Shakeup at The Stage at Karma
Just two months after opening, there’s a shakeup at The Stage at Karma on the South Side.
Kevin Saftner, who took over promotions of the former Devils & Dolls after closing his James Street Gastropub and Speakeasy on the North Side in the fall, is leaving after this weekend, citing “differences with ownership.”
Promoter Jon Rinaldo has signed on to do national bookings at the venue at 1713 E. Carson St. owned by Mike Papariella. Mr. Rinaldo is not certain who will be doing the local bookings, and Mr. Papariella could not be reached for comment.
From 1989 to 2011, Mr. Rinaldo owned Joker Productions, which booked Oakland’s now-defunct Club Laga, among other venues. In 2003, Joker appeared on the Pollstar’s list of the Top 50 concert promoters in the country for the first quarter of that year.
In 2004, when Laga closed, he reopened the former Rosebud in the Strip District as The World, but it lasted less than a year due to a downturn in Strip District nightlife, he said . He became the talent buyer for Diesel on the South Side from 2007 to 2011 before retiring from promotion. He returned in 2016 to launch Big Bash Entertainment and once again become the talent buyer for Diesel, which is a block away from Karma.
“As of now I’m still the talent buyer at Diesel, but they are going in a different direction with live music, name change and interior look. My focus,” he says, “will be on Karma. It’s a smaller venue, and when I looked at the numbers from the past few years, a lot of the bands that I had at Diesel would have fit better in a smaller venue. It also opens an opportunity to book genres that didn’t fit well at Diesel: AAA, jam, groove, punk, under the radar hip-hop acts and other untapped genres.”
Thus far Mr. Rinaldo has announced for Karma: Wax & Mac Lethal on May 2, the Law Records Tour with Kash’d Out, Tunnel Vision and Seranation on May 17, The Crystal Method on May 19, and rap legend KRS-One on June 12.