Newby's

Newby's

Newby's Logo
Location 539 S. Highland St., Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.A.
Owner Larry Thompson
Capacity 650
Opened 1975
Website
Newbysbar.com

Newby's is a music venue, bar, pool hall, and restaurant in Memphis, Tennessee, located about a block from the University of Memphis.

History

Newby's was established in 1975 by David “Newby” Harsh.[1] The restaurant changed over the years as it expanded with a full bar, pool room, large outside patio and then transforming an adjoining historic 1950s movie theater into a music venue. After suffering a stroke in 1996, Harsh sold Newby's to working bartender Todd Adams in January 1997. In November 2014, Newby's closed after filing for bankruptcy that January, but is reopening in December 2015.

The new owner of Newby's will be Larry Thompson, a former bartender of the establishment.[2]

Acts

Many notable acts played the venue. All genres of music were booked at Newby's, from Alternative Rock, Country, Hip-hop, to Electronic. The venue also hosted mixed martial arts fights.[3] Listed are a few past shows:

Controversies

Beginning in the 1990s, Newby's engaged in a legal dispute with Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) over license fees levied by BMI for the right to perform music in the BMI catalog. Newby's stopped paying BMI for a yearly license due to Adams' objections to terms of the license agreement. One focus of contention was the venue capacity, which is one determinant of the license fee. BMI based its fee on a capacity of 600, but Adams maintained that Newby's had a legal capacity of only 132 people.[1][4]

Facilities

The concert hall had a capacity of several hundred, and the bar/restaurant area offered live music with a capacity of about 150.

Typically, nationally touring bands played the concert hall and small acoustic acts played the bar side. Newby's had been reviewed favorably on the Memphis City Search website. Additionally, the website WCities says that at Newby's one could expect to hear anything from folk music to alternative music but that it was never boring.[5]

The bar side transformed into a sports bar, with several pull-down screens, during University of Memphis football and basketball games.

See also

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 1/26/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.