Last summer Smoken’ Joe’s BBQ & Blues celebrated their fifth year in business. After five years, owners Joe and Wendy Dodd are still going strong, consistently creating interest in their Boston restaurant and blues venue. The Dodds, aside from having a menu of incredibly tasty barbeque offerings, present many of New England’s better known blues bands. Blues plays six nights a week with folk music on Sunday evenings. Smoken’ Joe’s continues to build its customer base, and more blues fans get to listen to their favorite area artists, all while dining on perfectly smoked pork, sausage, and hamburgers. The Dodds were presented with a Keeping Blues Alive award at the Marshfield Faire soon after their fifth anniversary.The two decided to open Smoken’ Joe’s BBQ & Blues after visiting Louisiana and falling in love with the food, music, and culture. The Dodd’s concept for the restaurant and blues venue came from their travels to the south and the venues they visited.
“Smoken’ Joe’s is modeled after a few of our favorite places we visited, Memphis being one of them, because we loved the barbeque there. Louisiana because of the, food, culture, and it just felt right for us,” Mr. Dodd said.
“We had talked before about opening a place,” Joe Dodd said. ‘We knew we couldn’t live (in Louisiana) year round. It gets too hot after March, for me. So we decided to bring a little bit of Louisiana back home with us and share our experiences from our travels.”
After the Dodds moved Smoken’ Joe’s into their current space at 351 Washington Street in Boston’s Brighton neighborhood, they found they needed to make major renovations to the room.
“Brighton was not the first place we looked at. It was the last,” Joe Dodd said. “All the other places were smaller and the rent was very high, no parking and so on. The space we are in now was once a Korean restaurant and previously to that was an Indian restaurant. This place was the place for us to start, not too big and not too small, something we could handle.”Yet, the new entrepreneurs were in for a rude surprise when they started their work.
‘When we started remodeling, we opened a Pandora’s box,’ Mr. Dodd said. “We were somewhat deceived, led to believe that the place was fully inspected, and all we had to do was a little cosmetic work. We were wrong. The kitchen hood was not legal, but was inspected and up to date. We got a new hood and fire suppression system. We tore out all the walls in the kitchen and rewired, new plumbing and ceiling as well as a new electrical service.’
The Dodds had to go to the neighborhood meetings and pitch their idea to the local community and convince locals that they were good people and would do what they said they would do.
“Live music was never allowed on the odd number side of Washington street in Brighton,” Joe Dodd said. “This was a battle in itself, not to mention we needed at minimum a beer and wine license or our concept wouldn’t work.”
The rest is history. The Dodds received their full liquor license after a public hearing. They had an architect draw up plans to submit to the city of Boston. They also had to get their new meat smoker, named “Bertha” by Joe Dodd, through the front window space, as she’s a big girl, before they put in a bar. Hiring an electrician and a plumber was draining their bank account and no bank would give them a loan because banks consider restaurants to be a risky business.
“It was a long fight and we could write a book on this,” Joe Dodd said.
It was not hard to decide to develop Smoken’ Joe’s concert for barbeque and blues music. “That’s was a marriage just waiting to happen in Boston,” Joe Dodd said. “I was surprised when we opened that we were one of the very few places like this. Like the music, the menu evolved and we had a few Louisiana dishes but not to this extent. We started making our own Andouille sausage in-house and one thing led to another and here we are.”Just over a year ago, the Dodds brought on board a new manager named CJ. They just recently hired a new chef named Mike to manage the kitchen staff, a graduate of Johnson And Wales, who has been with Smoken’ Joe’s a little under a year.
“Business, is it tough,” Joe Dodd exclaimed. “We are often busy on a few nights. We need to have the restaurant fully staffed, having live music seven nights a week with Friday and Saturday nights being the only nights we charge a cover, a modest five bucks for all that talent. We foot the bill for the other five nights. And now we have live streaming that we offer for free, but people can use the ‘Tip’ Jar on the screen for either the bands or to help support Smoken’ Joe’s.”
Smoken’ Joe’s sees more business in the evening than during their daytime lunch hours. So, they really need to focus on the promotional side of their music offerings. Wendy Dodd focuses on bands that either have a proven track record of drawing a crowd or a new band that has the ambition to market themselves.
“You can’t have a vibrant community unless you do both,” Wendy Dodd said. “If I come across a band that is talented and ambitions but starting out, we will help them develop their promo. They have to be willing to hustle too. We have had quite a few artists get their start here, and it’s only been a few years since we started.”Although the Dodds’ personal taste went into choosing to feature blues, R&B, and soul to pair with their food, Wendy’s own personal taste is much broader.
“I am a child of the 60s and grew up on rock music and Dylan,” she said. “Over the years, playing in bands, working as a radio DJ, and producing albums, I was exposed to so many styles, and I liked most of them.”
Today, there is no one style of blues that goes over bigger than others with her Smoken’ Joe’s crowds. “It all works,” she said. “We will get a different crowd, depending on style and the particular artist, though. Mostly, people just want to have fun, and we try to keep things from getting too heady. Blues fans in particular are very down to earth.”
