How Many People Does the Blue Note in Columbia Mo Hold

Violet Vonder Haar grew up outside of Columbia, and as a preteen, she attended her first concert. It was a Shawn Colvin show at The Blue Note.

Now, Vonder Haar is a musician herself, performing solo or with her band Violet and the Undercurrents. She also collaborated with The Blue Note for the first show by Jane Doe Revue, an all-female rock orchestra, in 2017. "Being able to see artists that you admire on that stage and then eventually getting to a point where you are on that stage, and you're also making an impact on younger musicians, is just kind of a full-circle feeling," Vonder Haar says.

The Blue Note has been a Columbia staple for artists and listeners alike. It's gone through many changes as the music industry evolved, but it remains an essential piece of local culture.

Wanna be startin' somethin'

The Blue Note's first owners, Richard King and Phil Costello, opened The Blue Note in 1980, originally located on Business Loop 70, as a way of sharing their love of music. Ten years later, the venue moved to its current downtown space on Ninth Street.

King says marketing was the hardest part about the venue's earlier days. Without the Internet, he promoted concerts by hanging up posters for upcoming shows around MU's campus every morning. "We were notorious for just every building you went into, you would see five or six Blue Note posters everywhere you looked," King says.

With the rise of the Internet in the early 1990s, King changed his marketing strategy. Many employees were students, and they helped him create a website and Facebook page, which made it easier and cheaper to promote events.

A change is gonna come

Tyler Childers at The Blue Note — Tyler Childers is one of many musicians whose performed in Columbia before and after gaining a lot of popularity.
Kody Ferrin

Twenty years later, the venue attracted business partners Matt Gerding and Scott Leslie, who own other concert venues across the country. Gerding is a Columbia native. After a previous offer from the duo, King was finally ready to pass ownership to the two in 2014. "There's no doubt in my mind that they were the right owners," King says. "To this day, I think they've done an unbelievable job with The Blue Note."

Gerding and Leslie completed many renovations, including new flooring and paint and updated rigging to hang new stage equipment. Aside from aesthetics, bringing in more high-profile acts and supporting local musicians is crucial, Leslie says. "It was really important to us that when bands came in, they felt like it was a beautiful venue, and I think, by and large, we accomplished that."

The Blue Note has hosted numerous popular artists over the years, such as Grammy Award-winning country artist Chris Stapleton. The Ninth Street Summerfest concert series, held right outside the venue, has also hosted big names such as Kacey Musgraves and Snoop Dogg.

In 2016, country musician Tyler Childers played a happy-hour show for about 100 attendees at Rose Music Hall, which is also owned by Gerding and Leslie, and went on to sell out The Blue Note in 2018. Childers now plays arena-sized venues and events such as the Austin City Limits Music Festival.

"It's really rewarding when the smaller acts come through, and then they become big," says Mike Nolan, general manager of the venue. "You get these bands that play Rose Music Hall and then The Blue Note, and next thing you know, they're playing arenas and they're too big for us. Being part of the development of those artists' careers is pretty meaningful to all of us."

Although Leslie lives outside of Missouri, he says it's still rewarding to know the venue is important to people throughout Columbia.

"The Blue Note is something that makes Columbia a better place to live," Leslie says. "You don't have to live there to be excited about the fact that you're going to do your part to make a community, in which you do have business to get done, a better place to be."