Hundreds celebrate the day the music died.
When the soon-to-be closed Dibbo’s nightclub held their final band night on Saturday, March 23, more than three times as many people as expected showed up to say farewell.
Manager Chuck McGee said earlier that week that he anticipated a crowd of about 200 partiers, maybe 300, to his venue that as radio advertisements have said for years was “rock solid in downtown Hudson.”
The number he got was at least 1,000.
The spacious back concert hall was shoulder to shoulder prior to the guest band for the evening, the original members of southern rock group Austin Healy, getting ready to take the stage. Patrons were lined up five deep all the way around the circular bar area, waving money to grab the attention of bartenders — whose numbers were bolstered when guests for the evening who used to serve at Dibbo’s were pulled in to help. The talk throughout the night by both attendees and people elsewhere in Hudson’s downtown, as word got around, was surprise at the sheer number of people who showed up. The cops took notice, too, and did at last one walk through, as the maximum number of people allowed in the bar at one time was being pushed.
In large part because of the frenetic activity, Austin Healy didn’t get onto the stage right away, and its members were seen trekking back and forth and socializing in the long hall between the equally packed front bar area and the concert section. A solo performer on acoustic guitar kept the crowd engaged.
There were rumors that other longtime bands that had often graced Dibbo’s stage would make cameo appearances, but they didn’t materialize. In particular was a much anticipated showing by the Wetspots, and a few years back the word on the street and in the concert hall was that if there were to be a reunion of the band, it would be at Dibbo’s.
After Austin Healy did go on, and after its first set, the number of patrons thinned somewhat — and in what was a boon that kept other downtown bars quite busy all night, the revelers roamed around to other establishments. However, new people kept coming in the door to pay their respects to Dibbo’s and Austin Healy, who after scores of engagements was playing Dibbo’s for the final time. The concert hall is being sold to be remade into a cafe in front, a banquet hall in back where bands have played for so many years, and office space upstairs where there currently are apartments.
Austin Healy started with spot-on instrumental, especially in the rhythm section, and only got stronger as the night went on. After they closed with Free Bird, which McGee had said was the perfectly fitting finale, the band members thanked McGee and Dibbo’s for giving them a chance back when they were still another fairly unknown country band. A longtime employee then came on stage to toast McGee and other longtime employees, some of whom came back into employment at Dibbo’s time and again.
A lot of people brought in their own beer, and even asked to be photographed with it, and this in the long run worked out just fine, as with the huge crowd the rations at Dibbo’s started running really low.
After a massive cleanup to this massive party in back, the current front bartenders have found things much slower as the days wind down to that final entrance-room step in the Dibbo’s closure process. First the beer taps had been shut down and removed, then most of the liquor bottles and glassware stowed away elsewhere, as in just a few days after the big party all of Dibbo’s would be just a memory.
Lana was back working behind the bar on those last days, with official closure taking place at the end of the month, and reprised her role of mixing art with advertising by using lots of multi-colored chalk on the sidewalk in front. Some of the messages, which have included quotes from the likes of Bob Marley, have covered 100 square feet.
Downtown Hudson had not seen the likes of this since over a decade ago, when a street artist placed well-drawn cartoon characters on the dike road in the dead of night. The big chalk figures drew the ire of some city officials, so considered them unwanted graffiti, but I thought they were pretty cool and profiled them in the local paper.