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The New Penelope was the name of a coffeehouse and concert venue which operated in Montreal, Canada in various locations between 1965 and 1968.
It first opened under the name The Fifth Amendment in November, 1964, -- November 3, 1964, after owner Gary Eisenkraft took over an existing coffeehouse called The Fifth Dimension. It was located at 1455 Bleury St. until it closed in the spring of 1965. Eisenkraft then opened a coffeehouse called The Penelope on Bishop St. in the summer of 1965.
“I opened the place because I figured teenagers have nowhere to go,” he said. “They are pushed around and mistreated when they go out somewhere but we treat them with respect here.” October 9, 1965, The Gazette newspaper.
This in turn was followed just a few months later by The New Penelope, a larger coffeehouse and concert venue located on 1432 Stanley St. from November, 1965 until November of 1966.
While the Penelope and Fifth Amendment saw mainly acoustic blues, folk and bluegrass acts perform there, The New Penelope on Stanley St. began also integrating the emerging new styles of rock and roll and electric blues. Among the acts that performed there were the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Canadian folk-pop acts Ian and Sylvia and Gordon Lightfoot, as well as local rock bands The Sidetrack and The Cavemen.
The New Penelope was very popular with young people, in part due to its all-ages policy, serving no alcohol, only non-alcoholic beverages such as coffee, tea and hot chocolate. This meant that people too young to be admitted into licensed concert venues could see performances by these acts when they played at The New Penelope. It was also located just a few blocks from the two main Universities, Sir George Williams and McGill, attracting many of their students to its concerts.
By the fall of 1966, The New Penelope was again beginning to outgrow its location. Eisenkraft found a new larger venue at 378 Sherbrooke St. W., just west of the corner of Bleury St. He hired noted designer Francois Dallegret to come up with an interior design for the new location. The minimalist design consisted of outdoor stadium-type seating with long wooden planks arranged over metal pipe scaffolding.
The first band to play the new venue was none other than Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention, performing every night for some two weeks. . This was notable due to the fact that the band’s first album, Freak Out!, had just been released in the summer of 1966, and so they were not yet particularly well-known.
The New Penelope’s Sherbrooke Street location held over 200 paying customers, although this does not mean that every concert saw attendance in the hundreds. A case in point is the first appearance of Joni Mitchell at the New Penelope in 1967. Barely a dozen people are reported to have attended this concert, but by the spring of 1968 Mitchell was returning to host several nights to a packed house of fans. Mitchell was not the only singer-songwriter considered to be in the “folk-rock” style to play The New Penelope around that time. There were also concerts by Tim Hardin, Tim Buckley and Richie Havens. The singer-songwriter Jesse Winchester began his career playing regularly at The New Penelope, shortly after moving to Montreal in 1967 in part to avoid the draft that obliged many young American men to report to the Armed Forces to fight in the Vietnam War.
Owner Gary Eisenkraft’s mission to bring blues music to the youth of Montreal continued at the Sherbrooke Street location. Among the blues performers who played there in 1967 and 1968 were Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, James Cotton and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Notable rock groups that also played there include The Linn County Blues Band, The Fugs and The Young Ones.
The New Penelope found itself in financial difficulty by the summer of 1968. Despite various fundraising efforts and benefit concerts, it closed its doors for good in November, 1968.
References
- Publications Board of Sir George Williams University (1964-11-03). The Georgian - Volume 28, Number 7.
- "The Montreal Gazette - Google News Archive Search". news.google.com. Retrieved 2024-12-21.
- McGill University, Daily Publications Society (1966-12-09). The McGill Daily Vol. 56 No. 053: December 9, 1966. McGill University Library. Montréal : McGill University, Daily Publications Society,.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) - "Not Your Typical Concert Venue!". The New Penelope and Its Era (1965-1970). Retrieved 2024-12-21.
- Publications Board of the Students' Association (1967-01-13). The Georgian - Volume 30, Number 27.
- "The Montreal Gazette - Google News Archive Search". news.google.com. Retrieved 2024-12-21.