Singer-songwriter types normally aren’t found past the far western end of Ybor City after dark, but the scene is slowly starting to look a little different at the corner of Third and North Nebraska (technically on the border of historic Ybor and the new "Encore" district).
“We closed for about five months to completely renovate the place,” Steve Prevatt tells CL.
He’s talking about a nondescript building that used to function as a neighborhood watering hole. The structure is a just a mile northeast of downtown’s Marion Transit Center, where buses roll in and out almost all day long. The Bro Bowl — and the sound of boards being kickflipped all over the recently relocated skatepark — is even closer. If Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan has his way, then the sights and sounds of the Tampa Bay Rays will be just five minutes away by bicycle.
At the present moment, however, all you can hear is the crunch of gravel shifting underneath the weight of an automobile. In the light of a weekday morning The Blue Note looks a little like the random bar it has always been. But there are subtle signs of change — and they’re literally painted black and red on a baby blue picket fence:
“Upscale dive bar.” “Cocktails.” “Lots Of Wine.” And a big, bold “Honk If You Like Beer.”
The joint is definitely a place to catch a buzz. But other signs posted on the fence suggest what else is going on behind Blue Note’s single, solid wooden door.
“Jukebox,” says one. And just below that, seven feet long: “World Famous #BlueNoteBarTampa Est. 1943.”
That’s right. “Est.” more than half a century ago, but updated with a tagline and a hashtag. The Blue Note is Prevatt’s project, and he’s committed to making the 74-year-old spot live up to its history.
It’s technically a heritage business, one that’s been under a Prevatt family member’s watch since the 1970s, and Steve isn’t new to the bar game. Members of his family have run several of them, including the long-shuttered live-music venue Tut’s Pyramid, which was located on Franklin St. across from the former Club 911, where Franklin Manor is today.
In a 2004 story for CL (aka Weekly Planet), then music critic Scott Harrell and associate editor Eric Snider remembered Tut’s as “another exceedingly ephemeral endeavor that saw a few seasons’ worth of rock and hip-hop shows around ‘92-’93.” Other longtime Tampa residents remember it as the first place they legally had a drink or heard acid house, industrial and new beat.
Now Prevatt is composing a new beat with the help of veteran soundman Drew Paul and a team of youngsters whose combined age doesn’t match his own 57 years. Prevatt’s 15-year-old daughter Bella — a singer in Saint Petersburg College’s Music Industry and Recording Arts program — helps coordinate online promotions and runs a calendar that includes a full slate of shows plus off-site gigs for Blue Note’s in-house cinematographer Gage Briney. The Prevatts met Briney, 21, at an acting workshop in Atlanta.
Back home in Arkansas, Briney had the blessing of virtually no one as he pursued his passion of making movies. After befriending Bella and Steve, he decided to pack up his stuff and take a chance in St. Petersburg.
“I didn’t know a soul. Now I’ve been fortunate to be working almost every minute of every day doing what I love,” Briney tells CL in his thick Southern drawl, adding that there is one person he’ll call every now and then. “My grandma always supported me.”
Now he has a Tampa family (Bella says Briney is now “like my brother”), one that’s based at The Blue Note.
The footage Briney captures inside of the venue gets synced to sound directly from the board, and the results are polished live videos that Prevatt hopes artists can use to promote themselves online. In Prevatt’s eyes, Blue Note could also function as a recording studio similar to the Hideaway Café in St. Petersburg. He only opens on nights when there’s a show, and a cover charge ensures that anyone inside is there to see music.
To date, the venue has hosted almost two dozen shows from folk artists like Geri X, Kerry Courtney and Mountain Holler. Tampa songwriter Mwiza Simfukwe played one of the first shows at Blue Note and fell in love with the ambience of the dark, cave-like room, which can only fit about 60 people. He says being able to look into the eyes of audience members makes him feel like the song is the star and that he isn’t there for background noise.
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“Having the focus on the musician definitely shows that there’s a level of respect,” Simfukwe says, adding that he moved from Wesley Chapel to St. Pete so he could be closer to venues. “Now I actually have a reason to head back over the bridge.”
Who’ll actually head over in these days of change in the historic district is the big question for Blue Note. Word of mouth (along with its well-lit parking lot) will go a long way, but the venue’s location in the vicinity of what was once the Chitlin’ Circuit (clubs where black musicians played during the Jim Crow era) should be enough to pique curiosity and bring people through the door.
Music has always lived in and around the square of Tampa that the The Blue Note calls home. Hopefully now, at the hands of Prevatt and Co., it’ll live there for at least another half-century more.
Read a bit more about old Tampa Bay venues in this piece from our 2017 Music Issue.