If you’ve ever eaten at Salsarita’s, or simply walked through the lower level of the Busch Student Center, you’ve no doubt noticed the posters advertising The Billiken Club. Although you’ve seen the posters, and, perhaps, even wandered into Salsarita’s on a night when The Billiken Club was putting on a show there, you’ve probably taken for granted the fact that there’s a concert venue right on campus.
The Saint Louis University community has generally had a fairly indifferent response to The Billiken Club and the shows offered there, but the city of St. Louis is of a different opinion. Attendance at the shows tends to be small, but those who do come are more often from the St. Louis area than SLU students. Last year, The Riverfront Times even named The Billiken Club St. Louis’ best rock venue.
The Billiken Club’s booking directors, Alison Arida and Sanita Saengvilay, admit that it is sometimes hard to get over the stigma of The Billiken Club being part of Salsarita’s, but they appreciate having venue to bring, “bands that have huge potential” to SLU.
“We try to choose under the radar and indie bands that have the definite potential to get big, and choose bands from a variety of genres to broaden the horizon of music choices of the SLU community,” said Saengvilay.
The Billiken Club directors have frequent meetings to brainstorm about what bands to bring to the venue but are always open to suggestions from the community. In addition, The Billiken Club generally tries to get St. Louis local bands as opening acts in order to give a taste of St. Louis’s own music scene.
The directors work closely with booking agencies around the country, finding bands that are looking for a place to perform, and try to take chances with their performer selections.
“It’s really easy today for bands to become buzz bands,” said Arida. “We try to go with those with less buzz that we think are going to be big.”
According to Saengvilay, the goal of The Billiken Club is to reach SLU students, and the fact that the club books unknown bands should help with that goal. By getting bands to play, The Billiken Club is able to provide the SLU and St. Louis communities not only with a greater number of shows each year, but is also able to provide the shows free of charge.
In response to the continual lukewarm response from the University community, The Billiken Club brass is working to draw a larger crowd to shows this year. Changes to the venue itself have already been made, such as getting two large fans to keep the venue cooler during the shows and installation of a curtain to partition The Billiken Club from the rest of Salsarita’s. The Billiken Club has also greatly increased the number of shows that will be put on during the year, with nine shows during the month of September.
Among those performing are Pattern is Movement (who played The Billiken Club last October) and Dark Meat (described by Arida as “an eight-piece, psychedelic marching band”).
The Billiken Club is also planning on once again hosting Bene-fest, three nights of shows to help raise money for a local non-profit organization, as well as participating in the South by Southwest music conference.
Directors also hope to cosponsor shows with other SLU student groups and are working with Billiken Records to create a compilation live CD of bands that perform at The Billiken Club.
E-mail suggestions for bands you’d like to hear at the Billiken Club to [email protected] For more information, visit http://thebillikenclub.wordpress.com.
