A Brief History of Rent Party
I’ve been fielding a lot of questions recently about why RDU Rent Party came about and how various things work. So in the interest of not repeating myself too often, I figured I’d put the basic history and premise down in a post. I have some other things to say about why I love running it and why I think it has been such a successful venture, but for now I’ll just stick to the basic story.
Humble Beginnings
The first RDU Rent Party, although it didn’t go by the name Rent Party at the time, happened as a result of a last minute need. Solomon Douglas was on tour and had been booked by the local swing dance society on a Sunday (not their normal Saturday night). At the time, TSDS was struggling financially and made a last minute decision that they would have to cancel the Sunday dance. Suddenly gigless mid-tour, Solomon called Laura Windley, who then called me and asked if I could help put something together to host a dance so that the band could make some money and not have to eat an entire night’s wages.
I’ll back up just a sec here to say that up until this time, I generally avoided anything akin to organizing like the plague. I didn’t want the responsibility and as much as I might have gained some comfort teaching dance classes, you couldn’t pay me enough to make me want to talk on a microphone back then.
In this case, though, the situation just seemed to demand that someone do something. So, we quickly booked a room at Triangle Dance Studio and being that it was just the two of us, we decided to just put out a hat box (no surprise Laura had several handy) and take donations on the honor system. At this point, the specifics of the night are lost to me, but I definitely recall enjoying myself and a great sense of accomplishment in helping the band bridge the gap and giving the local scene a chance to dance to a band they would have otherwise missed out on.
Edition 1: A New Hope
Based on the success of the dance with Solomon Douglas and the struggling state of TSDS at the time, Laura and I got it in our heads to try our hand at running a few more dances, aiming to work with musicians who we felt brought a kind of energy that the Triangle scene had been missing for a while. It made sense to continue using the pay-what-you-can honor system with the hat box as we didn’t want to wrangle door volunteers. Neither of us wanted to make money off of it, so we opted in the early days to pay for the space and give the remainder to the band. After the second or third dance we ran and some nights making less for the band than hoped, I decided to start funding Rent Party out of pocket and since then the space rental for Rent Party has been sponsored by one of my businesses, Raleigh Rolfing or The Lindy Lab.
It’s funny looking back how small moments created bigger themes, but the whole edition/theme flavor of our ad copy came about from the simple act of Laura Windley buying cookie cutters. At the time, Laura was singing with the Atomic Rhythm All-Stars and occasionally with their smaller combo George Knott’s Square Trio. Because our attendance was smaller back then, we tried to hire small groups to make sure we could pay the individual musicians decently. So we had offered a gig to the Trio and it just so happened that Laura had purchased Star Wars cookie cutters around the same time and was looking for an excuse to use them. The entire “Star Wars Edition” idea was born out of those cookie cutters and went on to inspire a DJ/lightsaber battle and someone bringing a Death Star themed pie. It seemed to engage people and I found myself surprisingly enjoying writing ad copy, and so the idea stuck. Every dance since has had some sort of them that gives us a chance to make the dance feel like a special event and gives me a creative writing outlet.
One, Two, Skip a Few…
With some initial success, Rent Party got on a roll and was able to host some fantastic bands and artists who had never played in the triangle before. We also got to try some ideas that might not have otherwise have flown or been disruptive to a typical dance night. I have loved every Rent Party we’ve thrown, but a few of the highlights for me have been
- Catching Glenn Crytzer mid-tour for his first Triangle appearance and a Gatsby Edition party where we got in trouble for serving alcohol.
- Another first for the Triangle with Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns with a prohibition repeal celebration.
- Rent Party’s only DJ’d night, the Inappropriate Edition, which featured nothing but sexual, drug referencing, or racist songs. This night also raised funds to help pay for the Triangle Tap Project’s band battle between the Russ Wilson Swingtet and the Atomic Rhythm All-Stars.
- The Ragtime Edition dance where Ethan Uslan was massively entertaining on piano alone, something a number of people told us wouldn’t work for a swing dance.
- And my absolute proudest moment with Rent Party so far, the Floyd Council Memorial Edition featuring 4 exceptional local blues musicians, who were phenomenal to dance and listen to, plus we nearly had a fight break out and one of their non-dancer fans offered me moonshine. 🙂
To Infinity and Beyond (Maybe)
One of the great things to me about Rent Party is that there is no schedule. We run it because we want to run it, and if we ever get burned out, we feel free to stop. Plus, we only run it when bands are available, so if none of the bands we want to work with are free, no sweat, we just wait until a good one becomes available. That said, as long as the bands keep bringing it and people keep showing up and paying for great music, we are more than happy to keep Rent Party going. We’ve found a great niche in the scene at this point as the small flexible counterpoint to TSDS. We don’t expect we’ll ever have the clout to pull big bands on a Saturday night like TSDS does, but we can host great bands on off nights, be a testing ground for bands that don’t fit a larger dance, or even work with current dance bands in new and different ways. I’m happy to have found a niche for our “little dance that could” and as long as it’s fun and interesting, we are thrilled to keep producing it.
Laura and I both greatly appreciate the support that the community and musicians have shown to Rent Party and we look forward to producing more awesome and weird and awesomely weird dances this year. 🙂
Jason Sager 