Stuff of coffee-house dreams: Dosey Doe turns 10
In 2004, the seemingly never-ending expansion project on Interstate 45 in The Woodlands finally ended. Steve Said figured it was time do something with that parcel of land he owned alongside the highway. He still would run his bank-equipment company, but why not use that property to start a new business?
Said thought, how about a coffee house?
“I decided that a coffee house would be kind of cool,” he said. “I went to a couple of classes about coffee and had one of those once-in-a-lifetime realizations: Hey, I’m really good at this! I have the nose for it. I have the palate. I understand the science of coffee.”
Said did build his coffee house — except the place isn’t just a coffee house anymore.
It’s the Dosey Doe, a thriving dinner and concert venue, unique on the American music scene. Sure, you can get a cup of coffee with your dessert — but that’s country superstar Vince Gill onstage playing about 15 feet from you and asking what song you’d like to hear. How did that happen? “I set out to build a coffee house, but I didn’t want another Starbucks or anything like other coffee places,” Said said. “I’m an American artifact guy. I have all sorts of stuff, signs and beautiful artwork, a collection of things from the King Ranch, history stuff. I went out looking for a barn for my coffee house. Barns are a part of America that’s gone away — big, beautiful barns. I wound up hiring two guys in Indiana to find me one. They found one in Kentucky for me. It was beautiful, 165 years old, 35-feet high, made from 600-year-growth oak and birch wood.”
The barn originally was built to store tobacco. Later it was used to house livestock. Most recently, it was a depot to repair school buses. Said bought the barn, had it dismantled, its pieces put on a flatbed truck and brought to The Woodlands, where it was reconstructed on the I-45 feeder road.
Said decided to call his coffee house “Joan’s Jumpin’ Java.” The advertising logo had Said’s wife, Joan, wearing a cowboy hat and riding a stick horse.
“The lawyers told me there were a lot of places using ‘Jumpin’ Java,’ and I might want to change that. My wife came up with ‘Dosey Doe.’ We considered other names, but ‘Dosey Doe’ was a home run. Barn. Texas. Lyrical. People loved that name. The logo stayed, though,” he said.
As reconstruction on the barn neared completion, Said realized he may have something more — something bigger — than a coffee house on his hands.
“With all this dense wood, this barn could be good for music. I brought in two sound technicians who worked on the barn to make it acoustically perfect. The final result was, we couldn’t believe how wonderful it sounded,” Said said.
He figured, “Maybe I could have musicians in here playing while customers had their coffee. Maybe I could serve food with that music and coffee.”
Opening night for the Dosey Doe dinner and concert hall was Oct. 5, 2006. There were only 270 seats in the place. The first headliner was Cecil Shaw, whom Said describes as “Houston’s greatest vocal treasure” — with a voice somewhere between Barry White and Lou Rawls.
Shaw will be back next month as Dosey Doe celebrates its 10th anniversary.
Dosey Doe now hosts 250 concerts a year. It’s one of the busiest concert venues in Texas. Last year, Said expanded the seating capacity to 420 by buying another barn — this one “only 105 years old” — and creating one enormous barn along I-45.
In the beginning, Dosey Doe booked mostly local musicians who were grateful for a new place to play in the Houston area.
“I had to chase down 95 percent of the acts we booked here,” he said. “We were new. Nobody knew what Dosey Doe was.”
Early on, Dosey Doe caught a break. Country star Neal McCoy was visiting his son, who was attending Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, and agreed to play Said’s barn. McCoy was wowed by the acoustics. He called the barn “Song Church” and began talking up Dosey Doe to fellow musicians in Nashville.
“That got my phone ringing,” Said said. “Slowly, nationally known artists wanted to play here. I had to tell their agents, ‘Look, we’re a small place. I can’t afford to pay what your artist normally gets.’ The agent would come back with, ‘That’s OK, my artist wants to play there.’ Today, I’d say that 95 percent of our performers call me asking to play Dosey Doe.”
Said upped his food game, too. Customers choose between two appetizers, five entrees and two desserts. The biggest seller, by far, is the “Ginormous Chicken-fried Steak.”
“(Singer) Aaron Watson calls himself a pre-eminent chickenfried-steak expert, and he says we probably have the best anywhere. Our most popular dessert is bread pudding. We make it 10 different ways,” Said said.
Dosey Doe is not a typical concert experience. Dinner is served one-anda-half hours before the concert. The performer stands on a stage practically within arms’ length of the fans. Last week, the lead singer of the Fixx reached down and finished a customer’s dessert. The setting is relaxed and intimate. Performers talk to the crowd. Some take requests. It’s like being at home in your living room — with Clint Black dropping by to do a show.
Upcoming shows include Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame member John Sebastian (Sept. 24), Herman’s Hermits (Oct. 2), Vince Gill and the Time Jumpers (Oct. 9), John Michael Montgomery (Oct. 16), Tracy Byrd (Oct. 28), Ronnie Milsap (Nov. 11), Clint Black (Dec. 1), Nils Lofgren (Dec. 15) and Chubby Checker (Jan. 15).
Final word: I’ve had the “Ginormous Chickenfried Steak.” To borrow from famed defense attorney Jackie Chiles, it’s real, and it’s spectacular.