The Gamma Ray Bar is a labor of love

What do singer-songwriter Beck, “Soul Train” creator Don Cornelius and electromagnetic radiation have in common? They all inspired Kevin Willmott II, the longtime Madison musician and venue manager, when he set out to create The Gamma Ray Bar . The independent venue will open with a stacked local lineup on June 1 at 121 W. Main St.

The roughly-2,000-square-foot space will be, in Willmott’s words, a “mom and pop place” for local and regional talents to perform in a vibrant, low-pressure environment; to hone their craft and, more importantly, build community with other local artists. Willmott imagines the bar as a place “where you go meet the person you’re going to make your next band with.”

Looking over Willmott’s resume, you might wonder why he didn't open his own place sooner. Since moving to Madison from Kansas in 2012, Willmott says he’s “been engulfed in Madison’s music scene the whole time.” In addition to performing in the nine-piece soul cover band Don’t Mess with Cupid, among other groups, Willmott managed the High Noon Saloon, The Majestic and The Sylvee.

But in recent years, he began to question the “corporate-ness” of his work. His three employers are all owned by FPC Live, a subsidiary of Live Nation. “Is this really what I want to do going into my 40s?” he asked himself. “Is this really what I want to do for the rest of my life?”

While considering what his next “real groove" (his expression) was going to be, he realized the Main Street space was vacant. It had always had a special significance to Willmott: he performed there at age 14 on a visit to Madison, when it was then the Slipper Club. The Frequency and BarleyPop Live had come and gone there since then. “I’ve always looked at this space and wondered why it didn’t have the success it could have,” he says.

He signed a lease in March and has been working non-stop towards a June opening ever since. “Every day’s a big day,” says Willmott of the progress as the opening nears. When we spoke on the phone, the venue had just passed a health inspection, Willmott was directing people where to hang signs and his brother was putting the finishing touches on a space-defining mural in the South African Ndebele style.

“I’ve never been a person that just sits around,” Willmott says. Still, for all his years of venue management experience, there have still been some surprises. “I never thought it was gonna be this much fun,” he says, “and this much work."

Willmott’s passion for the project is infectious — and matched only by his musical knowledge. Over the course of our conversation, he referenced no less than a dozen artists and entertainers who've inspired him including Stevie Wonder, James Brown, Bill Withers, Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack, The Fugees and Charley Crockett.

Willmott hopes The Gamma Ray will fill the growing void of small, independent venues in Madison — joining the ranks of places like The Cardinal Bar and Café Coda — as well as be a community-building space for artists and musicians: in his words, a place where “you can find all the pieces that you’re looking for when you’re trying to make art.”

Though primarily a music venue, Willmott hopes to bring a wide variety of entertainment to the space, including live podcasts, storytelling events — Willmott has hosted “The Moth” story slams at High Noon Saloon for the last five years — trivia, comedy and even a karaoke dating show.

Importantly, as one of the only Black-owned venues in the city, Willmott sees the space as an outlet and a microphone for Madison’s underrepresented communities — “the communities that aren’t necessarily put in the spotlight,” he says. “Bringing in and highlighting Black artists is always going to be my dream.”

And The Gamma Ray will be an outlet for his own art as well. He plans to add his Cupid Tuesdays soul revue — which he currently performs at High Noon Saloon with Don’t Mess with Cupid — to the regular calendar. And he hopes to put his garage soul band Cowboy Winter (a play on “Indian Summer”) back together for some performances.

“I’m always creating on some level," Willmott says. "I can't help myself."

One question Willmott receives regularly since he announced the bar’s opening has been about the name. Though he’s since made connections to the Beck album “Modern Guilt” and the Dr. Octagon song, “Earth People,” his first priority when choosing a name was originality. As far as he knows, there’s not another Gamma Ray Bar in the country.

“That’s a cool word,” he thought to himself while reading about the discovery of large gamma rays in outer space. He found the experiences of contemplating space and art can inspire a similar feeling of wonder. And like its unseen, interstellar namesake, The Gamma Ray represents an “invisible connecting wave,” in Willmott's words, for the Madison music scene.

At a time he refers to as a “cultural winter” — invoking themes from the album “Winter in America” by Gil Scott-Heron — Willmott hopes The Gamma Ray will rekindle a scene in Madison that drew a nascent Nirvana (or even a “complete unknown” Bob Dylan ) to perform here, while paving the way for undiscovered or untapped talent to learn and grow into the industry.

“I’m going to be making a lot of art here,” Willmott says.

Jess Miller is an editorial intern at Madison Magazine.

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