Guest Book

Ryan, I have only been to Jake's once, to hear the Peacemakers, and I had a great time. It's not in Decatur-proper either -- it's located near North DeKalb Mall, with a Decatur mailing address. It's called a "roadhouse" for good reason though. . . it's sorta dumpy. But the staff was very friendly, menu is affordable (and consistently priced), and they have a great P.A. system. I was shocked at how good it sounded, especially considering the room doesn't appear to be designed for acoustics. My only gripes with the place was the stage is a bit low, making it hard to see if you're not right up front. That and, like the Brandyhouse, the music room only makes up half the venue so if they max out the fire code capacity the music room side would be PACKED. I will say this about the Brandyhouse. Their booking agent (or former agent ??) also is/was Bruce's and Oteil's agent, and has a reputation around town as a rather upstanding guy. He was on ARU's listserv then too, and he was very responsive to all of the fans' concerns/complaints (including my own ;)). According to him, the B.H. owners weren't familiar with the "in's and out's" of the music biz when they started out, and he didn't know of their practices. He claimed he would take care of that side of things (the false advertising of cover charges, etc.). He said he couldn't really do anything on the food & bev side of things though, other than pass along our concerns to the owners, as that was beyond his arrangement with the venue. That seemed like a fair and the right thing to do on his part, so gotta give props where props are due. I haven't been back there in well over a year though, so I don't know if they've fixed the gate issues. I did think it interesting that Oteil played Jake's last time through ATL, but I don't know if that particular agent still works with the Brandyhouse (he could do Jake's now, which would explain a lot as to jambands' making the switch to Jake's).