Tomorrow, Saturday, October 15th, 2005, The Sophisticated Otter in downtown Johnson City will close its doors.
‘The Otter’ has been the best club in Johnson City for a long time hosting plenty of live music and good times for years, especially to the students that attend ETSU and those other scene hounds like myself. Over the years, I’ve heard great music in this room and had the chance to perform on the stage a few times myself. It was cool
The Otter has had a lot of trouble over the past several months. A murder, ASCAP copyright violations, revoked liquor license, etc.
There have been a group of owners for some time and I guess their best approach to the compounding issues was to shutdown the club and start over with something new. For many years, they were running a groovy, hip party joint and seem to be turning down the volume a bit.
Change is inevitable and in this case it’s probably the owners best bet. For now though, it looks like it’s more ‘Pizza-Pizza” in Johnson City. I only hope they trust that live music was the least of their problems.
There is more of this discussion online at The Buzz this week…Click here.