NORTH HOLLYWOOD — They begin congregating outside a tiny storefront on a sun-blasted stretch of Laurel Canyon Boulevard every Monday around 6 p.m. People with guitar cases, ukuleles, self-composed chord charts, the occasional Persian lap drum. Some wearing Swing Era finery, most just casually dressed down.
Mondays have been Open Mic nights at Kulak’s Woodshed for nearly two decades. Thirty-plus acts usually make the lottery to perform one song each, starting around 8 p.m. at the recording/broadcast studio/live venue. Folks are variously accompanied by the house band of volunteer veteran studio musicians, singing and playing on their own or vocalizing to pre-recorded music tracks they’ve brought along. There’s no charge, but for a $20 suggested donation they can get professional quality video recordings of their performances, which are also streamed live worldwide at www.concertwindow.com and preserved all over YouTube.
The majority of players are the singer-songwriter types Paul Kulak established the Woodshed in 1999 to serve, but on any given night you’ll also hear an eclectic assortment of rock bands, Sinatra-like crooners, ethnic music virtuosos and anything else you can imagine could fit in a cozy, eccentrically decorated concert space.
And a lot you would never imagine.
“Anyone can play anything here,” said Kulak, a self-described loner who controls three of his venue’s six Sony HD cameras – including the one he famously attached to a skateboard that runs along the Woodshed’s upper south wall – from a cluttered control room behind the stage area all night. “As long as it’s family friendly and you’re not scaring anybody. The Nazi sympathizer dude with a speech, we had to turn the mic off for him. [Otherwise] there are no standards whatsoever.”
Which makes for a few clunky performances on any given night. But the vast majority of amateurs, aspiring and accomplished professionals and visitors from all around the world who hit the Woodshed’s open mic put on great shows.
“Anyone can play anything here. As long as it’s family friendly and you’re not scaring anybody.”
— Paul Kulak, owner of Kulak’s Woodshed
Like Roger Parham-Brown, a 76-year-old book writer who’s been coming up to Kulak’s from Echo Park every Monday (and second and fourth Tuesdays, when acts can get videos of two songs for $30) for nearly four years, and now has a booking agent and two CDs of his haunting, tremolo renditions of anonymous folk classics such as “The Banks of the Ohio.”
“It’s the community of musicians,” Parham-Brown said draws him to the Woodshed. “It’s like a church to me, it’s a family. Great musicians and we all support each other.”
Another regular, watercolor artist and teacher Donna Barnes-Roberts who goes by the stage name Donna Bea, has been making the trek from Altadena to North Hollywood to sing and play her ukulele for four years.
“The truth is, a lot of us spent our lives doing this, that and the other, and we didn’t get around to music,” she explained while sitting in an old comfy chair by the Woodshed’s crammed, tumbledown bookcase, which along with old album covers (Nancy Sinatra’s “Boots”), posters of Joan Baez and Spider-Man, an Elvis surfing rug, an Etch-a-Sketch, Christmas stockings and hundreds of other items comprise the Woodshed’s catch-as-catch-can décor. “I personally decided after I turned 60 to not let fear of ridicule keep me from doing something I wanted to do. It is very supportive here. Most of the people have been there, done that; they’ve looked stupid, sung stupid, worked stupid at some point in their lives. And the magic thing is, they keep coming back here – and you realize people get better.”
‘An international community’
Open Mic night is just as attractive to newcomers as it is to the regulars, whether they’re a blue-eyed soul-belting boy who just moved here from Indiana, a vacationing Swedish songbird or a Japanese transplant who just has to sing about how lonely L.A. can feel for her.
Sansa Asylum and Andrew Scott, who’ve been dating for six months and have put together a retro act, were enthusiastically awaiting their first gig at Kulak’s on a recent Monday night.
“We have a musical act where we do mostly standards from, like, the ‘20s to the ‘40s and ‘50s,” Burbank resident Asylum, wearing a red, sparkly Jessica Rabbit dress, explained. “I also like to dig up really cool old vintage music that nobody does anymore and make my own chord charts.”
“When we’re ready to put up something, we’ll have it,” Scott said of the video deal that attracted them to the Woodshed. “Since this is Los Angeles, other variety shows are very booked, so it’s nice to have something like this to come do on a Monday night.”
“It’s an amazing community resource that they keep up here with very little money,” Asylum added.
