BY DOUG MACKEY for WEEKLY VOLCANO 11/7/25 |
The 125-year-old, two-story building on T-town’s 6th Avenue that currently houses Jazzbones has been many things: a pharmacy, drugstore, grocery store, music hall, and a handful of permutations of its present identity. Under the new ownership of Keanu and Taryn Songcuan, it’s morphing yet again. Note, if you will, the noir paint job (inside and out) and the nifty new sign on Sixth Avenue, lifted into place and illuminated just last week.
One thing changing is the essential nature of the business itself, or rather they are engineering a return to its essential nature. It will now be a music venue, full stop. Some great eats and drinks, to be sure, but Jazzbones is aiming to elevate its profile among the venues serving T-town.
“I think the vision is to be open at least three to four days a week minimum, with all types of music,” says Keanu, “not specific to one type of genre, but a music venue, a true music venue for all genres.”
Last week I chatted with Keanu and the man mastering the booking end of things, Greg Garcia. “We’re bringing some country stuff in that’s never really been a thing for Jazzbones, right?” Keanu continues. “And hip-hop stuff that was kind of already established here, but we’re repositioning that, and then getting more local acts in here as well.”
Jazzbones’ days and hours open will be respectful of its increasingly ambitious music calendar. “Anytime we’re open there’ll be music involved. Right now, it’s Fridays and Saturdays for sure. Thursdays are kind of on and off, and then we’re hopefully branching out into the other days of the week as well.”
Jazzbones will typically open one hour prior to showtime, whenever that might be for any particular show. “There are a lot of people that don’t like staying out past nine or ten,” Greg notes, so shows that start at seven might well wrap up by 9:30 or ten. If a show has a relatively early start time and end time, expect the possibility of a DJ scene into the night.
Keanu’s a local who has businesses in construction and real estate and works with a nonprofit as well. When the Jazzbones business and the building both came up for sale, he leapt at the opportunity to preserve and enhance its somewhat faded reputation as a premier music venue.
“There were other parties interested in the business, and I think their plans were to change it more into like a nightclub deal, and being from the area I don’t really want to see Jazzbones go down that route,” Keanu says. “We’re trying to breathe life and spirit back into it.”
Jazzbones is upping its food game in a big way too, again focusing on local T-town goodness. “We just partnered with Busy Body, and they’re doing the kitchen, so they’ve created a menu for us,” says Greg. “It’s awesome to partner with somebody in the neighborhood.”
“Everything, I believe, is handmade too, from the fries to the sauces,” Keanu adds. “I had some popcorn chicken this weekend, and it was so good!” Greg enthuses. “It’s lightly battered, and their fries are delicious too!”
“So, that’s how I kind of got involved with this,” Greg adds, “because Nathan, who’s one of the owners over there (Busy Body), he and I used to book shows together in Seattle. So, when he reached out to me one day, he’s like, ‘Hey, Jazzbones is looking for a booking person. I’ll connect you with them.’ And so, it just kind of worked out that way.”
Greg moved down from Seattle a few years ago, and having been in bands that had played Jazzbones back in the day, he was happy to find a way to become intimately involved in Tacoma’s music scene.
When he first came on board, Greg perused the Jazzbones show calendar. “We realized that there were definitely some areas that we could improve on as far as programming goes,” he remembers, “and so we took some of the things that have been working well, and we’re spacing them out a little bit more because they were coming in so often and we didn’t want to burn out the bands,” Greg concludes. “I think reaching out to the local community was a big aspect of it for us too, because there are so many local bands around here, and none of them have been playing here for years just because they either didn’t know about it or didn’t have a relationship with anybody.”
Now Keanu and Greg want to get the word out to musicians and those locals who want to attend their shows. “We have a place in the marketplace where we’re a decent-sized room—it’s not too small, it’s not too big,” Greg notes. “The other rooms in town—there’s, you know, the Airport, obviously. They’re a little bit bigger, so they don’t really do a lot of stuff. At the Spanish Ballroom they’re booked out so much further, so we were able to offer bands more slots that were available sooner than later and things like that, and so really networking with that community was huge for us too.”
The two are clearly excited and focused on their goals. “We just needed to get the word out that Jazzbones was doing live music, not just doing tribute bands and things like that,” Greg continues. “Then just reaching out to some of the nationals and stuff as they become available and just, yeah, taking the things that have been successful here and trying to expand on that at the same time.”
One of the challenges is convincing larger acts that Tacoma has a base of its own for successful bookings. “We can educate them that there’s a lot of people in Tacoma that don’t want to go to Seattle, but it’s tough to really get past that stigma of competing with the big city,” says Greg. “I think as we grow and show people that we’re able to do good shows here, people are going to want to be a part of the Tacoma scene.”
Part and parcel of the new-look Jazzbones is a brand-new website, with a new ticketing platform that Greg says will come with fees somewhat lower than those used by some other venues. They want to get folks into the habit of checking out that website (www.jazzbones.com) to see what’s on the bill in the weeks and months to come. Marketing and social media efforts are ramping up as well.
While the downstairs will always be open for shows, they’ll pull back the cord on the upstairs for larger events, complete with its full bar (and countertop made back in the day by Justin Peterson). Capacity remains at 400.
But how will things sound? “We had a guy come in, and he totally dissected the system, and he’s like, ‘Actually your system’s in really good condition,’ and it just needed to be set up properly,” Keanu says, relieved. “We brought on a bunch of new sound guys, which is cool, and they’ve been doing an awesome job. The sound’s better than ever.”
From the balcony, Keanu scans the whole of the club, mentioning his desire to someday install a full curtain for the stage, which he notes would be very expensive but somehow doable. His vision seems to have no bounds. “How can we grow? There’s so much opportunity here. A lot of it right now is just trying to figure out what works, what doesn’t, and how we can do it better.”
Jazzbones is located at 2803 6th Ave, Tacoma, WA 98406. Visit them online at jazzbones.com.