There are not too many rooms right in the city of Boston for blues acts. That scarcity may or may not have a played a role in the popularity of the room. “In reality, we just gave Smoken’ Joe’s a direction, and at some point it took on a life of its own,” Wendy Dodd said, “thanks to the bands and the people that come out to Joe’s. If wasn’t for everyone, Joe’s would not be the way it is today.”
Keyboardist and vocalist Alizon Lissance has been holding a Wednesday night gig at Smoken’ Joe’s since its earlier days. Lissance, a member of The Love Dogs swing jump band and associate professor of Harmonics at Berklee College Of Music, remains as enthusiastic today as when she initially started.
“Smoken’ Joe’s gives me the opportunity to feed the local music community, pairing up musicians who don’t usually play together, creating new relationships as well as reconnecting old friends,” Lissance said. “This unique venue gives everyone a chance to hang out in a very warm and friendly environment, from the smokin’ food and relaxed vibe to its great acoustics. It’s no wonder that musical magic happens there on a nightly basis.”It’s been reported that restaurants and entertainment are two areas showing an improvement during these troubled times. But Mrs. Dodd said it is difficult to determine how the economic recovery played into their current level of business success.
“We opened just before the crash of 2007,” she said. “However, our sales have increased every year, but we are not where we should be as a healthy business. We are popular in the neighborhood, but we have become a destination, and that seems to be where our growth is coming from.”
Wendy Dodd has a special long time friend in the music business, folk Americana singer-songwriter Geoff Bartley, who performs most Sunday nights at Smoken’ Joe’s. The two have shared many musical interests over the years.
“I met Geoff Bartley in 1971 when he was playing acoustic blues in coffee houses and on the road with Bob Franke,” she said. “I was working at a college radio station at the time and booking a coffee house in Portsmouth. I was a deep lover of blues at that point and tried to increase the blues and soul and folk music content at WUNH and a local AM station. That later effort got me fired. It seems that the owner, Curt Gowdy, wasn’t amused by the music of a basso profondo during breaks in a Red Sox game.”
“Geoff and I hung out at the Stone Church and mused on life and all that,” she said. “I met Mae Cramer in 1975, just before she came to WGBH. I listened to her show like it was church. I had a lot of depression during those years, and you could say the blues saved my life a couple of times.”
Mrs. Dodd later played in bands in the 1970’s, recording- producing folks in the 1980’s and 1990’s. It was during this latter period that Dodd met storied local blues singer Shirley Lewis. They were introduced by Gary Shane (Shane Champagne, The Detour) who was producing in Dodd’s studio and brought her into his band, The Free Radicals.“Shirley and I used to hang out in Newburyport,” Wendy Dodd said. “Even back then, she was helping younger musicians get their start. She would bring them into the studio. Shirley was there for me during a very difficult period in my life. When Joe and I decided to open Smoken’ Joe’s, Shirley was our first artist. We didn’t have our official entertainment license yet, but we got a special one night license for New Year’s Eve 2007, and Shirley played. She went to all the city meetings and spoke up for what we were trying to do, and how it would benefit the community.”
Lewis was even more ecstatic though succinct in her own view. “A real barbeque and blues club finally setting up in the area. Way to go, Smoken’ Joe’s,” the singer exclaimed.
Smoken’ Joe’s now has bands in regular rotation who have been playing there for some time now. Others get added to the roster over time. This is all part of a plan to address different tastes in blues, factor in requests from patrons, and factor out the insufficiently dedicated musicians.
“I listen to our guests and what they like, but the process is pretty organic,” Wendy said. “We have a roster of wonderful artists that are in rotation. I try to bring in touring artists every couple of months, and we have new artists all the time. With the new artists, I look at their style and direction and try to make sure it will fit with what we are trying to do. I won’t take a chance on weekend warriors looking for an occasional gig. They need to be serious about their music and serious about the tradition of blues and soul. Sometimes I see them grow and move on to larger rooms. That is a good thing, and it makes me feel good about what we are doing.”
The Dodds’ regular customers like Smoken‘ Joe‘s a lot. Newcomers usually take well to the room, music, and menu. The quality that makes it so special can be traced to two things, blues and barbeque.
“Blues, soul, barbeque, and southern culture weren’t just concepts we added on because we thought they would bring in business,” Wendy Dodd said. “These are deeply held loves for the two of us, and they were all in our original business plan. I do see other places add a blues night here and there. Maybe they see our success and think it will bring in business for them. This is also good. Sometimes, when things slow down(at these other venues), they’ll drop the music or switch to another form of entertainment, another genre, perhaps. We know the blues, the history, the cultural significance. I’m not saying there is anything inherently superior to the way we do business. But we are a little different in that way.”The city of Cambridge has been courting the Dodds to bring their venue across city lines, but the Dodds have no plans to move.
“We know we are root-bound in our current location because there is no way to expand in this building. We love Brighton, and many of our guests, many of our regular musicians live here,” she said. “We have a landlord that refuses to take care of basic things like air conditioning in the summer. This year, we’ll probably have to take out a loan, so we don’t go through another sweltering summer like last year. Even so, we wouldn’t do anything rash.”
“We are so lucky to have connected with a community that shares our passions for food and music,” Wendy Dodd said.