Unlikely Mogul of Dana Point Takes New Risk : Concerts: Gary Folgner, impresario of the Coach House, is branching out into the L.A. County market with Pasadena’s 1921 Raymond Theatre, reopening Friday for music.

Judging from appearances, Gary Folgner could be a comfortable denizen of Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville, an aging ‘60s throwback living the uncomplicated life in a haze of soft tropical breezes and lazily unfolding sunsets.

The creases jettying about Folgner’s pale, blue-gray eyes look as if they were etched from squinting too regularly into the sun. His hair, long and fading from blond to gray, sweeps back in haphazard, floating wisps over the collar of that ever-present staple of his wardrobe, the Hawaiian shirt.

When Folgner speaks, the words run in quick, flat-toned streams, barely registering above a murmur. He is a 49-year-old bachelor whose constant companion is Bear, a 6-year-old part-golden retriever with understanding eyes and a disposition of almost Zen-like composure (“You never know it’s there after a while. I’ve never heard that dog bark,” says one of Folgner’s closest associates). Folgner’s longtime home is a two-room apartment in the back of a decaying, 1929-vintage motel in Dana Point.

These outward circumstances give no hint of what Folgner has become over the last five years: one of the most active pop concert promoters in Southern California; a restless, ambitious businessman who works 16-hour days and isn’t averse to taking on risk and debt as he pursues a program of expansion into larger venues and bigger markets.

Folgner’s biggest, riskiest venture will begin Friday, when Toto plays the first concert at the newly reopened Raymond Theatre in Pasadena. After establishing himself at two clubs that dominate their suburban markets--the 380-seat Coach House in San Juan Capistrano and the 850-seat Ventura Theatre--Folgner is moving for the first time into the fiercely competitive Los Angeles County concert scene. Having bought the 1,925-seat Raymond and an adjoining lot for $2.5 million--all but $100,000 of it borrowed--Folgner is banking on finding sustained success where other pop promoters failed during the hall’s previous incarnation as Perkins Palace.

Is there a void in the Los Angeles concert market, just waiting to be filled by a fixer-upper theater that began its existence in 1921 as a lavishly appointed vaudeville house?

“I think the fact the building has remained idle for a number of years answers that question,” said Tracy Buie, who books the Wiltern Theatre (in other words, the smart money knew better). The 2,300-seat Wiltern, operated by Bill Graham Presents, figures to be the Raymond’s toughest, most direct competitor in the struggle to land hot-selling attractions.

“It’s a venue with a checkered past. I don’t see what’s going to be so automatic about it,” said Alex Hodges, who oversees West Coast concert bookings for the Nederlander Organization, the national theatrical giant whose Hollywood venues, the Pantages Theatre and the Henry Fonda Theatre, also figure to compete with the Raymond for some bookings.

“Gary’s obviously out there to build his own little empire, and I’ve got to give him some respect for that,” said Ken Moon, who heads concert operations for Peppers Inc., a restaurant and nightclub chain whose recently opened Huntington Beach club, Peppers Golden Bear, is trying to mount a challenge to the Coach House’s dominance in Orange County. “I don’t think it’s easy to go up against the big guys in L.A.”

As he sat in the still-dusty balcony of the Raymond, with workers busying themselves below to refurbish the neglected house in time for its grand reopening, Folgner considered the key question: He is already well positioned in his Ventura and Orange County clubs, which he says average more than 35 concerts a month combined, so why pay $2.5 million--plus an estimated $1 million to $1.5 million in renovation costs--to go up against “big guys” like Graham, Nederlander and Avalon Attractions?

Folgner paused, then tilted his head back and smiled broadly.

“It’s a large gamble,” he said. “You’ve gotta have a little bit of life, take a chance sometimes. Don’cha?”

Concert promotion is a roller-coaster ride of a business, and Folgner isn’t one to get queasy on the dips and bends, said Ken Phebus, whose job portfolio as concert booker for the Coach House and Ventura Theatre grew bigger and more challenging with Folgner’s Pasadena purchase.

“When a show is a stiff, he’s at his jovial best,” said Phebus, who also books several other clubs that Folgner doesn’t own. “When a show is a winner, he’s very critical about how the operation went. It’s the exact antithesis of what you’d think (a club owner’s mood) would be. There’s a lot about him that I can’t explain, and that’s one of them.”

In any case, Phebus said, Folgner has never gotten upset when an act failed to draw up to expectations: “Gary’s not like that, not one time. We’ll sit down after the fact and philosophize about why it didn’t work, and we’ll try to keep from doing it the next time. He’s resilient if he’s nothing else.”

