Hearing that Randy Burns is playing two nights at The Space in Hamden (the weekend of Aug. 26-27) makes me think more than “Huh, Randy Burns is still out there.” It makes me realize that The Space fully deserves to claim the mantle of the old Exit Coffeehouse, the legendary ‘60s and ‘70s folk club/collective where Randy Burns got his start.
I missed the entire existence of the Exit. By the time I moved to New Haven, its spirit had dwindled to the occasional reunion. A few different people presented me with copies of the live anthology album recorded there.
This was a volunteer-run listening room whose top performers, such as Burns, were on par with the big-city folk scene in Greenwich Village. The folks who ran the Exit were uncommonly dedicated: I heard stories of New Haven hippies passing up going to Woodstock because they didn’t want to cancel an Exit show. The place is still spoken of in glowing terms as a community-based cultural landmark of its era. The Exit was so warmly remembered, so well documented, that one imagined it as a phenomenon that could never be repeated.
Yet, consider this: Steve Rodgers founded The Space in 2003, in the classic volunteer-staffed coffeehouse manner. It grew out of well organized weekly open mic nites at the rehearsal studio Steve’s band Mighty Purple. Like the Exit, The Space has paid high homage to folk and other acoustic musics, but also embraced rock, the blues, and whatever else the community was supporting. The Exit brought in countless college students; The Space has captured an even younger high school crowd. The Exit distinguished itself from the more commercial clubs where the main purpose was to sell beer. So has The Space, even when it recently opened a second club, The Outer Space, which has a beer-and-wine permit.

A two-night stand by Exit superstar Randy Burns and his Sky Dog Band should clinch the connection, but a quick scan of any month’s Space and Outer Space schedules will show you how devoted the venues are to a range of listening-room joys: solo singer/songwriters, harmony-trilling duos, three-piece pop acts, contemporary jazz quartets, on up to large ska bands and 150-capacity audiences.

The Exit and The Space. Two venues whose names suggest voids. Both created to fill a needed gap, and doing more than they’re given credit for in terms of ignoring generation gaps.