The Side Room Set to Open with Focus on House Music

A trio of local business owners and nightclub impresarios announced Monday that they will open The Side Room in August, a nightly music club and sister business to Blackbox Theater at the same address, which hosts larger electronic music shows on more of a weekly basis. 

Located at 421 E. Sugar Creek Road, the new night club will focus on house music, with themed nights scheduled five days a week, Wednesday-Sunday, opening from 9 p.m.-2 a.m. on those nights. 

The Side Room partners include Jay Tilyard, owner of nearby Blackbox Theater; Amir Tehranchi, owner of The Revel Room in Uptown’s First Ward; and restaurateur/DJ Andy Kastanas, known for his work as a cultivator of Charlotte’s nightclub scene in the 1990s and early 2000s. 

Electronic house-music pioneer King Britt will christen the space with an opening performance on Friday, Aug. 2. King Britt is the original DJ for Digable Planets and has worked as a composer and producer alongside artists such as De La Soul, Madlib, Kathy Sledge, Michael Mann, Miles Davis, Solange, Calvin Harris and Dua Lipa, among others.

The partners will look to celebrate local DJ talent and occasionally national and international talent at the club. Monday’s release announcing the venue’s opening included a schedule of shows, as listed below: 

• Wednesdays: Housework will feature house music with DJ Domii, a Charlotte native who has played Imagine and Breakaway music festivals, opened for Tiësto and founded Girls Room, a collective created and curated to spotlight women, nonbinary and minorities in music and art.

• Thursdays:
The Love Below: Amapiano, Afrobeats and world music with DJ See Bird Go, founder of All My Friends Are Fly.

• Fridays: Special events.

• Saturdays: Our House with local rotating DJ residents: Adverb (first Saturday of each month); That Guy Smitty (second Saturday); Steve Howerton (third Saturday), Probably Will (fourth Saturday) and DJ Andy K (fifth Saturday).

• Sundays: The weekly Q will be an LGBTQ night with guest drag performers.

Speaking to Queen City Nerve in April for a story about the Blackbox Theater’s partnership with Charlotte Symphony to host MERGE: Symphonic x Electronic, Tilyard said he didn’t open Blackbox with a focus on any specific style of music, but “it has just sort of been an EDM magnet in the post pandemic era mainly by circumstance.” 

Despite the unassuming exterior of the venue, electronic house-music fans have flocked to the site on Raleigh Street to see major acts over the last two years.

“Blackbox is well known in the circles of the music we typically present, despite that it is an almost ‘secret’ underground venue with no signs on the exterior,” said Tilyard. “We are a destination, so our events are what bring the customers.” 

The Side Room @ Blackbox Theater will eventually become enveloped by The Pass, the nascent large-scale development currently underway on the northern edge of NoDa where Side Room partner Andy Kastanas will soon open Soul Gastrolounge with his wife and business partner Lesa Kastanas. 

In April, Tilyard told Queen City Nerve he takes pride in being one of the first business owners on a block that will soon see an explosion of openings 

“We are in this area as an anchor and help to expose it to the people who will eventually want to come to the newer businesses,” he said. “Often, that’s the beauty of opening a music venue in a new area. We clear the path and help make an area more viable for future tenants and other businesses.”