Indeed, the Woodshed is essentially a subsistence enterprise. There’s no door charge, drinks or food – bottled water and cookies can be had for dollar donations – and no door charge if you want to just come and listen to Monday’s Open Mic. The room accommodates about 49, with a mismatched assortment of chairs, sofas and a canopy bed that could hold about four. A $10 donation is suggested, but like everything else on Open Mic night, not written in stone.
“The truth is, a lot of us spent our lives doing this, that and the other, and we didn’t get around to music. “I personally decided after I turned 60 to not let fear of ridicule keep me from doing something I wanted to do. It is very supportive here.”
— Donna Barnes-Roberts, who goes by the stage name Donna Bea
Kulak, who describes himself as a former delinquent and failed singer-songwriter, hates to have to charge bands to rent the place on other nights of the week, but it’s the only way he’s been able to keep it going.
“It became way more popular than I ever expected,” Kulak admitted, “but I was trapped by my own original vision, which was I wanted a place where singer-songwriters could go and they didn’t feel like they did at other venues, where they were essentially being used as bait to sell sandwiches and beer and things like that. I wanted them to know that they could just come here and do what they wanted and feel welcome, and not have to worry about the pressures of capitalism.”
While that concept has attracted big names such as Jackson Browne, Phil Everly and The Byrds’ Chris Hillman to the Woodshed over the years (and though Kulak isn’t 100 percent certain, he’s heard the likes of Katy Perry and Jason Mraz played through his joint on their way to stardom), he’s more partial to viewing his place as a home for moms who deferred their music-making dreams while raising their families or recovering addicts to get back on their performing feet in a liquor-free environment.
And every kind of creative dreamer in between. A safe space, but with an international reach.
“All open mics are a community, but this open mic is an international community because of the online presence that we have,” noted Jimi Yamagishi, 61, who comes in from Alhambra every Monday to record one of the 1,000 songs he’s written and hosts the Woodshed’s Twofer Tuesdays. “Like tonight, for example, I know for a fact that I’ll be having friends from China watching. I do endorsement deals and they tuned-in to see me using the guitar special effects pedals that they make, and they’ve become fans of the show because it’s American music like you could never get anywhere else.”
The volunteers
Kulak depends on volunteers like Yamagishi to keep the Woodshed going. They seem to feel more than compensated for their efforts.
“It’s great work to showcase and support artists,” said 21-year-old Dylan Gershon of Sherman Oaks, who’s been operating the Woodshed’s other three cameras, including the central boom crane, for two years. “It also gives them a chance to see my talents, and maybe we can collaborate in the future.”
A film student at Santa Monica College, Gershon said he’s honed invaluable skills in lighting, exposure, camera speed and timing and live camera editing at the Woodshed.
The venue’s longest volunteer, 30-year-old Eric Estes of Tarzana, has been managing the front of the house – and making sure the bathroom has toilet paper – for six years.
“The first time that I came in here, there was just something about this place that resonated somehow,” said Estes, who also sings and plays bass. “I love it. There’s no other place that’s like this in L.A., and I would even wager to say that there are very few places like this anywhere else. Places like this, and art itself, should be cherished. There’s a lack of this kind of stuff in most communities, and to be an integral part of this makes you feel nice.”
For 79-year-old John Cartwright, Harry Belafonte’s retired bass player and tour manager for such acts as Luther Vandross and Cassandra Wilson, anchoring the rotating house band Monday nights for the past 10 years has been an experience like no other in his long, distinguished career.
“It’s the greatest place I’ve ever seen in life, and I’ve been fortunate to travel around the world three times,” Cartwright said. “It’s the coolest and the best thing I know of for young singer-songwriters.
“Aside from the fact that I get the chance to keep what we call our chops together, I like to think that I’m passing on whatever knowledge I can, if they can use it,” the Sherman Oaks resident continued about his volunteer backup gigging. “And what can I say about Paul? Who, for 20 years, would do something like this unless he just loved it, man?”
Kulak said there have been times when he’s almost had to decide between shuttering the Woodshed or losing the small apartment he lives in nearby. It’s never come to that, but if it does we can probably predict which choice he’ll make.
“A guy my age should have grownup kids that are going to college and should have a retirement account,” the never-married Kulak pointed out. “We’re constantly behind, and it doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to change. But I don’t know what else to do with my life. I need some semblance of a purpose.
“I’m still holding out hope that I can someday find a way to sustain this venue without being a burden on the artists,” he said, purposefully.
For more information, go to http://kulakswoodshed.com/.
