AURORA | The staff at the Soiled Dove Underground have a gag about the music club that sits on the site of the former Lowry Air Force base.
“We are officially in Denver, but we joke about that where you land depends on which door you go out,” said Rhett Lee, who books acts for the venue. “If you go out the front door, you’re in Denver. If you go out the back door, you’re in Aurora.”
That’s not exactly geographically accurate. The Soiled Dove Underground is in a shopping center that’s a few blocks away from Aurora’s western boundary, but it’s close enough to feel like a stone’s throw. And when you’re talking about a venue that’s booked the likes of B.B. King, the Avett Brothers and Lee Ritenour, that kind of closeness can make a big difference when it comes to drawing an audience.
Since moving from its former digs in downtown Denver in 2006, the Soiled Dove Underground has carved out a unique niche in a part of town that’s sorely lacking when it comes to music venues. The 300-seat room located under The Tavern restaurant has become a go-to spot in the Denver metro area for world-renowned musicians of all backgrounds to play. Smooth jazz players like Gerald Albright prefer the venue for its warm acoustics and its lounge feel; thanks to the layout and staid mood of the room, singer/songwriters like Nina Storey can play a show for a quiet and respectful crowd. The Soiled Dove is even the preferred stop for rowdy rock acts like Los Straitjackets and The Tubes.
“It’s a listening room,” Lee said. “It’s always been an adult-contemporary room, but we do everything from jazz to Irish rock. We’re kind of all over the board … It did come pretty quickly. Right out of the gate, we were booking national acts with good name recognition.”
Most recently, the venue hosted a secret show by South Carolina rockers Needtobreathe immediately after they opened for Taylor Swift at the Pepsi Center. The concert sold out less than 24 hours after it was announced. The Soiled Dove Underground has also hosted plenty of hometown heroes; acts like the Fray, Big Head Todd and the Monsters and Hazel Miller have all played the room.
“We’ve found our niche,” Lee said. “The people that know us love us and they keep coming back.”
That didn’t happen by accident. Owner Frank Schultz had a very specific design and mission in mind when he opened the basement venue more than six years ago. Schultz and his team of engineers and musicians designed the room from the ground up with a specific approach to acoustics and sound in mind. It’s an attention to detail that comes through in the acoustic paneling, the rectangular shape of the room and the thickness of the curtains.
“What makes this room stand out is the time and energy spent dealing with the architect on materials,” said Chris Steele, the club’s production manager and audio engineer. Steele toured as an engineer with national acts like Lisa Loeb and the Lemonheads before starting at the Soiled Dove, and he said the club’s acoustics rival any other house in the state. That includes the Pepsi Center, where Steele also works. “There’s treatment on the ceiling, the floors are concrete, there are tiered height differences — all these things add up to making the sound much, much clearer.
“It basically breaks up the sound, that’s the idea,” added Steele, who refers himself as a “consumer advocate” for the club’s audiences.
The club’s purposeful design does away with the ear-splitting feedback and amateur mixing job of a small-scale rock club. Combined with its approach to layout — a seating scheme that feels similar to Denver jazz clubs like Dazzle and Jazz at Jack’s — that focus on sound makes the club a standout. It’s even more exceptional considering the lack of high-profile music venues in this part of town. Apart from exceptions like the Zephyr Lounge on East Colfax Avenue, it’s tough to find regular, predictable music gigs in Aurora, a city of more than 300,000.
The club’s owners have looked to tap into that audience since moving from downtown Denver, and it hasn’t been too tough. The shift from the crowded, chaotic neighborhood near Coors Field to the quiet, suburban center of Lowry has made the club a destination for a different kind of audience.
“What we certainly noticed was a demographic shift from downtown. We would do better there with acts geared toward younger people,” Steele said. “We found the free parking here makes it much more conducive to people who come out and want to make a leisurely evening of it.”
The crowd may trend a little older, but that hasn’t dimmed the appeal of the place for an impressive range of musicians. Lee and Steele have impressive memories to choose from as Soiled Dove employees. There was the private party featuring B.B. King, the Avett Brothers debut in Colorado in 2007, the countless jazz and rock legends who’ve stopped by to play an intimate show on a top-notch system.
It’s a track record that’s allowed the club to defy a basic rule about booking gigs in the Denver metro area.
“Live music crowds are very fickle and it’s very much centered around what the performance is. I think there’s not much of a tradition in Denver of people just dropping by a club. But if there’s a club that does that, it’s ours,” Steele said. “I really see that the audience and the artist are of equal part in this.”
Reach reporter Adam Goldstein at agoldstein@aurorasentinel.com or 720-449-9707