New Details Emerge for Live Music at the Former New Parish in Oakland

Ray Archie knows the room is special. He recalls nights spent at the New Parish as it teemed with the sounds of jazz, soul and funk groups. He talks about the Oakland nightclub’s predecessor, Sweet Jimmie’s, with a historian’s perspective.

So when approached by Oakland Theater Project to carry on the tradition of live music at 1743 San Pablo Ave., Ray and his wife Melissa Archie didn’t hesitate. Their company, Brooklyn Sound Lab, will handle music booking at the soon-to-be-reconfigured performing arts space leased by the Oakland Theater Project (OTP).

The alliance is a natural one. For the past four years, Archie has worked with OTP as sound designer and music director on company productions like Angels in America and Cabaret. For six months, he’s discussed with OTP how to best share the space with live theater.

One change for the building may be a little less grime.

“From a booking and curation standpoint,” Archie says, “it’s making sure that we have our highly curated experience. Making sure that we’re providing both the audience and the artist a white-glove treatment. Thinking of this as a high-end experience.”

Opened in 2009, the New Parish hosted early shows by luminaries such as Kendrick Lamar, Nipsey Hussle, Daniel Caesar and Olivia Dean. Certain features of the former nightclub will remain — the outdoor courtyard, for example — while the space’s wrap-around balcony, an awkward feature for theater productions which Archie refers to as a “noise chimney” impeding proper acoustics, may be on the way out.

In addition to the 300-capacity main room, a smaller, 125-seat performance space may eventually be part of OTP’s remodeling of the 13,000 square foot property.

Archie is a multi-instrumentalist who grew up in the Bay Area before moving to New York City, where he worked for CBS radio as a director of live music broadcasts. He has never booked a live music venue before. But he hints at convening a soon-to-be-announced team that “has a lot of live music-specific experience in the Bay Area.”

Archie emphasizes that blues, funk, soul and hip-hop will be central to the schedule. He’s very aware of the history of police crackdowns on rap shows in Oakland, including at Sweet Jimmie’s. But he also believes that “we’re in a different world,” citing the city’s Cultural Affairs Commission and the flourishing of rap shows at the Oakland jazz club Yoshi’s.

Sharing the space with a schedule of plays and musicals means that live music will take place when the theater is “dark” — either during lulls between productions, after daytime rehearsals, or on weeknights with no performances.

Archie points to the relationship between the Public Theater in New York’s East Village and Joe’s Pub, a live music space on the same site, as a corollary.

“Looking at the full facility as a performing arts center means that we’re not really competing,” Archie says. “We’re working in a symbiotic way.”