Club de Ville Rocks

With Club de Ville do-it-all Will Rhodes relinquishing his role as the venue’s solitary booker so he can focus on mixing sound and promoting a more personal selections of shows, the venerable Red River club and bar finds itself with big shoes to fill.

That’s where Jennifer Marchand comes in. The local booker, whose shows you’ve likely attended if you ever hit the Sahara Lounge on a Wednesday night – or shot down to Ruta Maya on South Congress when it was open – recently signed on to book Tuesday and Thursday nights at de Ville, with an emphasis on making the venue a popular weeknight hangout for fans of gritty, overdriven rock & roll.

“It’s a great departure from booking events at Ruta Maya and the Sahara,” Marchand said via phone this week. “It’s located in an actual entertainment district, which makes it a far cry from working at a destination venue – a remote location that people need to travel to and hunker down in one place for a while.

“Club de Ville is an all-out rock & roll venue in a rock & roll district in one of the most rock & roll towns in America,” she enthuses. “No rock band I’ve talked to has hem and hawed about playing there. There’s no, ‘It’s too far’ or ‘Aren’t you a world music club?’

“Rock bands are like, ‘Hell yes, I want to play there. Tell me when.’”

In the case of English Teeth, the bawdy British barroom rock quintet, that goes down on Tuesday nights, when bandleader Kevin Hoetger wrangles a free residency that’ll feature support from locals like the Astronaut Suit, Nic Armstrong & the Thieves, the Memphis Strange, and Texas Never Whispers.

Thursdays operate under the guidance of the Jamey Simms Band, which switches the Tia Carrera bassist to guitar alongside Amplified Heat drummer Chris Ortiz and bassist Dan McCann.

Tonight, Simms’ crew drops in around midnight after Alien Knife Fight and Jonas Wilson’s Plastic Habit, purveyors of excellent new EP Out of the Airlock. Doors at 9, and a $5 cover.