The Musical Box

The feeling this time is a little less maddening. But the finality of it is still sad.

Yesterday, word was confirmed The Dame will close for good on Aug. 23.

The downtown music club had re-opened last October in the old A1A location on East Main. Its former digs down the street on West Main were demolished the previous June to make way for the now-stalled CentrePointe project.

There was, justifiably, much outcry over the initial closing as the demolition also took out Mia’s (which has since successfully relocated to Short and North Limestone) and Buster’s (which will re-open in a larger, reinvented form on Manchester St. in September), thus effectively muting what had been one of downtown’s most active areas of nightlife.

In its new location, The Dame was a loner saddled with a stigma that many of its former patrons couldn’t shake. To some, the ghost of A1A’s frat rock/dance club days was a serious deterrent. Isolated as it was on a block of East Main that generally went to sleep after dark but housed in a complex with other bars with vastly more mainstream appeal, there was still an attractive comfort and spaciousness to the relocated Dame. But maybe one of the reasons it seemed so spacious was because it was so often empty.

The reasons for The Dame’s final closing are likely myriad. Luckily, the big picture isn’t at all as bleak as it when the West Main location shut down in 2008. Since then, older, smaller music venues – specifically Al’s Bar and The Green Lantern – catering more modestly to local music and smaller touring indie acts have emerged. Additionally, newer spots like Lower 48 in Victorian Square are now celebrating one year anniversaries.

There is also the upcoming rebirth of Buster’s. Its new Manchester St. location isn’t even open yet. But the venue already has five substantial shows slated for the fall that are/were right up The Dame’s alley: Young Dubliners on Sept. 16 (a rare regional outing by the Irish-American Celtic rock brigade); Blues Traveler on Sept. 25 (the veteran jam band’s first local club show); Silversun Pickups on Sept. 28 (with Manchester Orchestra and Cage the Elephant); Shooter Jennings and JJ Grey & Mofro on Oct. 1 (two acts that have packed The Dame in the past); and The Black Angels on Oct. 10 (part of WRFL’s Boomslang festival).

While it feels like we all passed out enough goodbyes in 2008 to The Dame to last several lifetimes, we will miss its final passing nonetheless. It was a flagship venue when live music in Lexington was at a premium. But there are no tears this time. Lexington has already moved on.