The former Eagles Club “aerie” at 2401 W. Wisconsin Ave. – called The Rave today – has been hosting concerts likely longer than you’ve been alive.
From big bands to the Big Bopper to the Hollies to Howlin’ Wolf to Counting Crows to Coldplay to the latest in hip-hop, metal and alternative bands these days, the building has seen it all.
You can read about the long history of the 1926 building in this Urban Spelunking story.
But, The Rave isn’t your grandmother’s Million Dollar Ballroom anymore.
With five venues in a variety of sizes, from bars to a ballroom, owner Joe Balestrieri calls it a “Disneyland of entertainment."
“When you come to The Rave, you're not just stuck in the room watching the show. You can go down to the craft beer lounge, you can go to The Rave Bar, you can go outside to the plaza, you can go upstairs to the Penthouse. And it is really a concert experience as opposed to just going to a concert.”
And, now, that experience has been elevated not only by an entirely new HVAC system, but also new sound systems in the two largest rooms – the ballroom and The Rave.
“Every room, every venue is now air conditioned and all the heating has all been updated,” says Manager Colin O'Connell.
Taking me outside, O’Connell shows me the guts of the shiny new system, which he says replaces a temporary system that used to pull up in a semi and then they’d run big white hoses from the truck through some windows.
“Temporary air conditioning ... didn't really accomplish what we wanted to,” he says. “This is permanent. It all works. It makes a huge difference at our shows.”
During a heatwave in June when temps ticked 100 and the heat index exceeded that number, O’Connell says shows at the building were well attended and the air was cool.
“We had 1,500 people in The Rave and it was fine all night,” he says.
While the system has a number of zones, allowing for the different temperatures in each room, The Rave Bar has its own separate system for when there are shows in there and the rest of the building is quiet.
“We can turn the air in the Ballroom 28 times an hour,” adds Balestrieri. “You always have fresh air. We put in HVAC, not just air conditioning. It's a new state of the art heating system, which cut our gas bill ... it has tanked.”
At the top of the stairs to the ballroom, a glass wall is being installed to keep the chilled air in.
Another “cool” (literally) upgrade is at the plaza out in front of the building, which has been in use for a few years but recently got some nice stamped concrete, new fencing and more.
“This has worked really well for us,” O’Connell says. “It's nice to just have an outdoor space along with the indoor space. We'll do food trucks out here, set up vendors, band merchandise will go out here.”
Another big improvement is in the sound systems in the two largest rooms in the building. Completely new systems in those rooms have replaced 20-year-old P.A.s, according to The Rave’s Audio Manager Jeff Claveau.
“It just got to the point where more and more tours and customers wanted better sound,” he says. “Everybody wants the newer shinier toys. So we did some research and went and listened to several different P.A.s and this one I got to hear it right out of the box. It was incredible the clarity that came out of the boxes.”
While they upgraded the mixing desks and other parts of the system, Claveau says, “it was more about the speakers.”
The other rooms in the building will get similar upgrades in time, Claveau adds.
“I'm working on it,” he says, “A P.A. is not a ‘do four rooms at once’-type situation. We wanted to make sure that the system that we were going with is reliable. And two P.A.s is not cheap. So we decided to split it up and eventually add the Bar and the basement venue.
“It'll be the same manufacturer, just a different model.”
Balestrieri says that the backstage areas for the performers are also getting some upgrades, too.
“You have to every day strive to be the best you can for your customer, and you have to strive to be the best you can for the bands,” Balestrieri says, “because you get the bands, you get the customers and you don't have the bands, you don't get the customers.”
With the Live Nation concert venue in the Deer District nearing completion, competition among venues in Milwaukee is about to heat up even more, notes Balistreri, and keeping The Rave venues fresh and up to date is important.
“By continually improving the experience, we’re in a position that we can keep getting better,” he says, noting that the 1926 Eagles Club building, designed by one-time Frank Lloyd Wright collaborator Russell Barr Williamson is unique, not only in Milwaukee, but in the country.
“Every time you get somebody in here who really knows the entertainment business, they go crazy over the building because there's just no place like it,” he says. “It's been 32 years of just continual renovation step by step by step.
“A lot of our renovation has really been taking the building back to what it was originally when the Eagles had it, so I wouldn't really even call it renovation, I would call it maybe restoration. Constant maintenance.
“When I look at the Milwaukee marketplace, you really have (only) a few iconic buildings like this left ... 2026 is the 100th anniversary of the building.
“(In 50 years) I think that the Eagles Club will still be here doing what we're doing. Hopefully the Pabst Theater and Riverside Theater will still be there, too, keeping the historic fiber of Milwaukee’s Concert Industry thriving.”
NOTE: This content created in partnership with The Rave.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press. A fifth collects Urban Spelunking articles about breweries and maltsters.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has been heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
