By Lucy Chumbley
On a cold February evening when the full moon is casting a beacon of silver light over the bars and restaurants of Adams Morgan, stride up 18th St. where weed smoke permeates the air and warm interiors waft the aroma of world cuisine into the street, and prepare to be transported.
Step into retro-cool Legacy HiFi, a new neighborhood bar that opened in November, featuring bold street art created by nationally renowned graffiti artist and owner Tyler Stoe.
Inside, old-school payphones with a modern twist (“I love them and missed them,” Stoe says), exposed brick walls with his original artwork, and behind the bar a set of retro TVs, art books, colorful cans of spray paint and a few stuffed rats. Hey – it’s Adams Morgan.
It’s as unpretentiously welcoming and quirky as Stoe himself, on this night sporting a Legacy DC hoodie, greeting patrons, enjoying his creation like the big kid he says he still is, making art and friendships while building businesses and community.
Tonight people are turning out for Flip the Beat – a new offering from Distrik Kollective of Creators Jam fame featuring DJs, producers, beatboxers and live musicians – that has found its natural home at the18th St. bar after launching late last year at Legacy DC’s 14th St. flagship.
Creators Jam, which just finished a long run at the Eaton Hotel DC, is a forum where vocalists and instrumentalists create original music in real time, feeding off each other’s creativity. Flip the Beat is similarly focused on live improvisation, creating a singular sonic experience.
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“Over the course of the Creators Jam, I felt that the producers weren’t utilized enough to my liking – or to theirs,” says Distrik Kollective founder and legendary bassist Michael Bowie.
Flip the Beat puts these musicians front and center. (Literally front and center, as passersby can see them through the window from 18th St., beneath a mirrored disco ball.)
The overall vibe is like being inside a session – “real live creative production like you see in studios, with very diverse elements included that people have brought to contribute to the moment sonically,” Bowie says.
When 8 o’clock strikes the rhythm gets rolling, and the vibe starts drawing people in.
“It really can start from anywhere and it has,” Bowie says. “Producers may finger-beat on MPCs. Somebody may play keyboard and bassline; somebody may drop a beat to what they’re hearing. They just start jamming – somebody will start something and away we go.”
Stoe says the monthly event aims to match the standard and originality of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series, offering an unrepeatable experience: “If you weren’t there, you weren’t there, and you’ll never be there.”
The first one “far exceeded my expectations,” he says. “At the second one, DJ Throwdown came, and I thought, this has legs. Different elements of hip-hop, different instruments. It could be a fresh experience every time, it’s not going to get dull.”
Flip the Beat’s arrival at Legacy HiFi is largely due to Tom Pipkin of Pipkin Creative Communications, a connector of artists and entrepreneurs of all ilks, who “knows a lot of people and tries to make things happen,” Bowie says.
“He’s a promoter of the arts and artistic endeavors who also has been involved in the artistic concept” for Creators Jam and Flip the Beat.
“I work in placemaking which is a term that basically describes bringing people together to create better communities,” Pipkin says on a recent snow day, as sledding kids shriek in the background.
As part of this work, he says, he tries “to present things that are going to resonate in different communities (main street, business improvement, private communities) and get that done.”
Get it done, he does. He put on 100-plus shows last year featuring almost 1,000 artists.
“Art doesn’t happen in a silo,” he observes. “There has to be a venue involved in order for people to see it and appreciate it.”
So he talked to a few people about the concept, and Stoe was enthusiastic.
“Tyler is a super, super supportive collaborator,” Pipkin says. “The whole experience fosters collaboration inside and outside the venue.”
One of the overarching ambitions is “amplifying the reputation of the creatives in this city in a way that makes other venue owners look up,” he says.
“It’s worth it to support these artists and pay them.”
Setting up the events is a labor of love and skill. “Michael Bowie and I basically throw out different DJs and artists – I help with the lineup as well,” Pipkin says. “We work hard at it. We bring a separate sound guy. We’re bringing in tons of people and the bar’s rocking.”
“Ultimately we’re here for purists,” he says. “We want people to appreciate high quality stuff and we’re trying to attract that crowd. We’re trying to create a bit more of a refined experience.”
But he stresses that the music is designed to have broad appeal. “If you like the good stuff you’re going to like this and if you don’t really have an ear for it you’re going to like it as well.”
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Mass appeal is important, but Stoe has little patience for venues that take the “copy-paste” approach, the time and tested safe route, in favor of creating an authentic experience. Plenty of places are playing Top 40 and serving $30 cocktails. But not his.
He has been prolific in creating authentic experiences via a string of business ventures, including Legacy DC (weed dispensary and art gallery), Legacy HiFi (bar and restaurant) and Legacy Session (studio producing video comedy segments, sneaker podcasts and a growing cadre of musicians, including 2x-Wammie Award winning singer-songwriter Autumn LaBella.)
Stoe’s newest venture, set to open around April, is the former Asylum – a legendary basement hangout accessed through a door disguised as a ’90s soda dispensing machine – where bike couriers, hipsters and celebrities seeking to avoid the public eye (name check: Hollywood A-lister and one time pot dealer Harrison Ford) – once took refuge of an evening.
In this space, he is aiming to create “a bodega smashed with a NYC news stand offering kitschy stuff for sale,” he says, offering a different menu from the upstairs venture. Demolition is under way, but visitors can still see the original DJ booth, plastered with vintage stickers.
“Anybody can get a DJ but you’re not going to find what just happened upstairs anywhere but right here,” Stoe says, standing amid the basement construction, beaming at the possibilities.
He was elated when producer Elise Perry, head of the Recording Academy’s Washington DC Chapter, showed up at a Legacy HiFi event. Likewise “DJ Throwdown is a national turntable champion – for him to come in and step on the decks and just shatter the event…”
“I’m freaking beside myself on the success of things.”
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