Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 15, 1995 TAG: 9509150043
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHLEEN WILSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Fire had destroyed his house. He was sleeping at his parents' home.
``I had lost it all,'' Butler recalls. ``I didn't even own a toothbrush.''
When Butler wakes up today, he'll find out if he's homeless again.
This time it isn't his house. It's the Roanoke Comedy Club, which he founded and owns. He has made the bittersweet decision to sell the Williamson Road building that has housed the club since 1991, and today he finds out whether the deal will go through.
That's the sweet part.
``I need to get out from underneath all of this debt,'' Butler says, waving his hand around the huge but very empty building he opened with proud hope four years ago.
The bitter part is that, for the fourth time in the 11-year Comedy Club history, it will have no home.
``The Comedy Club may have to be out of here as soon as the end of the month,'' Butler says.
Once again, he is like a cat hanging onto a screen door with one claw - slipping, just about to drop.
In the past, he has always managed to climb his way back to the top.
This time, it's different. This time, he says, he is really scared.
Looking back at the roller coaster ride that has been the history of the club, it's hard to determine whether Jimmy Butler has had the worst luck in the entire world, or the best.
He opened the Roanoke Comedy Club in the Down the Hatch room of the Patrick Henry Hotel in January 1985.
``I had always wanted to run my own business, but didn't figure out it was comedy until I first went to the Richmond Comedy Club,'' recalls Butler. ``When I left, my sides were hurting and so were all of my facial muscles. It was the greatest feeling in the whole world, laughing. It still is.''
For almost a year and a half, Butler worked as a loan officer for Colonial American National Bank (now Crestar) by day, and ran the Comedy Club at night.
Don't ask him how many hours he worked a week. It just didn't matter.
``I would leave the bank in a three-piece-suit at 4:30 p.m. and open the club at 7:30,'' he recalls. ``But it wasn't like work. It really wasn't. It was just like what you hear pro sports players say about how they can't believe they are actually being paid to do something they love so much.''
Among the comics who worked the club on their way to stardom are Rosie O'Donnell and Steve Lawrence.
Running the club isn't easy. Butler says he thinks a lot of folks believe he just sits around waiting for the show to start on weekends.
``I don't just wave a magic wand and comedy happens.''
He has acts to book and inventories to keep and orders to place and deliveries to accept.
And laundry to do and toilets to scrub. Butler houses visiting comics in a local apartment building he cleans himself each week after the talent leaves town.
Things were great at the Patrick Henry for three years. The club was given just five days notice to vacate, but Butler managed to re-open the club five days later at the Hotel Roanoke.
Then Norfolk Southern gave the hotel to Virginia Tech. Butler arranged to move into what was the old Wood Nichols building on Williamson Road, and managed to talk the Patrick Henry into letting him operate the club from there while the building was renovated.
``This was my dream,'' he says, waving his hands around the large empty building. It has been home to at least three restaurants that were supposed to provide the food to support the liquor license Butler needed to run his comedy club upstairs.
``But it was the worst business decision I ever made, moving into this building.''
Butler never found the one thing he needed for his dream to become a raging success: a restaurant that could survive.
``I don't know how he does it,'' says his wife, Diane, whom he married in 1991 just as disaster began to hit. ``But Jimmy never lets anything get him down. Somehow, he can always see the light at the end of the tunnel.''
The Comedy Club has always been successful, even with admission prices rising only $2 (to $7) in 10 years. It's restaurant problems that keep dragging Butler - and the club, which is usually packed - down.
``I need to get out of this building,'' he admits. ``This has been a nightmare. It scares me. I don't want to go through moving again, but I've got to get out from underneath the burden of this bank loan.''
Butler admits his luck may have run out this time.
``What if this time, I don't bounce back?''
Roanoke Mayor David Bowers - independently of any request from Butler - has asked the city's economic development committee to ``help Jimmy find a home for that great club of his.'' To Bowers and others, the Roanoke Comedy Club is one of Roanoke's many assets.
Mike Ashley, a club regular who has taken his turn as a comic at the mike, says the Roanoke Comedy Club is one of those things people will only miss once it is gone.
Ashley respects Butler for what he's tried to do.
``Even though he's never tried stand-up himself, it was always like getting called over to Johnny's [Carson] desk when Jimmy told you you'd done a great job,'' he said.
WROV-FM disc jockey Sam Giles, Butler's friend and collaborator on many of the club's award-winning radio and television commercials, knows that many people in the local business community probably don't think of Butler as one of them.
``But I think he just has to be one of the sharpest businessmen in town,'' declares Giles. ``He has to be, to have survived and succeeded as long as he has through so much bad stuff.''
In one of the commercial spots, Butler imitated Oral Roberts and pleaded with Roanoke to come to the comedy club or God was going to "call him home."
It worked. For a while.
Butler can't run to WROV to make another four-alarm ``save the Comedy Club" spot.
He'll learn today how much longer it'll be where it is. If their financing goes through, the new owners are expected to turn the place into a dance club.
``I am trying to save my baby, but I need to get out of this building,'' Butler admits. ``All I need is an intimate little room. There just has to be a place out there somewhere.''
One venue offered him space, but in order to run the club, Butler would have technically become an employee.
``In essence, I could have been manager,'' he explains.
He turned it down. The Roanoke Comedy Club belongs to Jimmy Butler. Simply as manager, he could lose the club he founded if the owners decided to bring in another manager at any time.
What has he learned from all of this?
``That I still love the comedy business. That people will always want to laugh. That I never want to mess with the restaurant business again in my life."
And that no matter what, he refuses to give up.
``I just need a home. Someone will have to drag me kicking and screaming out of the comedy business.''
But if that doesn't happen, the eternally sunny Butler still adds, ``At least I can say I tried. That I gave it my best shot. That I wasn't one of those men who live their lives in quiet desperation, with a dream in their heads they never get a shot at trying.''
by CNB