WITH DONNALEE GOODBROD ***image2***SFR: The end is near, the Paramount is closing. How do you feel about that?
DG:
I have very mixed feelings about that. I feel very sad in some ways, I feel very relieved in some ways and it's very exciting in other ways. I mean we're about to throw the best party we've ever thrown. Having Frankie Knuckles come to town [9 pm Saturday, June 25] for this event is more appropriate than I can even say.
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It's going to be an amazing show and he's doing it just purely out of his love for the Paramount and Santa Fe and the people that he's befriended here. So, it's a big week and it's full of excitement.
Is Frankie, in a sense, the reason the Paramount exists?
Partially, yeah. Partially because, well, I was a DJ for many years before opening a club of my own, which was Drama Club, and I was really inspired by him musically in the mid '80s. He just inspired me to, I think, take it to a different level and want to create a place for that type of music.
The Paramount made it for seven years. In most places that's a long time. In Santa Fe that's an eternity. How did you do it?
If I told you that, I'd have to kill you.
When you first started this club did you envision a solely dance music place?
No. Largely because of the overhead, for that size venue, it had to be everything. I personally had my favorites, my favorite types of live music and my favorite types of dance music, but I also had to concede. And the concession with hip-hop came a few years later. I was in the same boat as everyone else until somebody said to me, 'You need to wake the fuck up, this is Top-40 music.'
Do you like hip-hop?
I didn't used to until I started getting exposure to some of the live acts. I really started falling in love with people like Michael Franti, Chris Parker. Really socially conscious acts that I never thought I had the capacity to really enjoy before, and the Paramount taught me to open up to a lot of things that I was not aware that I had the ability to.
What else did the Paramount teach you?
Practically everything I know. A lot about patience-and I thought I knew a lot about patience-a lot about choosing your battles, a lot about honesty. It taught me a lot of those qualities, in terms of really solid grassroots qualities, things that I can live by every day. I've always known how to work really hard, but it taught me how to work harder. It taught me how to go for what I want, that nothing is really impossible. It's not ridiculous to e-mail somebody you want to have play there-my dream was always to have Frankie Knuckles play. And then Pat Metheny played here, he played at the Paramount, that was one of the most amazing live shows that I've enjoyed.
Is it surreal, as a music fan, to have this power to say, 'I wonder if we can get Michelle Ndegeocello here?'
At first it's weird. There's something very peculiar about it. At first it's like being a music fan, and then it's just a business. But I love picking up these DJs from the airport because we just have these great conversations on the way back, and it's always like that. It's always the most, I don't know, it's intimate. It's intimate conversation on the way from Albuquerque to Santa Fe.
Like when you picked up Frankie Knuckles for the first time?
Van [Roy, former Paramount manager] and I did. We've both become really great friends since then, but first it was a little tense, and I was nervous. I was so nervous because I was his number one fan, this was such a long-awaited event. And Van and I were sitting in the front, I think, and Van told Frankie, 'Donalee named her dog after you.' And there was this uncomfortable silence. And I know he was thinking that I had this big black mastiff or something, I know he was thinking I had some attack dog at home, and he said, 'Well, what kind of dog is it?' I said, 'Golden retriever,' and he just melted on the spot and it was OK ever since then.
How much did the lawsuit between you and [former partner] Cliff Skoglund affect where you are now?
Financially? That period took up a lot of my time, so it cost the club in that. We went to trial in April of 2004, and I had the stroke in August of 2004.
People say the Paramount's closing will leave a gap in Santa Fe's music world. What do you think?
I think that Santa Fe is really-I don't think that we have the population to support a venue of that size any longer, and I just think that there are too many other venues in town, and we're just saturated with too many other choices, and it's a daunting task to fill that large room. And to have to fill it as many nights a week to pay the rent and pay the utilities that it's necessary to do, it's a daunting task. It can be a very stressful thing in January and February and March and April. It's not an easy thing to do. I know that everyone's felt the bite of it. [Fan Man Productions'] Jamie Lenfesty has felt shunned at times for having live shows that have been poorly attended. [Chicanobuilt's] Joe Ray Sandoval has had shows that have been poorly attended. That large room, if you have a hundred people in there, it looks like…
Four.
Yeah. And to try to get the energy built up with that, it's next to impossible. To try to start something with that, it's very difficult. There was a time when it just fed off of itself and you just couldn't stop it. People would come in, and more people would come in and the energy just fed off of the energy. It was unstoppable. And, you know, it's changed. Times have changed and this town has changed. And I do think that if I were in better health, I would be trying to-I would still be in there making it work, absolutely. If I hadn't lost my health, I would still be doing it.
