The building, located on York Street down the street from Ashley's Ice Cream and across an alley from Mory's Temple Bar, was the original location of the Yale Co-op. During the 1960s, it was a popular restaurant called Hungry Charlie's and then the location of Caleb's Tavern.
In 1974, Mike Spoerndle, formerly a student at the Culinary Institute of America, rented the building for a French and Italian restaurant, which opened in March 1975. He named it Toad's Place, after a childhood joke. He said, "When my parents were going out to dinner, they would tell me they were going to such-and-such, and I thought it would be funny if they said, 'We're going to Toad's Place.' Plus, people who didn't go out and stayed at home, we'd call them 'toads.' It was the equivalent of a couch potato."[1]
In 1976, Spoerndle turned the restaurant into a live music venue,[2] working with a local musician named Peter Menta to bring in bands. Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and Koko Taylor were some of the first performers.[1] In 1976, Brian Phelps joined as manager and eventually co-owner. Phelps took control in 1995, after Spoerndle's numerous problems with alcohol and drug addiction.[2] Spoerndle died on May 6, 2011.[3][4]
In 1983, a second location opened in Waterbury, Connecticut, although it lasted only three years. In 2007, a franchise location in Richmond, Virginia opened with a concert by the Squirrel Nut Zippers. It included a restaurant and club for up to 1,500 visitors.[5] The principal owner was Charles Joyner, a local physician who was a disc jockey at Toad's Place while he was a Yale undergraduate in the 1980s. On 9 March 2009, Toad's Place Richmond was closed.
[6] All scheduled shows were canceled and/or moved to The National, another venue in Richmond. A third location was planned for Trenton, New Jersey.[7]
Jeff Lorber, a jazz keyboardist, included an instrumental piece called Toad's Place on his album Water Sign.[7] Through mutual friends, singer Rob Zombie met future wife, actress Sheri Moon, at Toad's in 1989. They married on Halloween of 2002.
Notable concerts
A long wall inside the venue the names of the many famous artists to have played there
According to the "I Can Remember When" documentary taken from the When Dream and Day Reunite bootleg, Dream Theater played there during the When Dream and Day Unite tour.[9]
The April 24 concert was the second one on the A Night to Remember tour. Earlier that evening, Brian Phelps (owner of Toad's Place) took Cyndi Lauper to dinner at Mory's Temple Bar, where the Whiffenpoofs serenaded her with an a capella performance of her song "Time After Time". She invited them to join her onstage the next day.[10]
The Rolling Stones played a surprise hour-long concert for 700 people at Toad's Place. They had been rehearsing for the Steel Wheels tour for six weeks at the Wykeham Rise School, a girls' school in Washington, Connecticut, that had closed earlier that year, and performed the concert as "a thank-you to Connecticut for the hospitality."[11]
Bob Dylan started a tour with a Toad's Place performance including four sets that lasted over five hours, his longest show to date. It was his first club performance in 25 years.[1]
The concert was called "Mr. Crowes Garden" and was one of five tour dates at small Northeastern clubs. The concerts were intended as a warm-up for their 2005 tour, after not having toured for almost four years.[12]
Incidents with under-age drinking
In September 2002, Toad's Place was fined $25,000 and closed for a week after underage drinkers were found on the premises. In May 2007, it closed for ninety days, after a November 5, 2005 inspection by the state Liquor Control Commission found 142 underage drinkers were present. The owner paid a fine of $90,000 in addition to the ninety-day closure. It reopened on August 4, 2007, with a concert by Badfish, a Sublimetribute band.[13]
References
^ abcFried, Fran, "Twenty years of rock 'n' roll: Toad's Place hits milestone", New Haven Register, January 1, 1995, page A1
