows. That was partly intentional and partly due to the niche they carved out in the marketplace.

Live Nation and AEG—big players Tony and Dave have routinely subcontracted with—have essentially gobbled up the concert industry, which makes No Clubs’ longevity all the more impressive. Any concert market leaves a trail of wannabe promoters and slippery operators who cut corners, cheat bands, leave vendors holding the bag, and slink off into the shadows. Tampa Bay is no different. Tony and Dave have been free of such sleaze, and that’s a major reason No Clubs has endured.

“They’ve always taken care of business,” explains Rob Douglas, the former in-house promoter at Jannus Landing (now Jannus Live) who has partnered extensively with No Clubs and is longtime friends with Tony and Dave. “They never stiffed anybody. They were fair. They didn’t leave anyone in the lurch. When they told you they were going to do something, they fucking did it.” 

It seems fair to describe Tony and Dave as an odd couple. Tony grew up in the Brixton district of London, a West Indian neighborhood. He’s diminutive in stature, reserved but quietly charismatic, and he’s not lost an iota of his British accent. Dave, raised in Safety Harbor, is a mustachioed mensch, a relentless storyteller. “I’ve been told I’m loquacious,” he says wryly. 

No Clubs is a partnership—and a friendship. The latter has been necessary. Yes, their four-decade run has been successful, but far from easy or lucrative. “I don’t think I ever made more than 20, 30 grand in the early days, quite a bit more later on,” Dave says. But they have not gotten anywhere close to rich. 

Their adult lives have been an ongoing cycle of booking shows and promoting the hell out of them, then hoping and praying that enough tickets sell to break even and hopefully generate a profit. Imagine scheduling what seems like a surefire thing and watching it bomb for some inexplicable reason. On the other hand, imagine a prescient booking that sells out within days and hauls in some serious coin. Imagine hearing the cheers of a packed house as the lights go down. Imagine spending quality time with the likes of David Byrne, Eddie Vedder, Laurie Andersen, Lou Reed and others. 

Early on, Tony and Dave learned how to take wins and losses in stride. “You have to,” says Tony, sitting at the table with me and Vicki, a leather bag strapped over his denim jacket. “We learned not to judge it on a show-to-show basis. I learned to take into account what we did for the year. If we finished in the black, we’d succeeded, and were able to continue into the following year.”

I ask Tony how many years ended up in the red, give or take. “Quite a few,” he replies with a sly smile. But the shows went on. 

No Clubs has encountered myriad bumps in the road, several potholes (you try handling marauding skinheads), a few craters and a couple of crashes. In 1989, during a period when Tony and Dave were looking to diversify programming, they booked platinum-seller Jody Watley into the 2,200-seat Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center (now the Straz). They sold about 300 tickets and took it in the shorts. Hundley recalls losing “30, 40 thousand dollars. [The industry] thought we were buried. It took us a year of making payments to her agent, but we paid it off.”

About 10 or 12 years ago, Tony remembers, “Everything was black. I had very little money in the bank. I remember one morning getting up really depressed. We were running out of money because so many of the shows were downers. I thought, ‘My God, this is gonna end now—after all we’ve done, all the hard work and everything. I can’t see a way out.’ Then I thought, ‘Y’know what? Screw it. I’m not gonna let that happen. I’m gonna focus harder on what we’re doing.’ And from then on we started taking [off] again.”

No Clubs’ wild beginnings

Both were music fiends. Both were in their 30s. Their tastes overlapped. Neither was into punk.

Dave Hundley had spent a year-and-a-half on the road as an advance promoter for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, where he embraced the credo “the show must go on.” He was running monitors at the Agora Ballroom in Tampa for the likes of Ultravox and Psychedelic Furs. Tony Rifugiato lived in Sarasota and owned Daddy Kool Records. (The store is now located in the Factory and he still owns it.) He was also DJ’ing, booking one-hit-wonder track acts like Shannon and Planet Rock at a skating rink, organizing breakdance competitions, and other ad hoc ventures in the lower rungs of the entertainment business.

A mutual acquaintance thought the two should meet, so set up a get-together at the Stuffed Pepper, a bar on St. Pete’s Central Avenue that played local acts. The meeting went well. Dave told Tony to call him if he needed any help. Tony said he would. 

