Shortly after leaving The Comfort Zone I was approached to check out this new club opening called Revival. I wasn’t so into booking a club again but as soon as I saw how amazing the place looked with a long marble bar and high ceilings, well I was excited by the possibilities. 

The location was originally a Baptist church then later became a Polish legion hall. Between those two energies, great music and abundant drinking were destined to occur. 

The owners had no club experience but lots of business savvy in other areas. They learned up real quick and 21 years later one of the owners, Joe Saturnino, is still running the club. This is a place you take a date to impress or even your in-laws (I brought mine to the opening). 

The owners quickly realized hosting jazz gigs and more sedate offerings wasn’t going to pay the bills so they asked me what they needed and I told them to get a DJ turntable set up and a Hammond organ in order to help attract DJs and top piano players to their space.

So they did that and both were used often and well. The ambience of the space quickly made it a favourite for public and private/industry showcases and over the years they hosted legends like The Rolling Stones, Shakira, Sarah McLaughlin, Justin Timberlake, Dido, Black Eyed Peas, Kid Rock, Sara McLaughlin, Nelly Furtado and the Cowboy Junkies. 

The strangest showcase in my time there was with porn star Ron Jeremy (now a convicted sex offender), in town promoting a documentary on him at the Hot Docs festival. It became a surreal night with lineups of women getting their breasts & cleavage signed by Ron and him trying a comedy set, which was truly horrific. The man’s talent is definitely in one head only and that ain’t no joke. 

Overall I was most proud of the local music nights we started there which became fixtures of the Toronto RnB, Soul and Hip-hop scenes for the years they were operating. The Monday night VIP Jam showcase was imported from another club but we made it much better. 

Every Monday the band, composed of some of the best talent in the country, backed up amazing singers and rappers. The owners would sometimes complain it wasn’t busy enough but I would then remind them that the rest of College Street was a ghost town and they had more than 100 people in their club. 

Wednesday nights there are what really launched the club into a place to be in the city. Called Eclectic Soul it was a large RnB/Soul showcase band playing covers. For some combination of reasons, it quickly grew to draw more than 300 to 400 people a night (paying a $10 cover even). 

It was definitely an amazing party night and its success was what made it end eventually. The band wanted more and more money (at the end the band was paid more than $2000 a night which is a great fee for a band in a club then and now) and were continually complaining to the owners.

I eventually convinced the owners to start up an entirely new band for the night with musicians I knew we could trust to keep the music level high, which was the only bad feedback we had from regulars of the night. I brought Sandy Mamane and his partner Dione Taylor into this situation and they quickly put together an outstanding outfit as they are tremendous talents each of them. 

Their band Soular ended up playing at Revival for 3 years on the Wednesday’s and are still around today at clubs and weddings. It is nice to see that kind of legacy come out of the wild Wednesday nights we had at Revival.

As the months went by Revival became more and more in demand, hosting some incredible live music and DJ nights with top Toronto music promoters. The city’s House music scene embedded themselves there through the United Soul collective and still do events regularly with artists like DJ Spinna, Crystal Waters, Louie Vega and Osunlade – which I am glad for as I am a House head. For years and years House music needed a home in Toronto and found it at Revival. 

I was also proud of designing a music concert course for students I was teaching at the time and we did 3 successful showcase events at Revival. It was so rewarding and exciting for them and me to see students go from thinking of an event to actually staging it in 14 weeks.