Joey Arias and the Pete Leinonen Band at Re-Bar, Seattle, WA, August 5th and 26th, 1991 and at the Crocodile Café, Seattle, WA, August 16, 1991
The local Pete Leinonen Band backed New Yorker Joey Arias’ Billie Holiday impersonation for three nights in August 1991 at Seattle's Re-Bar and Crocodile Café in Belltown, as advertised by this poster. Local performer and producer Paula Sjunneson (b. unknown), then known as the Swedish Housewife, had first brought Arias to Re-Bar in 1990, the year the venue opened, where he performed his first full set as Holiday.
Joey Arias is an openly gay performance artist, cabaret singer, and drag artist living in New York City. He was born in North Carolina and moved to Los Angeles at the age of six, where he later became an early member of the comedy troupe the Groundlings. On December 15, 1979, Arias and his close friend, Alternative musician Klaus Nomi (1944 – 1983), performed with David Bowie on Saturday Night Live. Arias gained popularity after making cameos in the 1988 films Mondo New York, Big Top Pee-wee, and Elvira: Mistress of the Dark. It was at Wigstock, the infamous East Village drag festival which ran from 1984 to 2005, where he debuted his signature blunt black bangs, a tight, high ponytail, and sleek eyeliner, a nod to Billie Holiday on the cover of Lady in Satin. In the 1990s, Arias covered Holiday’s music in a show called Strange Fruit, which ran for over a year at the Astor Place Theatre in New York, and he performed weekly at Bar d’O in the West Village. In 2003, he moved to Las Vegas to emcee in Cirque du Soleil’s Zumanity, before moving back to New York in 2009.
Pete Leinonen (b. 1942) is a bandleader, bassist, arranger, composer, and producer. He holds a BA in music from the University of Washington, where he also had graduate training with Robert Garfias and John Wittwer. His work has been featured in several films, and he has performed in Swing, Big Band, Jazz, Latin, Hawaiian, and Dixieland groups around the Pacific Northwest and beyond. The Pete Leinonen Band is the modern jazz band that has played the majority of Leinonen’s compositions since the introduction of his Original Cast record label in the 1970s, when the band was formed. The band regularly performed in local clubs and festivals, and they released their first recording, Ashfall, as a vinyl EP inspired by Mount St. Helens’ eruption in 1980, featuring Leinonen on bass, Prentis Drew (b. unknown) on drums, Keith Baggerly (b. unknown) on trumpet and flugelhorn, John Day (b. unknown) on guitar, and Ray Downey (1953 – 2014) on flute, piccolo, and saxophone.
Stephanie Dogan opened The Crocodile Café on April 30, 1991, at 2200 2nd Ave in Belltown, quickly becoming a fixture in the Seattle music scene. The Crocodile Café was closed in December 2007, reopening as The Crocodile in March 2009, now owned by Alice in Chains’ drummer Sean Kinney, managed by Susan Silver (b. 1958), guitarist Eric Howk (b. 1981) of Portugal. The Man, Peggy Curtis (b. unknown), and Marcus Charles (b. 1973), co-founder of Capitol Hill Block Party. In 2021, The Crocodile reopened nearby at 2505 1st Ave in a larger space. Numerous popular groups including Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Ann Wilson, Cheap Trick, and Billie Eilish have performed at the club.
Steve Wells and Patrick “Pit” Kwiecinski opened Re-Bar in January 1990 at 1114 Howell Street, which had long been a safe space for Seattle’s LGBTQ community. The Night Hawk Tavern (or Nite Hawk) opened in the 1930s, creating a center of gay nightlife featuring cabaret, followed by Thirsty’s in the 1970s, which then became Axel Rock, a dance-focused venue, in the 1980s, and finally Sparks Tavern, which added full-length stage plays, before Re-Bar moved in. Until 2020, when Re-Bar, like many venues during the COVID-19 pandemic, closed indefinitely, they hosted disco nights, art exhibits, theatre, drag, burlesque, and live bands, supporting generations of LGBTQ patrons and performers. KEXP’s Riz Rollins got his start as a DJ, becoming a big part of Seattle’s Black music scene, David Schmader put on his first three plays, and drag performer and comedian Dina Martina was born at Re-Bar. The venue also hosted one of the longest running poetry nights in the West, Seattle Poetry Slam, and a weekly Sunday dance night, Flammable. On September 13, 1991, Re-Bar also hosted the infamous release party for Nirvana’s second album, Nevermind.
