Cleveland's Music Box Supper Club celebrating 10 years of concerts, weddings

Aug. 2—It was a day like so many others. Mike Miller was in his office at the Music Box Supper Club when he started to hear the music of singer-songwriter Graham Nash, best known for playing in the acclaimed folk-rock act Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

"Like almost all (acts), he arrived middle-afternoon to do his soundcheck," says Miller, who is, as is his wife, Colleen, a managing partner of the venue on the West Bank of Cleveland's Flats. "Our business offices are within a stone's throw of our Concert Hall, so I'm kind of listening to it as I sit at my desk. And, all of a sudden, everything stops. I couldn't hear anything, and that's really unusual."

He also couldn't hear the staffers, who by then had arrived to prepare the space for the night's entertainment.

He investigated, and, yep, the Concert Hall was a ghost town.

He eventually went downstairs and heard some noise emanating from outside, in an area where the club's trash bins reside.

"I walk out, and Graham Nash is sitting on an overturned garbage can, smoking a cigarette, telling stories and my entire staff is in a semicircle around him just transfixed," Miller says. "He's sitting right next to one of our Dumpsters. I wish I'd grabbed my camera, my phone, when I'd come down to get a picture of it."

Miller is on the phone in late July, reminiscing as the club was poised to celebrate its 10-year anniversary in August.

Opened in the one-time home of dance hotspot Club Coconuts, the Music Box mixes music and food both in its downstairs Supper Club and the aforementioned upstairs Concert Hall, which has played host over the years to acts ranging from Paula Cole and Indigo Girls to Carbon Leaf and Candlebox.

Although the Millers' musical journey begins years earlier, the Music Box isn't the realization of some long-held dream.

Mike, who grew up in Cleveland Heights and attended Saint Ignatius High School in Cleveland, spent three decades in Chicago.

"In the middle of that, I was a top executive at a big ad agency and had a midlife crisis," he says. "I quit the job and bought a local blues bar. And I was dating (Colleen), who eventually became my wife and asked her if she wanted to come onboard as our booking agent."

He adds, "And in a year — I'm not exaggerating on this — she turned it into one of the most popular clubs in all of Chicago. She got really good at booking top-name acts."

Someone "swooped in" with an offer to buy it, which they accepted. He went back to marketing, while she stayed in the field, working for Chicago's City Winery, which he says boasts a concept similar to the Music Box.

Eventually, they decided to move to Cleveland — it was the idea of Colleen, a Detroit native, he swears — and bought the house next to his childhood home, where his best friend once lived. ("I just couldn't resist," he says.)

A neighbor kept nudging them to go look at the dormant Club Coconuts space, and they finally relented.

"We're standing (in it at a) window, and what goes by? One of those giant Lake Erie freighters. And my wife turns to me and goes, 'Hey, this might be a good idea.'"

After a year or so of putting together partners to help with the financing and the expensive renovation of the space, the venue opened in August 2014.

"The week we opened was the week that Cleveland had the Gay Games in town, and so we programmed in that way," he says. "We opened with a show by ... Anne E. DeChant, and Anne E. drew a huge crowd for us."

They were "off and running" after that, Miller says.

"Colleen did an amazing job (booking) for six months — just a lot of big names to kind of get our name out there," he says.

Concerts were only ever 50 percent of the Music Box equation, however.

"Half our dates are private events," he says, referring to scores of weddings and company parties. "We focus on private events first, booking those, and then when we can't fill that date, my wife is extremely good at quickly filling it with a concert, which we handle like a private event."

The challenge early on was to establish the brand and build a reputation — at a time, he says, when hesitation lingered with some folks when it came to going to the Flats due to a past perception of the area being unsafe.

"(They were) classic new-business challenges," he says. "Get people to give you a try, get in their car and drive downtown — to the West Bank of the Flats."

Indications the formula was working came early on, including the comments people would make as they left a show.

"One of the funnest things that I saw — I watched it happen — at intermission, (patrons) would run down to the box office and buy tickets for the next show," he says. "As soon as I saw them doing that, I go, Oh, we do have something. They like what they are experiencing."

