Musician Eddie Henderson performs at the Smoke Jazz Club.

On March 15, 2020, just before the city went into a pandemic-induced lockdown,  bassist Ron Carter and drummer Al Foster took the stage at the Smoke Jazz Club on the Upper West Side. The men, both over 70, were playing to a packed house in the intimate venue.

“We were holding our breath hoping to get through the weekend,” said Paul Stache, who co-owns the club with his wife, Molly Sparrow Johnson. Luckily, they ended the weekend without anyone becoming ill, but by then it was clear that Covid-19 was a looming threat. That Sunday, Stache and Johnson sat down and made a tough decision.

“We looked at each other and at the size of the room and said, 'You know, this just doesn't feel safe anymore,' and decided that night to shut it down,” Stache said. “At the time, we thought it would be a few weeks, but of course, it turned out very differently.”

That day was the last time musicians played for an audience inside the club. Like countless other venues, Smoke quickly pivoted to livestreamed performances, outdoor dining in glass greenhouses and a rejiggered storefront for sidewalk concerts.

Stache and Johnson had long considered renovating the space, but Covid made it a necessity. Now, after more than two years, the newly renovated club is reopening with a four-day celebration from Thursday, July 21 to Sunday, July 24.

Originally, the club held up to 75 people in a single room that Stache describes as “incredibly crowded but with intimacy to it that people found charming.” After expanding into two neighboring storefronts—a former dry cleaner and a law office—Smoke now features a spacious bar and lounge with a dedicated room for concerts that can accommodate up to 125 people, along with a kitchen and bathroom reconfigured to not interrupt performances with the clatter of plates or the flush of a toilet.

The overhaul is not just an expansion but the revival of a jazz institution that is a successor to the former Augie’s Jazz Bar, where Stache worked as a bartender before taking over the lease when the venue, founded in 1976, closed in 1998.

“There's a lot of jazz history in those four walls and we felt like the music can’t really stop,” Stache said. “Covid was the biggest challenge we ever had, but we also realized people need us more than ever—they need live music—and so it was just, ‘We gotta find a way.’”

Just before the pandemic, Stache and Johnson signed a 30-year lease with their landlord, the West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing, and said they were committed to making it work. The club’s livestream of performances was a hit, with hundreds tuning in not just locally but from China, Japan and the United Kingdom. Their curbside concerts were also a hit, with crowds often blocking a lane of traffic on Broadway to gather for the live music. But neither was a real revenue generator for the club.

Husband-and-wife duo Paul Stache and Molly Sparrow Johnson co-own the Smoke Jazz Club.

A fusion of federal grants, loans, personal savings and, perhaps most crucially, fruitful negotiations with their landlord kept the club going.

“Without missing a beat, our landlord said, ‘Let’s reconnect when you’re back up and running. We’re going to do everything we can to get you through this,’” Johnson recalled. “That was a huge gift to us as a small business and gave us the safety net that we needed to go forward.”

In June 2020 Johnson and Stache sat down with an architect and crunched the numbers. With the current restrictions and social distancing, they could have a whopping 14 people in the club at once.

“Obviously that was a nonstarter—that’s not a good business proposition no matter how you slice it—so we started putting plans in motion,” Johnson said.

Reinventing the space, of course, has not been without its challenges. They set out to begin construction in May 2021 and wrap up by that fall, but with labor shortages, what would have normally have taken a few weeks to obtain a general construction permit from the city’s Department of Buildings stretched into five months.

They had little choice during that limbo but to shutter the club since the space had already been stripped after receiving demolition permits. Once the club finally got municipal approval, their contractors had already moved on. That tacked on delays. Then sourcing certain materials, such as steel, became a saga because of supply-chain issues. But they managed to power through.

The newly renovated bar and lounge at the Smoke Jazz Club.

The last major hurdle is obtaining city Fire Department approval for their fire suppression system, which must be in place for Con Edison to turn the gas on in their kitchen.

Paperwork for that process was filed during the fall, and only on Friday did Stache and Johnson hear word that the city had received their request and asked for modifications. Food will accompany the reopening, but whether the club has gas or not will dictate the menu.

Still, they are beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel. When performers recently practiced in the new space, Stache wept.

“It was pretty emotional,” he said. “We feel really optimistic about the future.”

The George Coleman Quartet, which played the day the club opened and for its opening following Sept. 11, will--appropriately--headline the club’s relaunch. For more on the performances, visit the club’s website.

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