“Finding a jewel in Roanoke’s Dog Bowl” Dan Casey, The Roanoke Times 7/11/2024
“Finding a Jewel in Roanoke’s Dog Bowl” Dan Casey
published in The Roanoke Times 7/11/2024
One definition of “old fart” is a guy who discovers something in his community half a decade after it opens.
That would be me, and it happened Sunday night at The Dog Bowl, a charming but largely unheralded amphitheater in Roanoke’s West End. Slap me upside the head, it launched five years ago.
If you didn’t know it existed (like me), it’s behind Black Dog Salvage, the nationally known recycler of architectural treasures and other stuff.
Roughly 500 folks gathered there Sunday evening to see The Dead Reckoning, a Grateful Dead cover band. Sponsored by Ridge View Bank, the show was promoted by the nonprofit 5 Points Music Sanctuary (which also has an indoor music venue in Roanoke’s Old Southwest neighborhood).
It’s difficult to imagine how that concert could’ve gone better.
The band took the stage around 6:30 p.m. By then, the sun was mostly down. The air was warm but the mood, extremely chill. For the next three hours, it seemed like a little corner of Floydfest had been transported to 2.5 acres next to the Roanoke River greenway.
Black Dog founders Robert Kulp and Mike Whiteside opened their salvage business in 1999 – and The Dog Bowl 20 years later, on a surplus plot they purchased from the city of Roanoke, following development of Vic Thomas Park.
Kulp’s on vacation this week, but I caught up with Whiteside to query him about The Dog Bowl.
Black Dog Salvage uses the venue to stage The Dog Bowl Market, which happens the third Sunday of each warm-weather month (and maybe once around Christmas, too). The business invites in outside arts vendors, a food truck, some musicians and holds a low-key, once-per-month party outside Black Dog Salvage.
Otherwise, the venue’s available for occasional booking by local nonprofits, which use it to raise funds and spread the word about their do-gooding activities.
“It’s been a good thing for the community,” Whiteside said. “We don’t make a lot of money on something like this, but it brings awareness to the nonprofits that put on shows there.” Side benefit: It also heightens local awareness of Black Dog.
The charm comes from the setting and set up. Unsurprisingly, many of The Dog Bowl’s accouterments were salvaged, sometimes during the shooting of “Salvage Dawgs,” a long-running (2012-2021) reality TV show starring Kulp and Whiteside. Over 11 seasons, the show earned Black Dog Salvage an international reputation. (You can still find episodes on various TV streaming services.)
The stage is a former semi-trailer the folks from Black Dog rescued from the remnants of an old drive-in movie theater in Moneta, during season 10 of the television show.
In Moneta, “that trailer was used as a stage,” Whiteside told me. After they hauled it to a low spot on Black Dog’s back-lot, “one of our guys, Jeff Ellis, said, ‘This looks like an amphitheater,’” Whiteside added. “And that’s what it became.”
Next to the stage is a huge LOVE sign/sculpture (also circa 2019) that Black Dog produced to mark the 50th anniversary of the “Virginia is for Lovers” tourism marketing campaign. Naturally, it was also fashioned from locally salvaged materials by personnel at Black Dog.
“Every letter is a story,” Whiteside told me.
He made the “L” himself, from a trombone and a faux banjo and some other items. The “O” comes from a giant cable spool leftover from work that Lionberger Construction did on the Berglund Center. In its center is an old speed limit sign reading “50”. Rescued timbers comprise the V. And the pipes fashioned into the E are from the former Ballast Point brewery in Botetourt County, which closed in 2019.
The Dog Bowl opened in April 2019. As a music venue, it initially teamed up with First Fridays, the nonprofit that brings monthly summer music shows to downtown Roanoke.
Another local nonprofit, 5 Points Music Sanctuary, began putting on outdoor shows at The Dog Bowl in the spring of 2023. Tyler Godsey, 42, founded the organization. Sunday’s show was his eighth at The Dog Bowl. Two shows for the 2024 season remain, one each in August and September.
Godsey’s also produced concerts at Green Hill Park in Roanoke County; at River’s Edge and Wasena parks in Roanoke; at The Coves at Smith Mountain Lake; and at Wilderness Adventure at Eagle Landing, an outdoor experience camp outside New Castle.
There’s an interesting backstory to 5 Points. The nonprofit is centered around hearing-loss advocacy. Both of Godsey’s children, now 14 and 12, were born deaf, the result of a genetic disease known as Usher Syndrome. That usually leads to vision loss later.
5 Points offers hearing tests at all their concerts, through the Roanoke Valley Speech & Hearing Center. They also offer hearing protection devices to any 5 Points concertgoer that wants it – or color-blindness corrective glasses, for people who need those, “so they don’t get headaches” during the shows, Godsey added.
Besides 55 shows per year at its headquarters (an old church on maple Avenue southwest) 5 Points conducts music therapy for ages ranging from toddlers to seniors, including veterans with PTSD. It’s an active funder of local artists and advocates on behalf of accessibility for people with various handicaps.
The shows are to bring people in and expose them to the nonprofit’s broader accessibility mission, Godsey told me.
At The Dog Bowl, “we’ve been averaging about 500 people per show,” he said. “Up to 700, 750, it fits people very comfortably.”
As a venue, The Dog Bowl fills a niche in Roanoke’s inventory of concert stages, he added. 5 Points Music Sanctuary can handle 250 patrons, but the next largest venue is the Jefferson Center, which can handle 900.
Until The Dog Bowl started, there were no venues for crowd sizes of 500, 600, or 700 fans, Godsey told me. So entertainment agents were reluctant to book acts here that would draw that number. The Dog Bowl provides such a place.
Aside from that, the 5 Points concerts at The Dog Bowl are more affordable than many others.
Advance tickets for The Dead Reckoning show were $20 per person, plus a $3 fee – cheap for a live concert, and painless to buy online. Parking was free in a Black Dog-owned gravel lot across 13th Street (or in Vic Thomas Park).
Draft beers from Parkway Brewery cost $9. That’s not cheap, but it’s comparable to a Salem Red Sox game. There were a couple of food trucks on hand, too, and plenty of porta-pottys.
The crowd’s age varied widely, from young adults in their 20s to seniors. The oldest person I saw there Sunday is 86. Probably every over-50 former Deadhead in the southwest quadrant was on hand. I recognized some local doctors and lawyers wearing tie-dyes.
Most folks brought blankets and their own folding chairs, because seating at The Dog Bowl is limited. But the venue sports a handful of metal and wooden benches and a few bar-stool type chairs, too.
Godsey told me all the shows end before 10, so as not to annoy nearby residents.
The next Dog Bowl Market happens at Black Dog Salvage July 21, and it’s open to the public.
The next 5 Points concert at The Dog Bowl is Aug 10. That features reggae music by Lazy Man Dub Band. In September, The Dog Bowl will host Skydog, an Allman Brothers cover band.
You can buy tickets to either, or peruse other upcoming shows, by looking under “Events” on 5pointsmusic.com, the nonprofit’s website.
Dan Casey
(540) 981-3423
@dancaseysblog