The idea from the start was to "target an older clientele, a baby boom audience. And so that means the concerts go off a little earlier in the evening," Miller says. "They like good parking, which we have. They want to have a nice dinner. They want to have a nice bottle of wine. They want to turn and watch the show. And then they want to be home in bed by 11 p.m."

Now, he says, they have 90,000 subscribers to their mailing list, so keeping folks apprised of coming shows — many of which are weekend brunches — is pretty easy.

Three concerts he's excited about for the anniversary month take place over two days in the middle of the month. On Aug. 14, Sons of Cream — featuring Malcolm Bruce and Kofi Baker, offspring of Cream members Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker — will play the Concert Hall, while Jeff "Skunk" Baxter — a founding member of Steely Dan and member of The Doobie Brothers — will entertain in the Supper Club. The next night, genre-blending rock act Poi Dog Pondering — which was based in Chicago for some of the same years as Miller — will perform in the Concert Hall.

The Millers have never been afraid to try new things. The Music Box regularly hosts events in its "Cleveland Stories Dinner Parties" series; "Dinner & a Movie" nights, with rock-based and concert films such as "Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii" on Sept. 14; Murder Mystery Dinner Parties, hosted by Get Away with Murder Inc., such as "The Interrogation Room" on Sept. 13; and drag shows featuring Veranda L'Ni & Friends, the next of which is a Drag Brunch on Sept. 15.

It's regularly a riotous drag at Cleveland's Music Box Supper Club

Learn more about Get Away With Murder Inc. and the Murder Mystery Dinner Parties at the Music Box Supper Club

"You always have to invent programming that's going to keep them interested, keeping them opening the emails and looking at what's going on," Miller says.

That's not to say every idea is a winner. The Music Box discontinued its "Immersive Sound Listening Parties" because the high-end audio equipment was expensive to rent, and thus the venue had to charge people to come listen to an album they probably have in their own collections, Miller allows. And then there was the Fresh Finds Concert Series, the idea of a younger employee who, Miller says, wanted to target 24- to 34-year-olds with upcoming acts such as Youngstown-based rockers The Vindys.

Get to know The Vindys and learn how they're spending their summer

"Holy cow, it was hilarious," Miller says with a laugh. "These 20-somethings would show up, but they just looked around and said, 'This is where Grandpa's coming to.' They did not want to sit, eat dinner and watch a show. They just did not. You know, now they'll come and get married here — and Grandpa will attend and enjoy the heck out of it — but they're not going to come to a show here."

Speaking of weddings, they, along with assistance from the government, helped the Music Box weather the pandemic pretty well, Miller says,

And if you're guessing he has a good wedding-related story from the 10 years in business, you'd be right.

The docks right outside the venue now have handrails but didn't originally, he says.

"It would just open to the water, and no one had fallen in, we hadn't had any issues."

Cut to a wedding day and the husband of a bridesmaid trying to take her photo, telling her he can't quite get her into frame and suggesting she take a step backward.

"Plunge!" Miller laughs. "She fell right off the dock!"

The husband — "horrified," as Miller tells it — "was frozen," so a security guard hired for weddings jumped in to, um, save the young woman thrashing about in her heavy dress ... not exactly grasping that the water is all of about 3 feet deep there.

"He picks her up and tries to calm her down and says, 'You just have to stand up.'"

What pleases Miller most, he says, is that they've created this niche, not just as a club offering an alternative to others in Northeast Ohio — which he says are great but that sometimes start the music at 11 p.m. — but also as a venue for the private events that will "knock it out of the park."

If he stops by, say, a corporate event at the Music Box, he's likely to get stopped by guests who tell him what a wonderful time they'd had at a wedding there.

"My favorite thing is the real sense of community," Miller says. "I really feel that we have kind of woven ourselves into the fabric here in Northeast Ohio."

Music Box Supper Club

Where: 1148 Main Ave., Cleveland.

Info: MusicBoxCle.com or 216-242-1250.

Originally Published: August 2, 2024 at 2:06 p.m.