Thirty-nine years in the making — well, maybe not quite, but a long time — “Bar,” a 400-page, limited-edition coffee-table book chronicling the wild ride of the Stephen Talkhouse since 1987, will be released on July 25.
The Amagansett watering hole changed hands in 1987, when Peter Honerkamp, an ambulance salesman who had recently given up aspirations to be a novelist, and partners acquired it. The writer Clifford Irving, Honerkamp remembers in “Bar,” asked him if there was anything else he wanted to do. Honerkamp mentioned owning a bar, and Irving suggested he buy the Talkhouse. “In that moment I decided to do it,” he wrote. The reborn bar opened on or about Aug. 1 of that year.
Klyph Black and Eddie Mac were the first musicians to perform at the new establishment, soon to be followed by their full band, Rumor Has It. But in October 1987, the late blues musician John Hammond Jr., who lived in East Hampton, gave a performance, packing the intimate space at $10 per person. The concept of bringing national talent to the tiny establishment was born. Mose Allison, Taj Mahal, Richie Havens, Buddy Guy, and Junior Wells would soon follow. Soon, audiences would include Mick Jagger, Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley, Kathleen Turner, Jimmy Buffett, Jann and Jane Wenner, and Paul McCartney, several of them also taking to its stage for impromptu performances.
How that little bar has grown. In 1994, East Hampton Town approved an expansion and the tiny club grew a little larger, but not too much. A larger stage, however, allowed acts that would not have fit previously. Today, summer nights see a queue stretching hundreds of feet down Main Street, young adults waiting as long as necessary to get inside. The Stephen Talkhouse hosts annual concerts both for Sirius XM satellite radio (Metallica played under a tent behind the bar last August) and the Soho Sessions (the country superstars Dan + Shay performed last Thursday). Talkhouse Encore is a line of ready-to-drink cocktails and seltzers, and the Talkhouse Records label was recently launched.
Though it was short-lived, a Miami edition of the Talkhouse was opened in 1992. In 2004, Chris Carney, a Talkhouse employee, cycled from Montauk to San Diego to raise money for veterans wounded in the war in Iraq, and the annual Soldier Ride was born. This year’s local edition of the ride, which has spread to places throughout the United States, happens on Saturday.
As told by many, according to Honerkamp in “Bar,” the Stephen Talkhouse “became a movement” and “carved out a space where folk, rock, blues, and much more collided.” To date, more than 80 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees have performed there.
The present “felt like this really interesting moment to put pen to paper, to talk about where we’ve been, where we are today, where we’re going,” said Ruby Honerkamp, Peter Honerkamp’s daughter. “It’s more of a moment of reflection, it’s not like the story’s over. I think there’s also so much that people don’t even know about the Talkhouse. They might just see it as a place they’ve been to for a concert once, or they might have been to a concert multiple times in the Talkhouse, their late-night watering hole.”
“Whenever I hear my dad start telling stories about the place — I’ve heard these stories 100 too many times — I think of being able to give the stories to a new audience,” she added, “and an understanding of the beauty and chaos behind this place that you might frequent often, or only once. The Talkhouse is such a beloved institution, and people don’t even know a fraction of the craziness that goes on. Our hope is that this story inspires more storytelling.”
“I was involved with the Talkhouse since I first walked in when I was 16,” said Ted Delano, the lead editor of “Bar,” “and begged Nick [Kraus, a Talkhouse promoter] to see Richie Havens.” He later developed a professional relationship with the bar, working on its website and those of Soldier Ride and Talkhouse Encore. “There was the idea of doing a book over the years. At some point Ruby and I were talking, and it started to become more of a conversation.”
“We kept coming back to this idea of ‘told by many,’ ” Ruby Honerkamp said. Her father is “definitely the general that opened the floodgate,” she allowed, “but I think the Talkhouse is the Talkhouse because of so many people — the staff, the musicians, the audience, the community. So many nights, so many moments, so many stories.”
The book’s editorial concept and creative direction were helmed by Delano’s Made by Sea creative studio in Portugal, where he lives. “We work with a lot of businesses out here,” he said of the South Fork, “and a lot of family-run businesses. In the constantly changing environment of the Hamptons and the commercialization of the Hamptons, the Stephen Talkhouse, for me, is one of the last few places where you can still breathe. I’m saying this as a bigger reflection on all of it, but human spirit is important. When things get too curated, you can lose that human spirit. The human spirit is very alive at the Talkhouse.”
“Ted has been such a trusted partner, as has his team in Portugal,” Ruby Honerkamp said, “that it felt like the right way we wanted to produce the book. Ted also had worked with this printer in Portugal,” she said, citing the craftsmanship and quality of the book itself.
Like the Talkhouse, the printer, Grafica Maiadouro, is a family-run business, Delano said. “It’s very craft-oriented there. We have a small design studio, and the designers that we work with are very detail-focused. On the production side of it, when you’re making something like a book, there’s just a lot of care for detail. And,” he said of “Bar,” “you can feel it when you hold the book.”
“Bar” is priced at $160. The launch will happen on the weekend of July 25 and 26. Copies will be available for purchase and pickup on July 25, with a more formal launch on the following day. Details will be shared via the Stephen Talkhouse website and its social media platforms.