Hipsters, aging hippies, parents with children, young, old and the young at heart all walk up and down aisles of long tables filled with an assortment of treasures as both live bands and classic rock records play in the background. It is the Rock-N-Roll Yard Sale, a record sale and music festival wrapped in one that has been held in local venues like AS220 for the past seven years or so. Looking for something new, the event's creators decided to hold the sale Oct. 3 at a different location — the Met, the newly-opened club at 1005 Main Street in Pawtucket, R.I., co-owned by Rich Lupo '70.
Located in the Hope Artiste Village, a 650,000 square-foot restored mill complex, the Met is meant to be a haven for smaller bands and local acts that might not be suited for larger spaces in the area.
With a capacity of over 500 people, the club fills a void in the Providence music scene, said Lupo, who also owns Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel.
"I've been doing this for 35 years," Lupo said. "Our most recent locations haven't been the best for local bands — the history of the club is local bands. One hundred bands would bypass Providence because Lupo's was too big for them."
A musical legacy
Lupo said he knew he wanted to own a club and promote music the first time he walked into a bar his freshman year at Brown. Lupo said he immediately thought to himself, "I would love to someday do this and get bands. Gee, that would be really fun. "
After he graduated, Lupo didn't know what he wanted to do, but after painting houses for about five years, he finally opened his first club.
The first Lupo's opened in September 1975 and about a month later, the Met Cafe opened up just down the street, run by childhood friends Josh Miller, Tom Fairchild and Riley Hayford. Located in the Jewelry District, ,the Met was a venue for smaller bands, while Lupo said his club was "a large music club."
The two venues became "sister clubs" right from the beginning, Lupo said, and by the time the original Met closed in 1993, Lupo re-opened it himself as an annex to his larger venue.
Both clubs were housed in the same building, with a door connecting the two. Local acts and emerging national artists played the Met's stage, with the Dave Matthews Band and the Black-Eyed Peas making their Rhode Island debuts at the club.
Despite all of the Met's success, the music stopped in 2003 when Lupo moved his larger club to its current location at 75 Washington Street in downtown Providence — a building that did not have room for both venues.
Recreating the past
While Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel flourished in its new location, the Met ceased to be a part of the Providence music scene. That all changed when Lupo saw a show at the Blackstone, a club right at the border of Providence and Pawtucket.
"I walked in and said ‘Holy cow, this place feels like the first Lupo's,' " Lupo said.
For Lupo, the club immediately brought back fond memories of his first club, with its smaller size and intimate atmosphere. After showing the space to his national booking agent, Jack Reich, Lupo acquired the building a year-and-a-half later when the Blackstone closed.
Renovating the building was a labor of love for Lupo, as he tried to recreate the look and feel of his first club.
"It was my attempt later in life to recreate the original — I talked about doing it for 10 years," Lupo said.
"The original club was a place that was always very comfortable for everyone," he said. "No matter what you did for a living, or walk of life or what band it was, no matter your reason to be there, people seemed to feel comfortable."
Flash forward to today, and the new Met is very much the kind of intimate venue Lupo had in mind. The club is an industrial space with exposed brick and thick, black support beams. The natural harshness of the space is softened by warm lighting that evokes a family living room more than it does a cold New England factory.
For Mike Delehanty, local booking agent for the Met, the new space is ideal for small- to mid-size concerts.
"It is a great place to go see live music. Fans come happy and leave happy. There is a great staff, good vibe in the room, no single fight in the club yet — bands want to come back, and fans want to come back," Delehanty said.
As far as Lupo is concerned, the response from the club's audiences so far has been overwhelmingly positive — all he has to do now is make sure larger crowds come to the venue.
The Met doesn't have the luxury of Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel's downtown location, reducing the foot traffic of Providence citizens and tourists in transit.
"I can see that it is going to be a journey to get people turned onto it, but I think once people figure it out, they'll see that coming from the East Side, for example, is a simple process," Lupo said.
With 100 free parking spaces and without the hassle of downtown parking, Lupo said, the Met is now much more college-friendly than either of its past locations.
Delehanty said this will be key to the club's success.
"In downtown Providence, you have to pay to park. Here, it's free. The other night, I saw college kids, probably from RISD or Brown, coming down on their bikes — it's always a good sign when you see the fleet of college kids on bikes come in," he added.
‘A great atmosphere'
Back at the Rock-N-Roll Yard Sale, a festival atmosphere fills the room as Fleetwood Mac's "Songbird" lightly plays in the background. About 40 vendors sell their goods to a wide spectrum of ages. Jewelry and clothing are mixed in with toys and fresh cupcakes, as customers filter in and out of the building's wide warehouse doors, heading either to the tables of goods or the bar.
"I absolutely love this space — it's a great place," said Mike Lawless as he stood behind a table of records. The owner of the Nevermind Shop in Upton, Mass., Lawless has been to many record sales before but said there was something special about being at The Met.
"It's a great atmosphere. A lot hipper than a church hall or a VFW," he said as two women in their 50s and a young teenage girl sidle up to his table.
It is all about the music at the sale. Eager customers rifle through bins of everything from the Beatles to Joni Mitchell, from Andy Williams to Metallica. At one table, Bob Dylan's Live 1966 concert LP peaks out from one bin, while another one has Barbra Streisand's "A Star is Born" soundtrack nestled up to Starship's "Knee Deep in the Hoopla."
Jennifer Daltry, who organized the event along with her husband Chris, sits behind boxes full of records.
"The Met is a good fit for this event," she said as people trickled in and out of the club's main entrance. "The turn-out is amazing. We had some concern about the Pawtucket location, but it seems like the word got out to people."
As the afternoon went on, the background music ended and one of the event's live bands warmed up. The ‘Mericans, headlined by Daltry's husband, set up the stage. Once the band started playing, a warm yellow stage light flooded over Daltry and he began to sing.
While some people stopped what they were doing to listen to the band, most of the crowd continued to chatter, walking from table to table, to the bar and outside onto the deck to enjoy the cool October breeze.
Four high school-age girls walked out of the building excitedly. One of them clutched a bag full of old records. "I didn't know they had shows here, this is so cool," she said, as The ‘Mericans music played, the club's neon sign flashed to bright red and nighttime fell over Pawtucket.
