A pair of shows slated for New Brookland Tavern are headed to another state as the club remains shuttered following a temporary closure last week . But the owner of the longstanding Columbia music venue said he hopes the business will be able to reopen soon.
Two touring metal shows slated for Wednesday and Thursday — headlined by The Fall of Troy and Oceano, respectively — will relocate nearly an hour and a half down Interstate 20 to Grantski Records in Augusta, Georgia.
They’re the third and fourth shows that have been relocated since the Five Points club closed and canceled a show scheduled for Sept. 1. Last Friday, an album release show for local band Hillmouse moved across Harden Street to Bluetile Skateshop, and last Saturday, a lineup headlined by local metal band Wiltwither was moved to Vista rock club The Senate.
New Brookland Tavern owner Carlin Thompson, who took over the longstanding venue in late-July after handling booking and sound there for a number of years, said an issue with the club’s taxes is holding up the formal transfer of ownership, meaning he doesn’t currently have a retail license to operate. Until this is cleared up, the club will have to remain closed.
The S.C. Department of Revenue confirmed that the club is currently without a retail license and is also still hamstrung when it comes to serving alcohol, as New Brookland didn’t apply to renew its licenses to sell beer and wine before last month’s deadline. Thompson said the tax issue is putting a drag on getting the permits put back in place.
A spokesperson for the Department of Revenue said the club has submitted “an application for alcohol licensing and it is being processed according to law and procedure which may take up to eight weeks to complete.”
But Thompson is hopeful to have the retail license issue sorted this week and said the relocation of the shows Wednesday and Thursday “out of sheer caution.”
“We are gonna get it settled,” the club owner said.
Operating as a full-time music venue since at least 1998, New Brookland moved from West Columbia to Five Points in December . Since then, it has been making ambitious moves to capitalize on its better access to college crowds and reinforce its commitment to local music, putting on shows in various parts of its new digs — including a recent late-night punk pop-up under its Harden Street marquee — and moving forward with plans to open up a second proper stage in an adjoining storefront.
The club’s path to realizing these ambitions and resuming the sale of alcohol is hampered, Thompson said, both by its tax situation and increasing costs of liquor liability insurance, which are spiking in the state due to a law that requires bars to maintain at least $1 million in liability coverage.
Getting back to selling alcohol, a key revenue generator for New Brookland, will require the club to pay $70,000 with an $18,000 down payment for insurance in the coming year, the owner added.
“The amount on the quotes [is] too much for a down payment with this whole situation, too,” Thompson said.
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