Kings, the small Raleigh rock club that has long served as one of the Triangle’s most thoughtfully programmed and most steadfastly adventurous listening rooms, celebrated its 25th anniversary earlier this month. But the club actually hit the quarter-century mark in July.
Herbie Abernethy—aka Valient Himself, the lead singer of extraterrestrial-themed Triangle metal mainstay Valient Thorr—and his business partners Mike Howell and Josh and Alan Novicki bought the club from longtime stewards Paul Siler and Cheetie Kumar last October. When the big anniversary came around, they weren’t yet in a place to celebrate.
“We were so busy, we just said, ‘Let’s push it to where we can make it to where we all have time to do something,’” Abernethy says.
Part of the busyness had to do with the other businesses Abernethy and Josh Novicki operate. The Richmond-based business partners have a pair of establishments in that Virginia city—Cobra Cabana, a “heavy stoner bar food” joint and venue, and Hot for Pizza, a Van Halen–themed pizzeria. The pair also have a seafood bar and venue in the Wilmington area at Carolina Beach called the Sandspur. They’re also actively working to open another bar in Richmond along with a small listening room in a space behind Cobra Cabana.
But the demands of their other businesses weren’t the only reasons why the Kings anniversary celebration had to wait until November. Up until last fall, the Raleigh club with a capacity of 250 had sat mostly dormant since the onset of the pandemic, only opening for some parties during the annual Hopscotch Music Festival and a smattering of other special events.
Getting the club back into a rhythm hosting multiple shows and events each week, and getting the word out that the room was rocking and rolling again, has taken considerable effort.
“It being closed for a while during the pandemic—a lot of the business went to other venues,” Abernethy says. “Nature abhors a vacuum. So shows went to other venues. There’s a lot of competition.”
In 1999, Siler, alongside Ben Barwick and Steve Popson, brought Kings to a building on McDowell Street; that building was eventually leveled in 2007 to make way for a parking garage. Back then, the rock club landscape was much different than it is today. The Pinhook in Durham and the Cat’s Cradle Back Room in Carrboro, two similarly sized rooms that book similar acts, weren’t around yet.
When Kings reopened in its current upstairs space on Martin Street in 2010, it was able to reclaim its place in the local venue scene. The last year has been about reclaiming that place once again.
“When Paul and Ben and Steve opened Kings, there was a need for a place downtown in Raleigh,” Abernethy says. “Now, Raleigh is different.”
But while the market may be more crowded now than it was 25 years ago, Abernethy still believes there’s a need for Kings.
“Kings was an incredible spot,” he says of the role it played in him starting up bands while in college at East Carolina University. He and his friends would come to large clubs like Cat’s Cradle to see big acts such as Flaming Lips, but it was in rooms like Kings that they found greater musical variety and proof that they might be able to make a real go at pursuing music.
“Our friends’ bands who were a little bit older than us, the guys who already had it together, people that we respected, like Dragstrip Syndicate and Cherry Valence and The Loners, and even the Greensboro bands,” Abernethy recalls. “They all were playing at different places. And there was this new place called Kings, and we had a band called Lo-Fi Conspiracy, and they were the first ones that gave us a chance before we turned into Valient Thorr.”
One of the strengths that has historically set Kings apart in the Triangle is the breadth of styles incorporated into its attentively booked programming, spanning various shades of indie rock, metal, hip-hop, and experimental music, among others.
Maintaining this variety and opportunities for up-and-coming locals remains an emphasis, but it means having to adapt. The draw of indie rock isn’t as reliable as it once was, Abernethy says, and the crowd doesn’t drink as much as it has in the past, eroding bar sales that are crucial to the club’s bottom line. But things like jam-leaning bands and newer strains of hip-hop are showing gains.
Adapting to these audience trends isn’t just about generating revenue. It’s necessary to maintain Kings’ role as a hub to explore what’s fresh and exciting among the local and national underground.
“It’s stuff that we jokingly would call ‘bleep bloop’ music there for a while. It’s just stuff that I have no idea how to do,” Abernethy says, laughing at how far removed he is from some of the hip-hop and electronic music Kings books. “I’m not booking the room for my ears anymore. You gotta think about what the kids want to hear.”
But Kings also isn’t abandoning the kinds of rock shows and diverse community events that endeared it to regulars in the past. The annual Great Cover Up, which finds locals dressing up to perform cover sets across multiple nights, remains, and the venue has hosted two or three movie premieres in the last year.
Abernethy says that they’re looking at bringing back a dog show that Kings hosted in the past and that more 25th-anniversary programming is on the way, likely to include a show featuring Siler and Kumar’s stalwart Raleigh rock band Birds of Avalon and perhaps the return of one of the game shows the club hosted back in the day.
“We’re booking the future now,” Abernethy says. “But it’s nice to focus on where the past was, to shine a light on the past, and show where it came from. So those people will want to be back involved.”
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