Attenion all concert fans of New York City for there is a new venue in town and it’s name is Stage 48. The club is located down on 48th Street just off 11th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen and just the other day, PiercingMetal had the honor of walking through the club with their Marketing Director in order to bring you some inside details about it.

Joining me for the adventure would be our own Skeleton Pete who would be handling the photographic details for the examination and before I go any further its important to know that while the venue has hosted a small amount of events since the beginning of the year, it is still finishing off some areas and will be ready to rock in full by sometime in March so I’ll only speak about the areas that were not photographed to let you have an idea as to what you will see eventually. Considering I go to so many concerts during the year, I was very excited to have this opportunity to wander. So let’s get down to some exploration shall we?

While fans can come into the club straight from the ground level, Pete and I explored the second floor area first. The box office and coat check areas are there along with the restrooms. The view below shows the visual vantage point of the main floor, the side areas and a part of the stage. Nice and spacious isn’t it? When we arrived, the workers were getting ready to hoist up the lighting truss that you see on the main floor area. I sense a great amount of lights being available for some killer shows based on its size.

Pete caught me sitting down on one of the many couches that the venue offers its patrons but I was not lazing about and instead was Tweeting that we were here and giving him a bit of scale of how it looks from this side of the room. I did ask if the couches would be moved from time to time and the answer was yes, depending on the performance that night.

This next shot is taken from the side of the stage just near the backstage area entrance. While its not pictured its a roomy space for a normal sized band and it even offers the musicians a shower to freshen up after the show. I am sure many performers will appreciate that. I know I would.

I mentioned there was a second floor to the main venue and the best way to envision this would be a little like what you see in the Highline Ballroom and in Terminal 5. The balcony surrounds the main floor area and lets the audience look down from tables that are positioned there. I imagine that there will be times where the tables are moved as well to allow maximum fan enjoyment. The front of house mixing desk is also up here and out of the way of the general public. I think the technicians will appreciate that very much but we’ve not pictured it since it was being finished up when we were there.

Here we get a bit more of a sweeping shot of the stage and the main floor area. The stage might look big in the photograph and that is because it is. It spans about 33′ in length and has a depth of 16′; It’s a little more than 5′ high and as you can see from the photo goes right up to the second floor ceiling so if you are a touring band with a large banner you can use it here with no issues and bring your live show to bigger and more exciting life. If you are wondering about the capacity, well, I learned that the venue can hold 1100 for a standing show and about 400 for a seated event. Hearing those numbers made me smile because its nice to have another midsize venue in the city to host bands. Hopefully some managers are making note of that number as they read this 🙂

Time to take a little bit more of a closer look straight on at the stage. We were in the middle of the general floor for this one to give you an audience visual. In my head I imagined some of my favorite Metal bands performing on the new stage like —, — and of course — (you can fill in your own bands here since we all think differently after all). You’ll notice the absence of a barrier between the stage and the general audience and I did ask if one would be present at all. Right now the answer is “no”, so that means no photo pit and the folks that do that kind of stuff will need to brave the crowd or arrive early to get an optimum spot. Perhaps that will change depending on the shows that start getting booked. Shows like Y&T and King’s X will not need it, but a high power Death Metal and Black Metal band find this almost necessary.

Between the two floors, the venue offers the patrons four full bars that span a good amount of space which is good for those folks who just like to hang at the bar. You can also see that there are couches against almost every wall and these are so comfortable. I almost felt like ordering a drink while I was there but of course I couldn’t as there was no one working that role at the time.

The rear of the main floor has a section that can best be thought of as a VIP area or a private party section. I guesstimated this to be about 20 or so feet and there were some mini-tables and the couches that we found everywhere else as well.

I’ll let the next few images showcase the surroundings of the venue. As you can see there is a sleek look to the layout and its very roomy, with some wonderful work on the wood floor. This was previously an office building of some kind and completely reworked to be the venue and prior to that this was a horse barn. Yes. A horse barn. Look it up if you don’t believe me.

So that’s our visuals and insider information about the main venue, but don’t leave us yet because we are headed upstairs to one of the other sections of the building. I should inform you that this multi-purpose facility will also host corporate events, private parties and a variety of other shows outside of the kind that I normally do my reporting on.

This is the rooftop patio area and it connects to the Z Bar which is on the 3rd floor of the building. There was a lot of work being finalized in that bar so there are no shots to let you enjoy but this Z Bar will be the restaurant of the venue space and also offer up some live entertainment on a smaller stage. Based on what I saw here I envision some Jazz quartets, singer songwriter with guitar stuff and perhaps pianists. Perhaps even a smaller scale Rock band can do something, or a musician playing at the venue can do something intimate for select fans up here as well. That would work. The outside patio is connected to a full enclosed space that will have a working bar, tables and chairs as well. This was also being completed upon our visit but you can see the venue representative and I inside if you look closely enough.

I mentioned that the venue is practically completed and will be fully running in March but that is not going to stop the great Uli Jon Roth from making an appearance here on February 6th. The legendary guitarist is doing a Sky Academy early in the day and then performing for the masses in the evening. He is just the first in a line of shows that I know that The Metal Republic will enjoy. Coming up over the next few months are Y&T and King’s X. I’ve already added shows that our readers will enjoy on the Event Calendar and you can count on our doing any contests that we are asked to do by the venue as well with our PiercingMetal Contests section on this very blog.

With that dear readers we are at the end of our little expose and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed bringing it all to your attention. An extended thanks to the staff at Stage 48 for letting us do this and of course many thanks to my comrade in arms Skeleton Pete Parrella for his wonderful photographic eye. On behalf of the PiercingMetal.com website and blog and all of our readers I welcome Stage 48 to the scene and look forward to the shows that they will be offering up. In these crazy times where we lose things left and right, its nice to see a new place to enjoy live music opening up. The future looks bright and hopefully loud as well with this new establishment. I’ll see you at the shows.

Official Website: http://www.stage48.com
Venue Details: 605 West 48th Street, off 11th Avenue: 212.957.1800

Going The Distance: Skeleton Pete and I timed the walk from Times Square and 42nd Street and took that route straight down to Eleventh Avenue before turning to the direction of the club. We kept a casual pace and stopped no more than five or so minutes to observe other items of interest and
clocked the journey down to Stage 48 at about fifteen or so minutes for four long avenue blocks and six shorter numeric ones. Depending on where you are starting off from this is hopefully of some help in planning your concert adventure.

The Surrounding Region: A lot of our readers like to kick back a few drinks or eat something with a little pre-game time elsewhere before heading into a concert at another space so I was very curious as to what I would find on the way down. With our adventures over at the Best Buy Theater and B.B. King’s I often go to Smith’s or Rudy’s, but the new venue would require a closer launch spot for my group. Now, as I mentioned just above, Skeleton Pete and I walked from Times Square down 42nd Street to 11th Avenue and then over to the club. During this trek the findings were initially grim but a wave of hope hit us at around 43rd Street with the Manke Diner (43rd/11th), McQuaids Pub (44th/11th), Pom Pom Restaurant (45th/11th), BBQ USA (46th/11th) and Landmark Tavern (46th/11th). Having only sampled and enjoyed the Landmark Tavern, I cannot speak for the other places and would direct you to Yelp.com for additional insight on them. Readers who have tried the other places referenced are welcome to leave us some feedback in the comments area.