Blueberry Hill’s long-running venue The Duck Room, which from 1996 through 2014 played host to monthly performances by the legendary Chuck Berry, whose iconic “Duck Walk” serves as the inspiration for the space’s name, has undergone a facelift in recent weeks.
According to owner Joe Edwards’ daughter Christine Edwards, who was instrumental to the renovations, the team at the venue decided to take advantage of a pause in live events (as reported by SLM in June) to spruce up the joint.
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“The Duck Room opened in 1997, and there have been small renovations along the way, but we’ve never had the chance to do major upgrades like this in terms of painting, and updating the bathrooms, and refinishing some woodwork, getting new doors, and upgrading the lighting and sound equipment, because we’ve never had time enough to do anything major between booked shows,” she explains. The venue will open to the public tonight for its first show back since the break, a James Brown tribute by Berry’s grandson’s band, The Charlie Berry Project.
Edwards says that, once they’d made their mind up to put some work into the space, the renovations came together quickly.
“We actually accomplished all of it in two and a half weeks, which was nuts,” she says. “Timing-wise, it was really crazy. It was like: This guy’s gonna paint on this day, and they’re installing the lighting on this day. And then we’re going to do the green room. So, I mean, in total, I bet it took about two and a half or three weeks.”
Visitors to the space will notice quite a few new changes. The room has undergone a paint job, with its color changing from what Edwards lovingly refers to as “Post-It yellow” to a blue color that matches the curtain on the stage. The idea, she explains, was to make it feel as if the curtain was wrapping around the room, giving the vibe that the listener is onstage with the band, to make the space feel more intimate. Additionally, the team tapped Josh Howell of Hywel Dda Carpentry to replace some doors in the space that had been damaged over the years, in addition to refinishing the railing of the bar.
On the artist side of things, the green room, too, has seen a revamp. It’s now painted multiple shades of blue, with each wall or plane painted a different hue, for a striking effect that Edwards says the team is quite proud of. The space underwent a deep cleaning as well, particularly the bathrooms, which also got new faucets, new caulk on the sinks, repainted walls, and more updates.
Of the venue’s new look, Edwards says, “I think it just looks cleaner. I think it looks crisper. I think it looks a little bit more updated.”
But looks aren’t everything—at a music venue, the sound is paramount. To that end, Edwards says they’ve installed upgraded sound equipment, in addition to a new lighting system.
Consort Productions had previously handled booking at the Duck Room, and continues to do so at venues including The Pageant, Delmar Hall, and Off Broadway. According to Edwards, future booking at The Duck Room will be in the hands of a larger group of individual promoters. She speculates that Consort will likely be among them on occasion as well, but that the venue is opening its books to a larger overall pool of promoters in the hopes of showcasing more variety in musical styles.
In all, Edwards says she hopes that the updated space and the changes to booking will be a net gain for St. Louis’ music scene, and will help with ongoing efforts to rebuild the community in a post-pandemic world.
“The hope is that we’ll still get national touring bands and larger names, but I think we’re kind of trying to focus a little bit more on rebuilding the local music scene and being a little bit more community-focused post-COVID,” Edwards says. “We’re trying to get people out and back to seeing, like, local shows again. Because it just still feels like there’s a little bit of a lag of people wanting to get back out and leave their house and do stuff.”
