Jake Bergevin, an Everett, Washington-based jazz musician and educator, has a “weird fascination” with having more live jazz everywhere.
“When I walk into any restaurant, I'm like, ‘where would the band go, or where should the piano go?’” Bergevin said.
Motivated by this passion, he organized this summer’s inaugural Everett Jazz Walk, happening July 11 on the Everett waterfront. The one-night-only event features jazz artists from all around the Pacific Northwest performing in 10 venues around the port, which is amidst a multimillion-dollar redevelopment.
The event offers Everett locals the opportunity to catch live jazz without the trek to downtown Seattle. This year’s performers include Seattle jazz talent, including award-winning vocalist Greta Matassa and jazz-funk organist Joe Doria, as well as Everett musicians like guitarist Frank Kohl.
“I love the idea of artists getting together and people in community sharing art with each other,” Bergevin said, “and that's what this event feels like.”
The JazzClubsNW model
Bergevin was inspired to start the Everett Jazz Walk by Danny Kolke, a musician and venue proprietor in North Bend.
In 2010, Kolke formed JazzClubsNW in response to the mounting challenges facing musicians and music presenters. The nonprofit produces the long-running North Bend Jazz Walk, and a host of other community-based jazz events and educational opportunities.
In 2010, Kolke formedThe nonprofit produces the long-running North Bend Jazz Walk, and a host of other community-based jazz events and educational opportunities, despite the challenges facing musicians and music presenters today.
“The arts are swimming upstream against the internet, it's really hard to fill seats at concerts, it's really hard to do the marketing with the way they've throttled all the social media,” Bergevin said.
“This jazz walk thing seems to have hit some buttons to be able to actually activate some community to come out and gather.”
Kolke started JazzClubsNW a year after opening Boxley’s in North Bend, following a startling realization about the realities of running a music venue and restaurant, particularly in an 8,000-person mountain town.
“It became really evident we couldn't sell enough cheese burgers to pay for live music seven days a week,” he said.
With the help of a board of directors, volunteers, and members who support the nonprofit through a monthly fee, JazzClubsNW fundraises to support their programming, taking the pressure off the restaurant and bar as the main source of funds for the venue.
The model’s been so successful, Boxley’s opted to close their restaurant in 2016 to focus solely on music, and similar arrangements aren’t uncommon in regional jazz. Earshot Jazz also leverages a nonprofit structure to sustain their live music programming, and Seattle’s Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley has done so in the past.
In 2012, JazzClubsNW also began producing the North Bend Jazz Walk, which happens annually in April.
The festival, which sold out this year, has activated restaurants, café’s, coffee shops, a movie theatre and a car dealership as stages. Musical performances are typically staggered, but overlap to encourage attendees to walk around and catch different acts.
“It's not like…taking in one band and then the next band and just sitting in the same seat all day,” Kolke said. “You really get to take in the community, you get to take in the ambiance.”
Activating the waterfront
A few years after founding JazzClubsNW, other musicians approached Kolke looking to bring this model into their own communities. Bergevin, who’s taught music at Edmonds-Woodway High School since 1999, was one of them.
With Kolke’s help, Bergevin established the Edmonds branch of JazzClubsNW, which produces live jazz and hosts jams and other programming for students in the densely-populated Seattle suburb. Using North Bend Jazz Walk as the model, Bergevin launched Edmonds Jazz Walk in 2021, and now the jazz walk in Everett, where he’s lived for 30 years.
“Edmonds definitely has a particular kind of an old-fashioned town feeling, similar to North Bend, and the waterfront in Everett feels a little bit more cosmopolitan,” he said.
The Everett waterfront, which was previously home to heavy industry and timber mills, is getting a significant facelift. The Port of Everett is undergoing a multi-phase redevelopment, involving the addition of 1.5 million square feet of mixed use space, including recreational amenities, waterfront homes, retail businesses and restaurants.
Rachel Escalle is vice president of operations at NGMA Group, the parent company for Fisherman Jack’s and The Muse Whiskey and Coffee, two new waterfront businesses that will be venues during the Everett Jazz Walk.
Escalle said NGMA Group is excited to be a part of an event that’s “mutually beneficial” for their businesses and the jazz community. Per JazzClubsNW’s model, the venues get to keep 100% of what they make from food and beverage sales, while performers are paid directly by JazzClubsNW with ticket profits.
Escalle is also eager to support anything that brings attention to the potential of the “incredible” new waterfront space.
“Everybody's trying to really focus on bringing more to Everett and building up the city in general, but also, the things to do there and the culture and the community, and this is one more thing that really helps with that,” she said.
With the waterfront revamp in mind, Bergevin hypothesizes the Everett Jazz Walk could eventually become a “destination” jazz festival, with the fresh waterfront spaces serving as stages for big name jazz acts. The proximity to the largest public marina on the West Coast may even make it a draw for jazz-loving boaters.
But, Bergevin doesn’t have a boat and this event is all new this year. What he does know is that this event will bring in more opportunities to listen to jazz and encourage community connection — which is the mission of all JazzClubsNW programming.
“I love the idea of the jazz community sort of rallying around these little flagpole events, and all the artists coming to one city all at once,” Bergevin said.
“Everyone’s community-spirited, because none of the things pay outrageous, but because everybody’s there, it feels really good to be a performer, and it’s such a nice fundraiser for the cause of more jazz everywhere.”
