Georgia Theatre rebuilding, slowly

In the early morning hours of June 19, 2009, the big-time, small-town world of Athens music was rocked.

The legendary Georgia Theatre — a historic venue that had seen bands like R.E.M., the B-52s, the Ramones, B.B. King and Tom Waits play its stage — was gutted by flames. About all that was left of the structure was its art deco façade.

Sixteen months later, the cause of the fire remains undetermined, though it is speculated that a short in a fan in the green room may be to blame.

Reconstruction, meanwhile, continues. The effort is making deliberate progress despite serious obstacles still in its path.

If passion, memory and emotion were enough to pay the bills, the old theater would already be back in business.

But while rebuilding continues, money is still in short supply for the $4 million-plus project.

According to Wilmot Greene, who acquired the 120-year-old building in 2004, requirements for rebuilding brought about by its historical status complicate the project and add costs that some people find difficult to understand.

“We are still actively seeking donations and trying to qualify for government tax incentives,” Greene explained. “But to date, we have only raised 4 percent of the project cost, which means a debt load three times larger than we were prepared for.”

But also overwhelming was the emotional outpouring that occurred after the fire, Greene said. People from all across the country and beyond sent e-mails and Facebook messages expressing their sadness and concern.

Greene said he is banking on these types of emotions and memories as well as the kindness of strangers to rebuild the theater.

“Many Athens bands, venues and fans showed support and did what they could to have benefit shows and help us get started on the road to recovery,” Greene said, specifically mentioning the Zac Brown Band’s benefit show last October at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre.

“The music community showed true understanding and sympathy,” Greene said.

Tony Eubanks, a former music club owner and community activist, said that as soon as he heard about the fire he gathered up his daughter, then 2, and took her to see the building burn.

“The theater holds such a prominent place in the history of Athens in general and the music scene in particular that I wanted her to see it,” Eubanks said.

Vanessa Briscoe Hay, lead singer of Pylon, a band that helped shape the Athens music scene, said that rebuilding the theater is a cultural must for the city.

On Oct. 1, 1989, Pylon was the first band to play at a then newly refurbished and reopened Georgia Theatre.

“If you look at the list of bands that actually played there and when, there has always been an interesting mix,” Hay said.

“To me, that’s what Athens is about, a melting pot of all ages, races and interests.”

The next benefit of note for the theater is scheduled for Oct. 23 at Bad Manor in Athens, with performers STS9, Mimosa, Two Fresh and Michael Menert scheduled. It begins at 8 p.m.

The nonprofit Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation also is accepting tax-deductible donations on behalf of the Georgia Theatre.

Earlier this year, Hay sang a couple of Beatles songs with tribute band Abbey Road Live at a benefit for the theater.

At that performance, Greene told Hay that he’d been at the Pylon show that had reopened the theater back in 1989.

Pylon, he told her, was the reason he decided to move to Athens in the first place.

After the fire, “he promised to make the Georgia Theater better than it was,” Hay said. “From all reports, I think that he is going to.”

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Film aims to preserve theater’s long history

While benefit concerts and private donations are helping rebuild the Georgia Theatre, a documentary titled “Athens Burning” is also aimed at raising funds while preserving its history.

The film, due out early next year, traces the chronology of the Athens music scene embodied by the theater from the 1970s to present-day reconstruction efforts. Eric Krasle, an Athens attorney and one of the film’s creative directors, said he believes it is an economic imperative for the city of Athens that the theater be rebuilt.

“Looking at it from not only a historic perspective, but one of simple economics, keeping Athens on the music industry map is vital,” Krasle said.

The film, which Krasle calls a “labor of love,” features the last known interview with musician Vic Chesnutt, who died of a drug overdose on Christmas Day 2009, as well as exclusive interviews and concert footage of many of the artists who played there.

It also boasts previously unseen footage of the fire and the theater afterward from the inside and a cameo from Billy Bob Thornton.

And there are stories that only longtime Georgia Theatre habitues, like Vanessa Briscoe Hay, lead singer of Athens band Pylon, can tell.

Hay recalls, for instance, one evening in 1978 seeing the B-52s at the theater. It was a night that would prove historic not only for the Athens music scene, but her life as well.

As Hay sat in the audience with her best friend waiting for the show to begin, she was approached by a musician named Randy Bewley, a guitarist who died in February 2009.

“He asked me if I had heard the taped music just played over the auditorium speakers — [it was by] his new band,” Hay recalls. “Little did I suspect he would be asking me to audition in just a few months for the band that would become Pylon.”

- Holly Aguirre

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Benefit concert

Rebuild the Georgia Theatre

8 p.m. Oct. 23. $30 advance, $40 day of show. Bad Manor, 346 E. Broad St., Athens. 706-850-8500, www.rebuildthetheatre.com .

More online

● www.georgiatheatre.com : Find reconstruction updates and benefit merchandise.