Burned Restaurant Had Rich Musical Past -- `The Other Side' Known For Folk, Jazz

-- AUBURN

The air smells of wet ash around downtown Auburn's Truitt Building. The two-story brick structure, at 78 years the city's oldest, is little more than a shell after a fire gutted it early Saturday morning.

Auburn fire officials said today the fire was caused by a short circuit in the main service panel of the building's electrical system, due to a malfunctioning beer cooler. The fire caused an estimated $120,000 damage.

Ken Partridge, Auburn's assistant fire marshal, says the facade and one or two walls might be able to be saved, but everything else is gone.

On the ground floor, The Other Side of the Tracks sign still hangs, unscathed, the only reminder of the long-running restaurant that occupied the bottom floor of the building. For many, the restaurant is remembered as more than just an eatery.

From 1976 to 1980 it was home to Victory Music, the folk-music organization founded by singer Chris Lunn. During that period it was not only home to the folk-music community, but also the only real jazz club in the greater Seattle-Tacoma area.

``There wasn't anything else,'' says Lunn. ``The Folklore Society wasn't doing very much and there was no jazz at all. Parnell's hadn't opened, so all these great players at Cornish like Denny Goodhew, Barney McClure, Danny Deardorf, Joni Metcalf, Don Lamphere, this was the only place to put groups together and jam. Fifty people would show up and that was the jazz scene in Seattle.''

Lunn had started Victory Music at the Court ``C'' coffee house in Tacoma in 1969, but moved in 1975.

``Dale Schmidt was the one that got us into The Other Side. He was a musician, working as a cook there. . .

``We started out with just an open mike in February 1976,'' Lunn recalls. ``A dollar for the music. It was just a half a room then, held maybe 30 or 40 people. The rest was a greasy-beer house, bikers and foosball.

``Well, our open mike went pretty damn well. So the owner threw out all the pinball and foosball machines, tore down the walls to make it one large room and developed his operation as a restaurant as we developed ours. We were both at low points at the time. If anyone had told me to go to Auburn to save my soul, as it were, I wouldn't have believed it. I figured I'd just go to Auburn until I could find another place in Tacoma.''

Lunn eventually ran music in The Other Side of the Tracks six nights a week, two jazz, two open mike and two concert nights. Right after he opened the room, Lunn was injured in an automobile accident. While he recuperated he came up with the idea for The Victory Music Review, a newsletter still published every month.

Lunn keeps the past collected in cardboard cartons scattered around his workroom and picks through dozens of photos of all the people that played there.

The era ended when The Other Side of the Tracks changed hands in 1980.

Victory Music is now set up at the Antique Sandwich shop in Tacoma, The Crystal Star in Ballard and The Epicurean Express in Lake Forest Park and doing very well. Still Lunn can't help smiling as he recalls days and nights at The Other Side of the Tracks.

``It was one of the great surprises in my life.''