Hull's First Halloween Without the C Note: Where the Live Music Went

The marquee at 159 Nantasket Avenue is dark this Halloween. For most of the last fifty years, that address held a room for music under one name or another. The C Note went dark on Sunday, September 27, after a Great American Songbook tribute with Michael Maloon and Melanie Whelan. The club added that show because its first planned finale, a September 26 night with the Aerosmith tribute band Draw the Line, sold out fast, according to The Hull Times.

Halloween weekend is when the loss shows. The C Note's annual Halloween party with Booty Vortex was a highlight for longtime bar manager Barbara Rhind. She told The Hull Times that "you actually felt uncomfortable if you did not have a costume on!" On Saturday, October 31, Booty Vortex plays Halloween in Gloucester. Hull has live music that night too, at a beach club and a Hull Shore Drive party rather than at a room built only for bands.

Four names, one address

Most people on Nantasket Avenue knew the C Note had been the Sea Note. The address goes back further than that. Hull Times columnist David Kellem, who plays in the band Assisted Living, traced the lineage in a September piece for The Hull Times:

1. The Eudemon Disco, run by the Sabbag family in the 1970s, with DJs spinning all night and occasional live acts.
2. Toby's Place, which came next.
3. The Sea Note, opened by Joe Phillips in the 1990s. Kellem recalls it booking the James Montgomery Blues Band, Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen, and the Boston funk band Taylor Made.
4. The C Note, after Charlie Fruzzetti took over in 2008.

One band links the last two names. Paul Redmond of the Fat City Band told The Hull Times that his group played opening night when the room opened as the Sea Note, and played opening night again when it became the C Note. In the same Hull Times tribute, he called the club "a music room first and foremost." Rhind said much the same in her own interview: "We don't have a kitchen and even though we have a TV, it is a rare occasion that you will see it on."

That is what Hull lost. The town still has places with live music. What it no longer has is a room that existed only for the bands.

The house bands kept their calendars and left the peninsula

The bands most tied to the C Note didn't stop playing when it closed. They moved their dates to other towns, and following them now means driving off the peninsula.

Booty Vortex trumpet player Mark Coronado told The Hull Times that "Booty Vortex would not be Booty Vortex without the C Note." Its Halloween run this year has two stops, and both are far from Nantasket Avenue. On Thursday, October 29, the band headlines a Halloween disco party at LaBelle Winery in Amherst, New Hampshire. Doors open at 7:15 p.m. and the show starts at 8. On Saturday, October 31, it plays a Booty Vortex Halloween Show at The Cut in Gloucester, with doors at 7:30 p.m., music at 8:30, and general admission standing tickets at $26.95.

Draw the Line's Neill Byrnes told The Hull Times that the C Note has "basically been our home base." The band's tour page now runs through other cities, with a few dates that come back toward the South Shore:

• November 20 at The Vault in New Bedford
• November 28 at Simple Man Saloon in Clinton
• December 12 at Commercial Club-E in East Bridgewater
• December 19 at Soundcheck Studios in Pembroke

Pembroke is the closest these bands get to Hull before the new year. When MassLive reported the closing in July, it quoted the club's farewell post on Facebook: "Keep going out to see your favorite bands play in small, independent venues, and keep experiencing live music at the local level." This winter, doing that takes a car and some planning.

What Hull's own stages offer Halloween weekend

On the peninsula itself, Halloween weekend music is down the beach from the old C Note.

The Daddy's Beach Club events page lists both nights of the weekend and doesn't post set times. The Parrot's Smoking Jackets Halloween party runs from 9 p.m. to midnight. California Underground has karaoke on its Friday calendar, so anyone in costume who'd rather sing than watch has that option.

A beach club, a Hull Shore Drive party, and a karaoke night make up Hull's Halloween weekend lineup. Terpene Profile drummer Wayne Gay saw this coming in his comments to The Hull Times before the final show:

"You can find sports bars, beach bars, and restaurants that also offer live music, but rarely do you get a chance to experience and be part of a community that is strictly focused on music."

His description fits Hull's weekend calendar this fall, and those rooms are good company on a Saturday night. They share the space with dinner, drinks, and the beach crowd, and the C Note never did.

After Halloween, the weeknights carry more of the load

Once the costumes come off, the weekend schedule thins out and the weeknights matter more. Daddy's has Those Four on Friday, November 6, and Back Nine on Saturday, November 7. Beyond that, the regular music in Hull comes from recurring weeknight listings on the LFG Tonight calendar:

• Tuesdays: WSU Blue Grass at Daddy's Beach Club, listed November 3, 10, and 17.
• Sundays: An open mic at Jo's Nautical, 125 Main Street, listed November 1, 8, and 15.
• Fridays: Karaoke at California Underground runs every week into December, listed through December 18.

The Jo's Nautical open mic matters most to the C Note's legacy. In the Hull Times tribute, Coronado described the C Note as "a venue where up and coming talent could establish a foothold." Ali & The Biddies guitarist Erich Hochstrasser said some of his first live shows with a band were on that stage, back when he was in middle school. With the room gone, an open mic on Main Street is the closest thing in Hull to a first stage for a new band.

Not every performance in town is a band, either. The Hull Times calendar lists a South Shore Writers' Salon fundraiser for Alzheimer's on Thursday, November 12, from 7 to 9 p.m. at California Underground. Listings like these can change, so check with the venue before you go.

The building, the parking lot, and what's still unsettled

The Hull Times reported that the C Note building sold in July for $1.1 million. Plans for it haven't been made public. Rhind also told the paper she had to cancel every show she'd already booked from October 1 into 2027. That's a full season of bookings for bands that now need somewhere else to play.

Rhind named several reasons for the closing. One is something anyone who goes out at night on Nantasket Avenue will recognize. She told the paper that the state Department of Conservation and Recreation had started locking the gate to the Nantasket Beach Reservation lot across the street as early as 8:30 p.m. The club was licensed to stay open until 1 a.m., and there's little street parking nearby. She also said the club never fully rebuilt its customer base after the pandemic, when backyard gatherings and outdoor events at other venues drew people away from paying a cover for an evening show.

Meanwhile, the rest of Hull's late-season calendar keeps going around the empty storefront. Gallery Nantasket, at 121 Nantasket Avenue, has its "New Fall Season" exhibition up through December 6. The Hull Nantasket Chamber of Commerce lists the Hull Holiday Showcase of local gifts and artisan work for Saturday, November 28, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Nantasket Beach Resort, 45 Hull Shore Drive.

When Ali & The Biddies singer Ali Howshall described the room to The Hull Times, she said "the floor was a little sticky and none of the chairs matched." She was talking about the stage where her father had played more than 40 years earlier. For now, nobody has said what 159 Nantasket Avenue will be next.

Lindsay Conlon follows Nantasket Avenue the same way neighbors do, one storefront and one marquee at a time. If you live in Hull and want to know how changes like the C Note sale fit into what's happening on your street, Lindsay Conlon will walk you through it. When you're ready to see what your own home is worth, click Get My Valuation.