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Nine years ago, pianist and performer Doc Watkins created Jazz, TX in San Antonio. The music club was a basement-level venue, just around the corner from The Park at Pearl.
Despite the club’s jazzy focus, Watkins said music, food and drinks all have to succeed for the venue to work.
And here’s what he credits his success to:
“Obviously, it’s a music venue, but we take our food program and our bar program and our service, just as importantly as we take the music,” Watkins said.
Perhaps because of all that, Jazz, TX has been quite successful. It’s so successful, that he’s creating a new club—but not in San Antonio.
Doc Watkins playing piano with his group
“It’s going to be called Doc’s, and it’s going to be in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston, in the former Tower Theater, which is a historic building built in 1936 —originally— as a movie house,” he said. “But in 1980 Ella Fitzgerald actually recorded a live album in that venue.”
That past as a theater means it’s got a large marquee and a far larger floorplan than Jazz, TX does.
“It was originally designed as a theater in 1936, but it has been done and redone multiple times. And so at some point, a really large kitchen, probably big enough to cater 600 people, was built,” Watkins said. “And so we have a full kitchen. We built a mezzanine, so now there’s a second level.”
He said construction is nearly complete and he expects to open in November. Doc’s will be a jazz club too, but with a twist. He also expects to add blues, zydeco—genres popular in Houston.
“It’s going to be diverse, but diverse in a different way than San Antonio. So the focus—it is a jazz club—it’s going to have a lot of jazz, but it’s going to have some blues. It’s going to have some R&B,” he said. “We’re going to provide world-class music programming that reflects the musical cultural landscape of Houston in the best way that we know how, as jazz musicians.”
Doc’s will open in Houston in November.
