Kee To Bala Keeps Up

COTTAGE INDUSTRY: Beaches, shown during their July 18 gig at Kee To Bala in Muskoka, Ontario. (Corey Kelly / Tour Bus Entertainment)

RUSTIC DANCEHALL ACQUIRED BY LIVE NATION LAST SUMMER

A two-hour drive from Toronto is a township of about 4,800 people called Bala, where one can get some tart wine from Johnston’s Cranberry Marsh and a berry crumble pie from Don’s Bakery.  You wouldn’t expect the community — situated in the prestigious cottage region of Muskoka, population 67,000 — to have a venue that has attracted the likes of Louis Armstrong to Snoop Dogg and Rush over its 80-plus years. 

The Kee To Bala — which opened in 1942 as a dancehall, originally called Dunn’s Pavilion, designed, built and owned by the late Gerry Dunn — is a 1,000-capacity, un-air-conditioned wooden treasure that attracts concertgoers by foot, car, bus and boat over the warmer months: opening Canada’s Victoria Day weekend and closing Canadian Thanksgiving in October. 

The eye-popping names that have played the building include Duke Ellington, Count Basie, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the Ramones, Lighthouse, April Wine, Hootie & The Blowfish, and Chubby Checker. There are regulars now: Blue Rodeo, Kim Mitchell, Sam Roberts Band, The Glorious Sons and more.

Last June, The Kee, as it is fondly called, was acquired by Live Nation, in partnership with current operators Mike Strong and Mike Homewood, who bought the storied structure in 2011 and book it alongside Live Nation’s Mark Russell. Among the usual Canadian suspects, The Kee hosted shows by The Smashing Pumpkins and Billy Idol who had just played Toronto — the Pumpkins supporting Green Day at Rogers Centre stadium and Idol headlined Scotiabank Arena. 

So what is the appeal? Strong spoke to VenuesNow about the magic of The Kee and why bands are willing to hike to cottage country to underplay.

VenuesNow: The Kee has had many owners over its 80-plus years. How did you come to be one of them?
Mike Strong: Well, like many folks cottaging in the region, it was ground zero for my summer plans from an early age. Let’s call it 19, wink-wink (drinking age in Ontario is 19). I did everything I could in the summers to be up north and would be pretty much at every Kee event.

Oh, man, I’ve seen all the big acts.  Avicii. Snoop. The Hip — Snoop, I was in my early 20s; that was a big highlight for me. 

Then, in 2011, you and your partner Mike Homewood had the opportunity to buy The Kee. What were you doing at that time? 
Mike and I had another bar together, and I was helping promote and run some events out of The Kee in the summer months. I had a bit of a connection to Bill Beardwood, acting GM there for, I want to say, 10 years. I caught wind that the existing ownership might have been getting a little tired in there, and we just kept beating down the door to get a hold of the ownership group. Got in touch with Chris McGlynn, the acting operating partner at the time who had had it for 10 years, and it was a passing of a torch, we’ll call it.

It’s a special place. When I see Sam Roberts Band there, which I did for about 10 years in a row, maybe more, it reminded me of my university days, the frat party vibe.
It’s all original wood structure; it’s almost 100 hundred years old now. Sam himself will say that it’s an experience like no other, being in the region, playing the venue. It becomes tradition for a lot of the Canadian artists. It’s like a rite of passage to come through and play The Kee. It’s probably a circled date on a lot of their calendars. It’s a really relaxed environment; everybody’s having a good time, coming off the water or whatever they were doing for the day. I think the bands feel that energy and, like you said, it’s got a vibe and aura to the whole experience that is The Kee.

Sam and the band stay each year at the same beautiful cottage across the bay from The Kee [owned by Steve Manchee]. Where do the other performers stay?
It depends on what the artists want to do. Sam, Blue Rodeo and The Hip have opted to stay at private residences over the years.  We’re pulling from the Canadian pool, so they likely are going back to Toronto or catching a flight or hopping on the bus, but we like to encourage everyone to spend the night or come in a day early and kick back, jump in the lake and get out for a boat ride.

Why partner with Live Nation?
Partnering with Live Nation was a strategic move. Access to a higher product, touring acts, international acts, things that didn’t come so easily to me in the past. We operated within our Canadian artists listings, and all those Canadian acts are quite familiar with it, but we wanted to open The Kee up to some of the international touring acts and put them in a more intimate setting in Muskoka.

