Cafe Coda owner Hanah Jon Taylor plays outside the Willy Street club.
Most people still realize that necessity, not Frank Zappa, is the true mother of invention, and no one knows that more than musicians and club owners whose livelihoods have been swept away by the COVID-19 pandemic. Hanah Jon Taylor, an acclaimed jazz saxophonist and owner of Café Coda, finds his feet planted in both camps, as a club owner and musician in an industry that has all but vanished with the passage of Gov. Tony Evers’ safer-at-home order.
Like other music groups and venues, Taylor’s Willy Street jazz club has turned its Facebook page into a “stage” to host live streaming concerts by area jazz musicians.
The weekly program started on April 24 with pianist Anthony Cao and the Ari Smith/Timothy Russell Duo, while this past weekend included performances by guitarist Josh Harty and pianist Johannes Wallmann, head of the jazz program at UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music. On May 8 the broadcast will showcase Madison pianist Jim Erickson, who was originally booked to play the same date at the recently cancelled IBLA Foundation Grand Prize concert series at New York City’s Carnegie Hall.
Taylor, who also plays flute and wind synthesizer, drafted a simple business proposition for the club’s Facebook performance series, which is also set up to accept GoFundMe pledges and accept contributions through PayPal.
“We’ve divided the income into thirds,” Taylor says in an interview with Isthmus. “Any monies contributed or pledged during the online performance will be divided equally between the artist, the tech crew and the house. It helps us keep the lights on.”
Café Coda also recently received a $9,600 federal loan from the Small Business Administration, which will help the club handle ongoing operating expenses and service debt until it is able to once again open for business.
An interesting development is that Taylor plans to continue online performances even after the club reopens for business. The new series will partly offset expected income declines due to reduced seating related to social distancing criteria, but it also supports the owner’s artistic vision. “We’re realizing this benefit not only as a revenue stream, but also as another way to get the music out there,” Taylor says. “We want to make these the best presentations we can.”
In addition, Taylor’s Cool School, his pro bono work teaching young musicians about jazz through the Madison Metropolitan School District, also has migrated online. Future sessions will be held every Saturday from 10-11 a.m. utilizing Zoom technology and accessible through the club’s website.
Taylor, left, and Micha Buffat, teaching the online version of Cool School.
Taylor credits Jim Newhouser from Studio Earth Remote and Micha Buffat of the Madison Music Experience and sound engineer Scott Liesman for assisting with launching the concert series. He also gives a nod to fellow educators Anthony Millevolte and Larry Stephens for helping establish Cool School’s online broadcasts.
“Those cats know a lot more about this tech stuff than I do, but then they probably can’t play saxophone worth a shit, either,” Taylor jokes.
Taylor was traveling a few weeks before Gov. Tony Evers announced his Safer at Home order. The saxophonist attended a New York City recording session on March 1, then spent time visiting friends playing with the Sun Ra Arkestra, a band he had originally booked for Café Coda in March, while they were on tour in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He arrived home on March 7, but was stopped at the doors of Sherman Middle School when he arrived for his artist-in-residence gig.
“They had a list of five states and if you had just come back from any of them you were not allowed to enter the school,” he says. “With New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania I had been in three of those five states.”
During the current lockdown Taylor is spending more time playing music than he is performing the role of club owner, although he still has the now-empty Café Coda cleaned and sanitized twice weekly. He spends time practicing his instrument from 8 to 11 a.m. every morning, gaining a new appreciation for the virtually empty streets outside.
“The most important thing is to keep music in the air, and I have come to appreciate the acoustic value of Willy Street when it’s empty,” says Taylor, who studied design at Southern Illinois University with legendary inventor, futurist and geodesic dome designer R. Buckminster Fuller. “I can open the windows, play my saxophone and get some brand new lessons in acoustics.
“In terms of honing my craft, I have been able to think about music as an artist rather than in terms of which liquor distributor that I have to pay this week,” he adds. “That’s my ultimate approach to playing soprano sax — walk into some place, drop everything, and start my long tone. I feel it’s my obligation to keep the song alive, and we’re doing what we can to make that happen.”
