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A decade in, the nightclub Jazz, TX has established that it has staying power.
It opened a decade ago and celebrates musician Doc Watkins, who built the club at Pearl.
“Ten years ago, we had a pipe dream of an idea to open up a jazz club in San Antonio and make a go out of out of it,” Watkins said. “And just when we got up and running and really got the kinks worked out, then we got hit with a global pandemic, and almost went under completely.”
The trials and tribulations of COVID-19 nearly did them in, but not quite.
“It all started 10 years ago in a little basement space that I think, at best, most people would have given a coin flip's chance of surviving through the first year,” he said.
Of the many ways Jazz, TX is celebrating is through a particular kind of commemoration: Watkins wrote a book about it.
“It's kind of an origin story of Jazz, TX, but it's partially a memoir as well because the origin story of Jazz, TX is tied to my own story, and so I decided I needed to tell both,” he said.
Watkins is clearly focused on how he managed to succeed.
“If you just put one foot in front of the other on a daily basis and do something that you love and do it with all with all your heart, opportunities will come and success will come,” he said.
Watkins opened a jazz club in Houston last November and is now in the planning stages to open another in Chicago.
Watkins said that he didn’t have a clear vision of exactly how to build a successful jazz club here. He just did it.
“I did not have like a goal or an end result in mind, you know,” Watkins said. “And when we started, you know, it was really like, ‘can we make payroll? And can we just keep this thing going?’”
Somehow the people kept coming, and Watkins managed to pay the bills.
“In the early days of Jazz, TX we were just getting by, by the skin of our teeth. I mean we were just operating at break even, basically in the beginning. We were lucky,” he said.
The performances to celebrate the tenth anniversary are on Friday and Saturday — and those shows are sold out. However, there are tickets for both performances on Sunday.
