Ottawa loses another club: Good-bye Bayou

[bradm]

According to http://thebayou.ca/

The owner of the Bayou, Bob Saiklay, has now changed the locks at the bar and therefore, the Bayou will no longer be a place of music for the people to enjoy. It’s with great regret that I must remove myself from this bad situation.

Dang. I had planned on seeing Soul Jazz Orchestra there on Friday, and Inglewood Jack (the band I'm in) was trying to set up a gig there in August.

Aloha,

Brad

[Guest Low Roller]

Didn't the crazy old guy that used to run the soundboard own the place and shut it down a while ago?

[bradm]

No, Bruce (the guy who ran the soundboard) had a partner, and the partner gave him a month to get his gear out; that was Octoboer/November, 2005. The club got renovated a bit (in particular, the sound booth was moved to be against the right wall; they put in a new sound system, too) and re-opened a couple of months later.

Aloha,

Brad

[bouche]

Le Petite Chicago in Hull could use some Ottawa crossover. I'd love to have reasons to go there. Mr.Something Something play there from time to time.

[Davey Boy 2.0]

from the Citizen;

The locks have been changed and so has Ottawa's music scene with the abrupt closing Tuesday of Bank Street's Bayou blues and jazz club.

"The rent hadn't been paid," says club owner and businessman Bob Saikaley. "The landlord basically just had enough."

Opened in 2000, the downstairs club near Sunnyside retooled in December 2005 by replacing long-standing manager Bruce Blair with Ottawa bluesman Jed Rached, making renovations, and adding more out-of-town acts to its locally focused, open-mike nights and booking practices.

Unfortunately, says Saikaley, the Bayou's three-year trend of financial losses continued.

Rached, who arrived Tuesday to find his key no longer worked, says, "I think the room has an aura that's left a bad taste in people's mouths from previous incarnations," referring to the room's reputation for poor sound and the anger among some club-goers at the ousting of Blair.

Friction between Rached and Saikaley may have also been a factor, according to the message Rached posted on the Bayou site (www.thebayou.ca) Tuesday night.

"There's no storefront and no signage," says Ottawa's country-folk musician Pat Moore, one of the Bayou's non-blues or jazz performers. "It was a great place to play. People paid attention, but it was also big enough that they could chat or get up and dance."

As for Saikaley, "I'm done in the bar business," he says. "It's almost a weight off my shoulders."

[Freak By Night]

Jed Rached is really upset about this.

So upset that he sent 3 e-mails on Tuesday night to a mailing list of Ottawa media contacts.

The three e-mails were exactly the same, except for the number of exclamation marks in the subject line.