The signs on the front doors of The Temple Club said it all Tuesday night:
"With Apologies, Tonight's Show is cancelled."
However, the sign indicated a larger issue: The Temple Club is closed for good.
Now, local musicians are scrambling to fill the void left by the club, which was Lansing's largest venue for live music.
Financial issues forced the shutdown of the club on Tuesday. Ownership reached its decision in a Monday meeting, which was announced by general manager Jerome White in an e-mail Tuesday night.
"The decision was made, and unfortunately, it was one that wasn't too appealing to me," White said in an interview Wednesday. "It is what it is."
"From day one, it's been difficult to completely fill the venue on a consistent basis," he said. "We've got a large venue, and in order to fill it consistently, you have to have national acts all the time."
The Temple's closing sent the coordinators behind "We Rock, You Decide" — a voter-awareness concert originally scheduled for Friday at The Temple Club — on a search for a new location. Co-organizer Joel Kuiper said several venues had been contacted, but as of Wednesday night, nothing was confirmed.
Indie-rock band Mason Proper was one of the 20-plus bands booked to play "We Rock, You Decide." It wasn't until Wednesday morning that the band's keyboardist, Matt Thomson, learned the club had closed.
"As of now, we're all just assuming that it's not happening," he said of the concert.
White said he is looking for alternate venues for some of the shows scheduled with national headliners. Ticket refunds for the shows that are not relocated will be available at the point of purchase.
Mason Proper had played The Temple once before, and Thomson said the band was excited to play the club's second-floor mainstage, The Grand Room.
"Going upstairs, it was a fairly impressive place," he said. "It reminded me a lot of St. Andrew's in Detroit, so I was really shocked to find out it had completely shut down. It didn't really seem like it was suffering financially, but I suppose that's something that's hard to tell just hanging out at a show for one night."
Unfortunately, national touring acts don't guarantee massive turnouts.
"For every three (shows) that worked out great, we had one that didn't," White said. "When you have three that work out great, you do well financially. If you have one that doesn't work out great, then you pretty much erase the success of the previous three shows."
Artists with close ties to the club were informed of its closing almost instantaneously. Agostino Visocchi of The Hard Lessons said he was flooded with phone calls and e-mails Tuesday night.
"The Temple Club has been a big part of our career, especially in Lansing, and I think we've been a big part of their show roster, so everybody was calling me like one of my buddies got in a car accident," he said. "Like, 'Oh, did you hear, man?'"
Rapper Clokwise of the group F.O.S. said losing The Temple Club will have a profound effect on hip-hop in Lansing, but there's no reason to despair.
"I don't want people to feel like because of The Temple Club being gone, that's it for the hip-hop scene out here," he said. "It's not the end of the world, I guess."
Visocchi remarked that it hasn't been that long since Lansing music's last major loss — the departure of booking agent Steve Lambert.
"I feel like we just did that Steve Lambert going-away party at Mac's (Bar), which wasn't a closing but was definitely the end of an era for that," he said. "And now with The Temple Club shutting down, it's basically eliminating the outlet of a mid-size venue in Lansing, which is kind of a bummer."
Lambert, who booked shows at The Temple Club and Mac's Bar, 2700 E. Michigan Ave., before leaving in July for Washington D.C., said he was "extremely disappointed, but not surprised" at the club's closing.
Over the last drinks to be served in The Temple Club's Red Light Lounge, employees enjoyed pizza and some spirited rounds on the digitized links of the lounge's "Golden Tee" arcade machine Tuesday night.
It was a low-key send-off for a club that had planned to celebrate its fifth anniversary with a secret special-guest-headlined blowout on Saturday.
"It's a complete coincidence, but it seems appropriate, though," White said.
Erik Adams can be reached at adamser9@msu.edu.
