Swayze's Venue
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Swayze's Venue is a music venue located at 2543 Bells Ferry Road in Marietta, Georgia, United States. It was founded in 2002 by Treephort frontman Lee Satterfield. It is a popular venue for up-and-coming bands in the East Cobb and metro Atlanta area, and is well known for offering unknown bands shows with a small demo, but hosts popular acts and tours as well. Swayze's gets its name from actor Patrick Swayze.
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[edit] Venue
The venue itself is of small-medium size, currently painted solid black inside, featuring a number of pieces by local artists dislayed inside. The venue started as a converted consignment store, painted purple with spatters of orange, navy blue, and black paint and lit by rope lights. Since its move to its current location, the rear wall has been removed and replaced with the current stage. Regarding the black paint job inside, a number of rumors circulate among patrons. One is that owner Lee Satterfield hired workers to paint it a fitting color, and returned to find it covered in black paint. Lee reportedly fired the workers, but decided it wasn't worth the effort to repaint the venue. Another is that the staff, consisting primarily of teenage boys, got bored one day and decided to repaint the venue.
The venue is located in a strip mall, next to various stores, including a Qwik-Mart which has Swayze's patrons coming in and out constantly during shows, a children's barber shop, and a pawn shop.
Swayze's stage has 4 PA speakers with a mixing board in the very back of the venue. This is operated by whomever is running the venue on the night of the show.
[edit] Shows
Swayze's plays host to a number of different music genres, namely metalcore, hardcore, punk rock, emo, many forms of metal, as well as indie rock, ska, baroque pop, electronica, and E-grind. Shows generally cost from $5 to $10 a ticket. Many popular local acts play at Swayze's, including:
- Mean Girls
- Lazer Attack (fronted by Lee Satterfield with fellow Treephort member Joey Robertson)
- TxC
- The Emotron (Treephort's Kyle Knight)
- Last Day To Fall
- Horcrux
- Drag The Waters
- We Love To Party
- Taj Motel Trio
- She Came From Above
On nights with hardcore and grindcore acts, hardcore dancing, also known as slam dancing or moshing is a popular activity for fans. Swayze's shows are typically high-energy, considering the size of the venue. Crowds can range from over 200 people to as little as 2.
[edit] Rules
Artists in the area frequently book shows at Swayze's, and as such it has an incredibly long list of shows. Swayze's also has a number of policies that all bands and fans are expected to know and follow. For example:
- Swayze's is, always has been, and always will be, an all-ages venue. There is to be no smoking, drugs, or alcohol on the premises.
- Set times and the order in which the bands perform are decided upon beforehand by the management.
- Bands are expected to load in at the given time or their act will be dropped.
- After a fight outside Swayze's in late 2006 involving authorities, a no-reentry rule was enforced.
The rules are leniently enforced, but following the rules regardless is one of the main ways to get invited back to the venue.
[edit] Swayze's Comics
Since January 2007, there is a comic book store located inside Swayze's known as Swayze's Comics. It sells comic books as well as action figures, lunchboxes, and other comic book paraphernalia. Before Swayze's Comics opened, the space was filled by Deathgasm Records, a metal record store. This has since closed and moved to a private location.
[edit] Swayze's Tuscaloosa
In 2006, owner Lee Satterfield opened a second Swayze's in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. This is run very similarly to the Marietta Swayze's and hosts many of the popular Marietta Acts, but is smaller in size.
[edit] Compilation Album
In 2006, Swayze's released their first compilation album, a 2-disc CD featuring the most popular acts that play at Swayze's. This was released through the venue and was reviewed by the popular Atlanta independent magazine Creative Loafing. There was some disagreement between some of the acts as to who was to be included in the CD, resulting in some bad relationships between certain bands and Lee Satterfield, particularly due to Satterfield's total unwillingness to refund the bands for their time and money, which had to be paid in advance for a spot on the album.
