Today’s Back to Rockville review of last night’s Dandy Warhols show, which I didn’t attend, mentions yet again the biggest issue I have with one of Westport’s (re-)emerging venues: The Beaumont Club and its horrendous sound.

For most native Kansas Citians, the Beaumont is more or less boiled down to the mechanical bull that used to be its main draw. For years, it was  a cowboy bar where rednecks and white trash (read: locals) could go and get drunk on cheap beer and maybe see a $20 metal show.

The location has undergone some major changes recently though – the Westport Beach Club is gone, and is now replaced with the equally frat-tastic Backyard. The addition of Sidecar as a satellite venue next door was just completed recently.

Act-wise, the venue has been on a much more aggressive booking spree in the last year-plus, getting a lot of acts that would probably be better served at the Record Bar.  Nothing wrong with a little friendly competition, though – the fewer entries on notcomingtokansascity the better, right?

Which is all well and good until you actually go in the place for a show. Granted, last night’s Dandy Warhols show was $15, which, in comparison to most shows at the Beaumont, is on the cheap end. I’m not concerned with the up-and-coming nobodies the place books to fill in weeknights, but typical covers for a national touring band worth seeing begin at $20 a person and go from there. We paid $30 apiece for Broken Social Scene last year – Lee Perry was around $30, never-weres Buckcherry are slotted at $35 next week, Tortoise and Prefuse 73 is a respectable $18, KMFDM is $25, and Dinosaur Jr is $20.

Again, all well and good – if people are willing to pay these amounts, so be it. The issue I keep seeing in every review of an event at the location mentions the negative impact of the sound. Regardless of the genre on display, the sound is, in a word, terrible. After experiencing it firsthand on a few occasions, I made a conscious decision to forego seeing artists like Perry, Tortoise, etc there because I could not justify a $50 night of essentially standing around looking at artists I admire moving around on stage going through the motions of making music, while hearing instead a swirling sludge of sound going on in the background and periphery.

It’s great that the Beaumont has essentially taken on Lawrence’s Granada by bringing in acts that would otherwise head straight to the college town out west, but they’ve got to do something about either their equipment, the room layout, or the person/persons running the board. Kansas City is unfortunately notorious for having horrendous soundboard operators, and while the Beaumont has enough flaws already, this is ultimately going to be the one that keeps the rabid music fans from coming out to pay the cover they are charging.  Nobody wants to pay $30 a ticket to see their favorite band sound like garbled shit.