For many decades, The Grad Club on Barrie Street has been a cultural hub on Queen’s University campus. Run by the Queen’s Graduate and Professional Students Society, the club offers food, craft beer on tap, study space, special events, and live music. The Grad Club has made a name for itself as a live music venue in Kingston, both for local musicians and for touring bands. In 2009, CBC radio listeners named The Grad Club one of the Top 10 live music venues in Canada.
In theory, The Grad Club shouldn’t work as a live music venue. Housed in a Victorian brick duplex, the interior features a long, narrow room on the ground floor with a tiny stage. The main room can hold 100 people standing, at most, and 50 people seated.
Virginia Clark, longtime manager of The Grad Club, says that there are two components to the appeal of The Grad Club for musicians. The first is the great acoustics (complemented by the work of a great sound person at live events). And the second is the intimacy of the room.
“The ‘secret sauce’ of The Grad Club – and I’ve heard this from a lot of musicians – is the intimacy and the connection with the audience,” says Clark. “When they’re playing big stages, the audience is way back there. But here, they can connect with the audience. And the audience feels it, too. There’s just this awesome connection vibe between the musicians and the audience.”
The Tragically Hip performed at The Grad Club as students. Years later, so did Devan and Khalid. Jill Barber made her public debut as a singer at The Grad Club, when she was 16 years old. She was visiting her brother Matthew in Kingston, where he was a Queen’s student. During their visit, Matthew took Jill to The Grad Club, where there was an open mic night. Jill got up on the stage and sang “In the road,” a song by Weeping Tile, one of her favourite bands. Later, as a Queen’s student herself, Jill formed her first band, Bent Ivy. The “rockin’ folk” trio included Gary Lavallee on drums (LaVallee is the longtime owner of Kingston’s Zap Records) and Andy Shurvell on bass.
As a musician, like Sarah Harmer, Devan and Khalid, and other Kingston-based musicians, Barber took inspiration from her surroundings. Her 2002 song, “The Best View” was inspired by sitting on the roof of her student house on University Avenue.
Stars, Grizzly Bear, Alex Cuba, NQ Arbuckle, the Sadies, Danny Michel, Alvvays, METZ, Hannah Georgas: they’ve all performed here. And sometimes, musicians make surprise appearances on the tiny Grad Club stage.
Neko Case was in attendance when the Sadies were performing: after the band’s first set, she asked Clark if she could join the band on stage for their second set. Clark recalls, “She said, ‘we’re going to be playing New York City on the weekend, and I’d love to warm up the songs with the Sadies.’ It was a magical set.”
Another time, Sarah Harmer and Weeping Tile were performing a benefit show for the Salvation Army winter relief fund at The Grad Club. Bruce Cockburn showed up at the door: the members of Weeping Tile insisted that he get on stage with them to do a song “as the price of admission” to the sold-out show, which he gladly did.