The first No Clubs concert happened as a lark. In early December 1985, Tony got a call out of the blue from Scooter Melton, who booked Act IV, a punk/new wave club in Tampa that occasionally presented up-and-coming national acts. As Tony remembers it, Scooter said, “I screwed up—I can’t do this show, because it’s too big for [Act IV]. But I told the agent that you would do it.” Tony asked: Why me? “He told me that word had gotten around that I was a reliable guy who could probably pull this off.’”

The act in question was Suicidal Tendencies. Tony seized the opportunity and set up the deal with the agent. He had nine days to put together a show for Dec. 20. Tony called the Cuban Club in Ybor City, which had an open date. He set the ticket price at $7 at the door. He called Dave, who put up some cash toward the artist fee. “I always tell people that I started in this business with $10,000 and—you know what?—I’ve still got that $10,000,” Dave quips. Neither partner can definitively recall how much they paid Suicidal Tendencies, but they agree it was around $2,500. Dave enlisted soundman Mike Abdishi, who, Tony recalls, charged a princely sum but brought in high-level gear.

The concert, held in the Cuban Club basement, sold out. The room was packed with 600 or 700 kids. Slam-dancing ensued, but nothing occurred beyond the normal mayhem at a punk show. “Everything went perfect,” Dave says. The band benefited from production way above punk standards, plus catering, a dressing room. In effect, Suicidal tendencies received first-class treatment and the audience got a terrific show. After it was over, No Clubs handed the band a $750 bonus. As Tony recalls, “The road manager looks at us and says, ‘Y’know, this is the first time we’ve gotten a bonus on the whole American tour.’”

Two neophyte promoters had pulled it off. Tony figured that was it. “We hadn’t planned to do another show,” he says. What prompted the intrepid duo to forge on? “The phone never stopped ringing,” he replies. Word had gotten around within the insulated world of punk touring that two guys in Tampa Bay could be relied upon to do business in an honest and ethical way.

The rest, as the shopworn saying goes, is history.

Amid all the hard work, stress, negotiations, logistics, chaos, emergencies, the late nights into early mornings, let’s not forget something. “We’ve had a lot of fun over 40 years.” Dave says. 

And while the tandem has made a substantial contribution to the Bay area’s music scene and culture overall, it’s also simpler than that. Tony sums up their legacy thusly: “It’s only in the last few years that I’ve really understood that what we do has made a lot of people happy.”

The shows must go on

No Clubs brought in Huddy, 33, to help move the company forward. Tony and Dave—both of whom have dealt with serious health scares—have scaled back their activity, especially when it comes to boots on the ground. Huddy has taken over most day-of-show duties. She also handles ticketing, advances the shows and heads up the small marketing team.

Like her partners, the St. Pete native delved deeply into music from an early age, starting with Joy Division. In her mid-teens she began attending shows, many of them at the State Theatre and Jannus Landing. She joined band street teams, handed out flyers, sold merch. “I liked every aspect,” Huddy says of the concert scene. “I liked that anything can happen at any time.”

She decided to forego college and instead scored an internship with Tony at age 18. Huddy worked at Daddy Kool, helped market shows, and contributed anywhere she was needed. It took her 15 years, but she made partner. “A lot of times I come to Tony and Dave with weird or interesting pitches and ideas that they wouldn’t think of doing,” she says. “I think they are very appreciative of that because at this point they’re not constantly researching what’s the current trend or what’s speaking to this generation.”

I ask Huddy for her vision of No Clubs as it forges onward. She hesitates, then chuckles, “Um, that’s a big one,” she replies. “Tony and Dave have set a really great foundation to work off of. What I hope to bring going forward is more community-driven things—events and partnerships that help our local scene, which has its ebbs and flows. Also to move forward in an industry that is not kind to independents. It would be beautiful to see No Clubs make it to 80 years, but I also understand that the industry is very volatile. 

“I’m hopeful, and I’m gonna put as much effort as possible into making sure we survive as long as the world will let us.”

---

Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.

Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | BlueSky

---

This article appears in Dec. 25 – 31, 2025.