Twist & Shout, the blue-collar Bethesda nightclub and dance hall that became the major Washington venue for blues, Cajun, zydeco, rockabilly and other Southern-based roots music, will shut down Sept. 6, according to owner Marc Gretschel, who calls the closing "a personal and a business decision."
"The business isn't as big as it was," Gretschel says. He describes the "personal" side of the decision to close after a 12-year run as a question of "lifestyle and priorities."
"When I started doing this I was single, and now I'm married and have three children," says Gretschel, who not only booked the club but also worked the door, tended bar, cleaned up and generally inhabited the club from open to close.
The dance hall's closing is "tragic," says Mark Wenner of the Nighthawks blues band, a longtime Twist & Shout regular. "It's a landmark club and Marc's done an incredible thing for this town."
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Twist & Shout originally opened in the special-events hall of the Bethesda American Legion post in 1986. From 1992 to 1996 the club operated in Wheaton as Tornado Alley. In 1996 Gretschel moved the club back to the Bethesda location on Auburn Avenue and reopened once again as Twist & Shout.
According to Bruce Iglauer, president of Chicago-based Alligator Records, those clubs were "a crucial part of the touring circuit for most national blues artists anywhere below the B.B. King-Robert Cray level. To lose somebody who's been this committed for this long is a big loss to the community and for touring artists. I don't know where they'll find a regular home in the D.C. area. It feels like an old friend died."
Gary Hayman, who operates a zydeco Web site and publishes the biweekly ZydE-Zine magazine, notes that when Gretschel started booking Cajun and zydeco bands, he provided a steppingstone for artists who previously hadn't toured outside Louisiana. "It became a signature event for these traveling bands because they were able to have a main gig at Twist & Shout and then be farmed out to Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston and points north," Hayman says. "He's really responsible for getting these bands to work up and down the East Coast. . . . In Louisiana, they'd often make peanuts and couldn't stay together if they were just relying on that."
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"It'll be a heartbreaking thing for a lot of bands," Nathan Williams said Sunday afternoon as his band, the Zydeco Cha Chas, set up for a performance at the club that night.
Share this articleShareTurning to Gretschel, Williams asked, "Do you know how may people you got looking up to you, bands from all over the country?"
Twist & Shout surmounted a number of challenges since Gretschel first opened in April 1986, booking roots-music bands that most other local clubs shied away from. In 1990 country star Mary Chapin Carpenter had a big hit with "Down at the Twist & Shout," in which she celebrated the venue with help from the Cajun band BeauSoleil. That same year, the club had to close when Montgomery Country officials revoked its beverage license in a disagreement over rental arrangements with fraternal organizations like the American Legion. When Gretschel returned to Bethesda, the site was no longer owned by the Legion.
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During the mid-'90s, Gretschel's club took a financial hit from Alexandria's Fleetwood's, which often outbid the Bethesda dance hall, paying what the Nighthawks' Wenner calls "unrealistic money -- offering Saturday night fees for Tuesday nights."
But where the subsequently bankrupt Alexandria club was fancy and well furnished, the low-ceilinged Twist & Shout offered a funky, down-home ambiance as close to a classic roadhouse as the Washington area has had. There was no real stage, only a few tables, a limited menu but an expansive dance floor, one particularly crowded when hard-charging, electric-powered bands like Nathan & the Zydeco Cha Chas or Little Malcolm & the Zydeco House Rockers would play.
"There was a total devotion to the music, a total lack of any pretentious atmosphere," says Wenner, adding that "everybody always seemed comfortable, from the swing dancers and yuppies to college kids and biker types."
Starting with the Zydeco House Rockers' show on Wednesday, there will be a dozen more shows at Twist & Shout, mostly on the weekends. Gretschel has made no announcement about his further plans. CAPTION: The Grandsons at Twist & Shout. The club, celebrated in song by Mary Chapin Carpenter, was a steppingstone for blues acts.
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