“There’s a good feel out there,” Hagan
says. “People listen better when they’re not drunk. They want to hear
my own recordings. They ask for my originals, so I do a mix.”
On March 14, Swedish-born
singer-songwriter Chris Brenne will venture out of his Beantown home
base to perform on the same stage as he cultivates a national audience.
“Chris plays coffeehouses all around Boston, but he was doing a gig in
Chicago,” explains Burritt’s co-owner Darryl Wolford. “He found us—a
friend of his lives in Syracuse—and he said, ‘While I’m on my way, I
can get off the Thruway, in two minutes be at Burritt’s Café, do a gig
Friday night and be in Chicago for my Saturday night gig.”
Brenne is one of several touring acts
that is putting Burritt’s on the national map and creating a buzz along
the Thruway corridor and across the Internet. “I was asked just last
night what my favorite venue might be like,” Brenne says. “Burritt’s
came to mind for several reasons. It should be a sort of natural
meeting place for people to come and see music, but also hang out with
friends. I’ve been to a lot of places around the country and it’s one
of many similar cafes that I always look forward to playing at.”
Customers never incur a cover charge to
enjoy the music or the carefully designed menu of breakfast entrees,
sandwiches, salads, coffees and teas, all served in the midst of the
impressive ambiance of a former hardware store. The café’s renovation
was still under way when the couple opened the smaller front dining
area in March 2006, a few weeks before finishing the main room that now
features the stage. The rich look of the décor boasts plenty of
weathered beams and plank flooring with brick walls behind the counter
and the elevated stage.
Sweets on you: Sherry Saben-Wolford and Darryl Wolford,
co-owners of Burritt’s Café, share a Saturday night with local music
fans, who flock to the eatery to munch on its delectable deserts; the
bathroom (below) is an attraction too. MICHAEL DAVIS
{mospagebreak}
A glass case displays a tempting array
of desserts, all created on the premises and many crafted to be
healthier than standard cakes and cookies. “I’m a registered nurse, by
profession,” says Sherry Saben-Wolford, Wolford’s former classmate,
wife of four years and business partner. “So I’m very aware of the
unhealthiness of many regular foods with the insecticides and
pesticides and chemicals used to process it and I didn’t want that
here. I’m also aware of the effect of sugar on everybody. So it became
very important to me to find the best sources of products that are
hormone-free, antibiotic-free and locally produced. We use all high-end
products. That’s what I want. I want quality.”
Most confections and rolls are produced
on site by the café’s baker, Karmen Casetaro, and the goodness isn’t
lost on regular visitors. “I’m a cookie-holic,” Hagan confesses. “They
always make sure I get some. But they’re more healthy. Some of it is
organic, which I like to eat.”
The business name comes from the early
owner of the hardware store where Wolford, who grew up in the
Weedsport-Cato area, had purchased material and supplies for his
cabling business. “In 1850, Oren W. Burritt moved from Connecticut to
join his cousin in the hardware business here,” Saben-Wolford recounts.
“In 1852, he bought the building and built the adjoining building as
the O.W. Burritt and Brother Machine Shop, where he patented two tools
that are now hung over our front door.”
That original building was lost in a
fire and replaced by the current structure, which had remained vacant
for several years as Wolford simmered a desire to see it rehabilitated.
“We saw this building sitting here in the center of town pretty much
unused for five or six years,” he says, “and decided, first of all, to
renovate the building and make it come alive again.” The exterior of
the rejuvenated café has an art-deco look, with orange bricks trimmed
in gray and a 75-foot Erie Canal mural on the north wall, across a
parking lot from another Weedsport landmark, the Old Erie Restaurant.
Where once there were racks of plumbing
fixtures and shelves of tools, there’s now more than a dozen tables
with glass tops laid over colorful tablecloths and an upright piano
that occasionally provides some impromptu entertainment. “If I can get
someone to sit down and tickle those keys, you bet,” Saben-Wolford
exclaims. “I’ve had a couple of college kids come in and start playing
and I say, ‘You can play for your meal,’ so they played for a while.”
The new life of the handsome edifice now
includes evening performances Thursdays through Sundays, generally from
7 to 9 p.m., an early time slot that has proven as popular with the
musicians as the patrons. “The level of music has just been
astounding,” Wolford marvels. “A lot of the musicians have played
barroom music their whole careers. Here we can seat and accommodate
enough people so it draws a good crowd. You can get 75 or 80 people in
here for a performance that’s non-alcoholic. A lot of musicians bring
their children. For some kids, it’s the first time they ever saw their
father play.”
Saturdays and Sundays also feature a matinee of music that appeals to customers who may rarely go out at night.
Nurturing the business as a live music
venue, aided by a creative Web site (www.burritts.com), has helped the
owners to move beyond a small, blue-collar town eatery to make a name
for Burritt’s. “That’s opened up a whole new door for us,” Wolford
theorizes. “I just did a booking of a lady from Nova Scotia. She’s
traveling to do an act down in Nashville. She said, ‘I found you on the
Web and realized you’re kind of on my way. How about I stop and sing
for a night?’ So it’s very interesting, the whole dynamics going on
with the explosion of music on the Web.”
Wolford now has his sights on another
musical project inspired by Syracuse pianist Joe Riposo. “Joe stopped
in one day and played a recording he had done,” Saben-Wolford recalls.
“Darryl said, ‘That’s beautiful. Where did you record that?’ and Joe
said, ‘Right here!’”
Wolford is now working toward laying
some live tracks in the café. “There’s something about the hardwood and
brick that just works,” he says. “Joe said he’d been in studios all
over and didn’t get sound like that.”
If all goes according to plan, customers
will soon be able to get a freshly made recording of a favorite
musician along with their takeout orders. It’ll be another reason to
visit the café where the music is as hot as the coffee.
Burritt’s Café is open Mondays through
Wednesdays, 6 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Thursdays and Fridays, 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.;
Saturdays, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.; and Sundays, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more
information, call 834-6870.
