Since its beginnings, Westerly’s Knickerbocker Music Center has never once waived from its ultimate mission: cultivating and celebrating live music, with a special emphasis on the blues.

The Knickerbocker Music Center (or perhaps better known as its nickname “The Knick”) has hosted legendary local and nationally touring musicians over the years, such as Stevie Ray Vaugn, Buddy Guy and Deer Tick, among many others.

In honor of The Knick’s 90th anniversary, Mark Connolly, the Knickerbocker Music Center executive director, reflects on the end of the milestone year, ranging from the institution’s humble start, monumental rebuilding, and expansion to musical education.

“The building looks the same as it does from the outside as it does now,” Connolly said. “When it got rebuilt, [the plan was] to make sure it looked the same as it was because the place is steeped in history and that’s part of what made it famous and allowed it to continue through hard times, even through something like COVID-19, we got through that as well. We are still alive and kicking.”

The Past: Hitting the Right Notes

At the end of Prohibition, brothers Albert and Paul Vitterito decided to close their ice cream shop and create a storied music night club and cafe in Westerly, opening its doors in 1933. They named their new music venue the “The Knickerbocker Café” after the Knickerbocker Express, a well-known train that passed through the Westerly train station. The Knick can still be seen from the train tracks today.

Their location was key, Connolly noted, as musicians in the 1930s and 1940s typically didn’t have their own cars, and would take the train going from gigs between Boston and New York, conveniently stopping at The Knick to play in between.

Over time, The Knick grew its fanbase of performers and return patrons. One of the most notable groups was Roomful of Blues, a jump blues and swing band born in Westerly when guitarist Duke Robillard and pianist Al Copley started a band that played Chicago-styled blues in 1967.

Connolly said he originally heard the story about Roomful of Blues from Paul Vitterito’s son, Paul Vitterito Jr. (previous owners of The Knick.) The story goes that Roomful of Blues approached The Knick, asking to play. Paul Vitterito said the band wasn’t big enough to play on the busier Friday or Saturday nights, and gave them Sunday nights to see if they could drum up more business. When Roomful of Blues made The Knick their home club, they would pack the house every time they performed.

“Within a few weeks, Roomful of Blues had people down the sidewalk waiting to get in and the place would sell out every Sunday night,” Connolly said. “That became a big part of the Knickerbocker lore.

By the early 2000s, The Knick was losing its momentum and business was slowing. In 2003, the West Warwick nightclub and hard rock music venue The Station had a fire caused by a mishap with a pyrotechnic display and fire code violations, resulting in 100 deaths and injuring 230 others. In the aftermath, local venues with capacities over 100 people were forced to update to the latest safety standard, but Paul Vitterito Jr. couldn’t afford the needed restorations and had to close the place down.

However, this wouldn’t be the end of The Knick. In 2009, a group of passionate music lovers from Westerly and Watch Hill formed Westerly Blues, LLC, and raised $1.5 million dollars to buy the venue and renovate/rebuild it. After the initial renovation, Westerly Blues, LLC asked Connolly and his business partner Jon Kodama (who left in 2014) to come on board to run The Knick and rejuvenate the new business in 2011. (Connolly would become Executive Director in 2014 when The Knick officially became a nonprofit organization.)

Both had been in the Mystic, Connecticut restaurant business for years. Connolly said working at a music venue was an amazing new journey for him.  His vision was to get the community more involved with The Knick by becoming a nonprofit organization focusing on music education. He wanted a space that encouraged a new young audience and returning fans alike.

“I wanted the place to become a musical community center,” Connolly said. “When I got there, it really wasn’t that. A lot of people had come when it was really big in the late 70’s and into the 80’s but, they this time they were my age in their sixties, and they didn’t want to go out that much and they didn’t want to stay out late and they didn’t want to spend that much money. When you are a venue, you can’t really stay alive with that type of clientele, so we needed to get younger people in there and we needed more of the community involved.”

The Present: Swinging Away the Blues

Nowadays, Connolly’s goal of becoming a nonprofit music educational organization has become a reality. The Knick is now sister organizations with the United Theatre and the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra and Music School as a multi-venue regional campus for the arts and arts education. The United and The Knick provide an educational learning center for over 300 weekly lessons to students of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra and Music School.  Together, they have worked with more than 5,000 students in the Westerly & Chariho school districts.  

“By becoming a nonprofit and really reaching out to younger musicians in the area, and finding what they had to offer, what the young people wanted to hear, we have gained considerably,” Connolly said.

The Knick provides space for students to have lessons during the week and performance opportunities, such as the performance series “Youth On-the-Mic” for sixth to twelfth grade musicians. The collective is always looking for new ways to best benefit the young musicians, leading to a recent development of a new direct pathway between The Knick and the United Theatre, thanks to the Westerly YMCA for giving permission, Connolly said.

“This path is kind of like the first part of physically showing we can get the two students to go to and from the two venues much quicker,” Connolly said.

Additionally, The Knick had some additional renovations to target a younger audience, such as transforming the space known as the Tap Room a “cool, small vibe club,” Connolly said.  

“That’s another reason we are in better shape with younger people,” Connolly said.

The Knick also works with local nonprofit organizations in the area, giving them a venue for charity events. Connolly said this is a win-win partnership as these events showcase The Knick’s new look, brings new people into the space and raises funds for valuable causes.

“As long as they are local and I believe in their cause, we would bend over backwards to help them out,” Connolly said.

The Future: Building to The Knick’s Crescendo

2023 has been a busy year for The Knick, Connolly said. While it has been successful, he said there is much more to come. One of The Knick’s main goals is to expand its involvement with the United Theatre and the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra and Music School to become one entity under a big umbrella, instead of being sister organizations, to become even more successful within the community.

“I can see us gaining on our dream and our goals even on a day-to-day basis,” Connolly said.  

Connolly said he also hopes to make more connections with local and national artists and bring them into The Knick, a nod to the organization’s early roots. He credits previous collaborations, including Grammy award-winning musician and bandleader Jon Batiste and Newport Folk Festival performers (in The Knick’s performance series called “On the Road to Newport”) as memorable and impactful experiences.

“The more people you can work with, the more you can have as partners, the bigger [you can get,]” Connolly said. “We want to keep working on that. We want a lot of people involved. We want people to know this is where you go when you want to hear great music or have a great play or anything like that. Westerly has a lot to offer and we want to be part of it.”

There will always be an audience for blues music, but it takes embracing change and building new connections, Connolly said. He said there aren’t many places similar to The Knick that have been around for 90 years and one can feel that history as soon as they walk into the venue.

He adds that The Knick has plenty of stories to tell, but even more stories to create.

“​We are there for musicians and they see that,” Connolly said. “We get musicians coming through and they say they are going to tell their managers that we were treated really well here and the vibe of the place is great and that we want to come back. To me, that makes my day.”