Peter Shapiro’s Rock and Roll Playhouse Shakes Up Daytime Club Programming

Live music impresario Peter Shapiro and his DayGlo Presents have come up with some bright ideas over the years.

From turning New York’s Wetlands Preserve from a dance club into a jam band mecca, to launching the expanding Brooklyn Bowl concept, the Lockn’ festival and staging the Fare Thee Well Grateful Dead 50-year tribute concerts in 2015, to name a few.

But 10 years ago, Shapiro landed upon another master stroke when he founded the Rock and Roll playhouse, a combination of music and dance featuring live music geared toward parents or other adults and the kids they are accompanying.

The win-win proposition allows adults and their children to connect through music while giving clubs of a certain size the chance to fill dayparts that would otherwise be dead.

The musicians are hired in each market, adults can have a drink if they like, and the Playhouse often has a theme, such as a Beatles or Bowie tribute. There is even Emo for Kids.

“That’ll work well in New Jersey,” he said. “I’m serious.”

Shapiro said he often reaches out to venue owners that he knows personally or has relationships with, as he is also a venue and club owner himself, the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York, and the Bearsville Theater just outside Woodstock, New York.

Asking if they had anything going on at noon on a Saturday or Sunday, the answer is almost always, “Not much.”

“I can just call Dayna Frank (at First Avenue in Minneapolis) or when we do the Boulder Theater, call Cheryl (Liquori), or call The Bowery (Presents) guys for the Sinclair, as just a guy who owns venues, like my friends own venues, like the Bluebird (Theater) in Denver or the Sweetwater (Music Hall) in San Francisco,” he said, the latter being in Mill Valley just outside The City.

 Beyond the wide range of popular those longstanding music venues, the Playhouse is also doing free shows at large public venues like Rockefeller Center and Wrigley Field to reach even broader audiences.

“Sundays work well because there are often not any shows on Sunday night,” Shapiro said. “Saturdays we do less, because there might be a load-in, but part of the magic of this was using real music venues.”

Shapiro said having young children at the time helped hatch the idea. 

“Ten years ago, my kids were four and eight, and we would go to places like City Treehouse or Apple Seeds and they’d sing, but it just wasn’t the same as bring your 4-year-old to see a tribute to the Beatles or Bob Marley in real live rock club,” he said.

The key was utilizing real music venues that may not have programming during those slower weekend timeslots, he said.

“No one’s making a lot, but no one’s losing a lot; everyone’s winning because it’s fun,” Shapiro said. “It’s great community relations to do family programming as a rock club.”

It would be a hard thing for a club owner to pull off on their own and Dayglo brings a lot to the table, Shapiro said.

“It was helpful that this came out of a venue owner’s brain,” he said, noting that Rock And Roll Playhouse has it wired: they hire the musicians, bring the giant parachute that’s part of every event, deploy assistants who get the kids dancing.

“We figured out how to do it,” Shapiro said.

Dayglo has a dedicated person, Adam Roberts, himself a musician, to hire the players in each market.

“Usually we find a cover band, because once you are a top cover band, like a Dead cover band, they can usually figure out the Beatles, Bob Marley, the Eagles or the Stones. If we do Taylor Swift, there are different players.”

According to Shapiro, the Playhouse continues to add new clubs and cities and is now in over 80 venues across more than 25 states, with room to grow.

Shapiro said he is partnering with local schools, daycares, or community organizations to spread the word about Playhouse events and encourage families to attend by offering incentives like discounted tickets or family packages to make the shows more accessible for a wider range of families.

Of course, the venues themselves will promote Playhouse events through their existing marketing channels and customer bases, Shapiro said, but playing some non-club settings while leveraging social media to reach new audiences and share content that highlights the fun, family-friendly atmosphere of the shows have built a following.

The strategy is to expand to more traditional music venues while also exploring unique public event opportunities to continuously grow the Playhouse’s reach, Shapiro says.

“The key seems to be continuing to raise awareness and making the shows as welcoming and affordable as possible for families in the local communities,” he said.

There’s also a gratifying aspect beyond dollars and cents, Shapiro says.

“The kids are so young, there’s not a lot of self-consciousness yet, so they go nuts,” he said. “They dance like they’re tripping and to see the smiles of parents seeing their child at what’s often their first show, it’s big.”