You retained part ownership.
Yes, but they’re a publicly traded company. They would need controlling interest.

The Kee has a rickety old rustic cottagey charm — and I mean that in a good way. When you were in talks with Live Nation, were you concerned they would want to update the place, “fix it up”?
At the forefront of our early negotiations was vision and view of The Kee because it is an iconic and historic piece of the region.  We could quickly agree that the luster of it is in the charm of its rustic-ness and heritage and lineage. You can’t recreate that stuff. So that was quickly aligned upon from the folks at Live Nation. And, yeah, we haven’t changed a ton. We have people that will come back from 50 years ago and they say it feels just like it did then.  I can tell you, there’s probably a hundred coats of paint that have gone on the walls and the floors and in the bathroom since then, but the plan there is to cherish the charm that exists.

There is no air-conditioning, and it can be sweltering. Will you be putting in some AC?
We’re talking about adding some exhausts and vents to get circulation up, but, no, I don’t think we’re air-conditioning the space. 

We’re seeing some enhancements in production. They (Live Nation) prioritize the artist experience, along with the fan experience, so they are raising the bar in those categories. 

Has the “green room” for the artists adjacent to the venue been improved? I don’t know if it has a name.
Yeah, it does. It’s called Dunn’s Coffee Shop [not an actual coffee shop]. A little garage roll-up door. We’ve enhanced that space a bit at the direction of the Live Nation touring folks. We added a three-piece bathroom with a shower. It gets a little bit of love every few years, so we’re just in one of those cycles right now. 

This summer, you had Billy Idol and Smashing Pumpkins, two acts that had recently played to arena-size crowds in Toronto.  Smashing Pumpkins had just played Rogers Centre, supporting Green Day. What’s the appeal for them to then play a venue that small?
They’re touring amphitheaters and arenas and then stepping into our little house. People are ecstatic. Those were some really special shows. We haven’t had hype like that since The Hip came through. It definitely pumped some life energy into the place and into the town. Ultimately, those are the types of things we want to look to do together in in this new partnership [with Live Nation].

These days, people complain about ticket prices anyway, but some people on social media moaned about The Kee prices. They’re not used to it.  Tickets are double or a little less than triple when you have a marquee act?
Yeah, the economics change when you’re dealing with international talent obviously — USD, touring costs, etc. So, the ticket price roughly is double what a domestic artist ticket would be.

[Smashing Pumpkins frontman] Billy Corgan made a nice post on Instagram from The Kee, one captioned “Hello Muskoka,” sitting by the water, another pointing to the sign. Nice relaxing afternoon, a mini vacation, before he plays.
He was just sitting across the bay, looking back at The Kee from the Bala Bay Inn.  

That’s the beauty of The Kee for a lot of these guys; it becomes personalized when you play on a smaller stage in a smaller town. When they’re coming through Scotiabank (Arena), they’re not sitting there talking to the president of MLSE [Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment] when they’re coming off soundcheck, whereas (here) they get to meet our crew, maybe throw a high-five my way or someone else’s way and get on with the day. 

Your season is May to October. I saw in the history of The Kee that there were shows New Year’s Eve for a few years running until the Millennium. There was a blizzard one year. Blue Rodeo played the turn of the millennium, which was broadcast globally via satellite. Everyone could get snowed in or not even be able to even get to The Kee.
I just had this conversation with the old owner at Billy Idol (laughs). “Why did you guys try this?” It was the millennium, the year 2000. They gave it a go. I mean, January in Muskoka, I’m not sure where the logic was but they went for it and everything froze underneath the building. It’s uninsulated. It’s a boathouse, basically. So, I don’t think we’re doing any winter activity.

I mentioned the crowd for Sam reminds me of university, but on other nights do you get a different crowd depending on who is playing?
Part of the room is the cottagers. Whatever is happening that Saturday night, they might have family up and it’s grandparents to grandchildren and everything in between. But, for the most part, the audience’s is depicted by the act on stage. So It changes as the talent and show demos change. 

Are you starting to book next year?
Yes, there’s some conversation going around right now.  A lot of our Canadian stuff we know roughly when it’s going to be, but a lot of the international tours we’re trying to find holes.