Folgner needed to be resilient when he turned to booking big-name pop acts at the Coach House early in 1986. He had just declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the result of a downward financial spiral that he said began in 1980 when a tortilla warmer short-circuited and touched off a fire that wiped out the Mexican restaurant that was the hub of Folgner’s business holdings.

The Villa Mexican Restaurant in Dana Point, and the adjacent Dana Villa Motel where Folgner still lives, have been in his family since 1956. Folgner and his three younger brothers grew up in a small house on the property, helping to run the restaurant and motel and also working in their father’s plumbing and home-building businesses. Folgner said his father started taking him on plumbing jobs when he was 12.

By 1980, Folgner was running the restaurant and had embarked on a plan to turn Villa Mexican into a chain. He eventually expanded to five outlets in Orange County and San Diego County. Folgner’s other holding was the Coach House, a defunct steakhouse he bought early in 1980 for $52,000. Capitalizing on the “Urban Cowboy” boom, Folgner began presenting shows by touring country bands (country remains his favorite style of music).

Folgner’s small empire began to crumble when the Dana Point restaurant burned, leaving him with an uninsured loss of $600,000, according to documents in his bankruptcy court file (Folgner said the restaurant’s insurer canceled his policy a month before the fire, for reasons--unfounded, Folgner maintained--having to do with the condition of the building’s electrical wiring).

Folgner rebuilt the restaurant, but he gradually had to sell his other holdings to pay debts from the fire. After his initial fling with country music, Folgner had turned to booking local rock and Top 40 bands at the Coach House, without notable success. In 1985, Folgner tried to sell the club for $180,000, but the would-be buyer backed out.

Enter Ken Phebus, who had five years’ experience booking rock bands at clubs in Long Beach. Phebus and a partner, Ed Christensen, saw South Orange County as promising, untapped territory for touring rock acts. Folgner let them put on concerts by Leon Russell and Dave Mason at the Coach House late in ’85 as outside promoters. The shows did well. Starting in January, 1986, Folgner launched the Coach House as a full-time concert and dinner club, with Phebus working as his in-house booker.

“We were under the gun at the time,” with the bankruptcy having just been filed, Folgner recalled. “I don’t think (turning the club into a major pop and rock venue) was a last resort. You just keep trying things until something works.”

The Coach House worked, immediately and brilliantly, thanks to a huge piece of luck: Just as Folgner began presenting concerts full time, the Golden Bear, which had been Orange County’s dominant rock club since the early ‘60s, lost its lease and went out of business. Folgner and Phebus had a clear track.

The Coach House went for variety, presenting everything from hard rockers to folkies to jazz acts in sit-down surroundings. In the affluent Orange County market, the Coach House could also go for high prices, often charging $25 and up for the biggest names.

Consequently, Folgner and Phebus could make lucrative offers that attracted acts such as Ray Charles, Miles Davis, Randy Newman and B.B. King, who customarily play considerably larger venues.

Folgner’s profits accumulated steadily, according to bankruptcy court documents--rising from $30,546 in 1986 to $128,603 in 1987 and $46,604 in the first two months of 1988.

Figuring that he was on to a good thing, Folgner leased the Ventura Theatre in mid-1988 and essentially duplicated the Coach House concept. But he said the bottom-line results have not been the same. Ventura has been a slow-to-develop market, so Folgner said he lost $300,000 there in 1988 and $250,000 in 1989.

The theater might eke out a profit in 1990, Folgner said, but only if it enjoys an unusually bountiful December. Overall, he said, his combined businesses lost $36,000 in 1988.

(Folgner, in his only previous Los Angeles County venture, also lost heavily that year trying to promote a controversy-marred Cuban club revue at the Variety Arts Theater).

He said his various enterprises yielded a total profit of $40,000 in 1989.

Even with Ventura’s losses draining the Coach House’s gains, Folgner jumped forward in the spring when he found out that the Raymond Theatre was for sale. The theater’s incarnation as a pop venue began after Pasadena businessman Marc Perkins bought it in 1978. A succession of promoters booked shows there, ending in 1988 with a series of punk and heavy-metal dates, during which rowdy fans damaged chairs and fixtures and taxed the patience of city officials.

In 1987, Perkins concluded that the venue did not make economic sense as a theater and submitted plans to gut its innards and convert it to office use. Preservationists, alarmed that the landmark building would be robbed of its architectural grace, persuaded city officials to delay the plan. Folgner and Edward Haddad, owner of the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim, emerged as prospective, competing buyers interested in continuing to run the Raymond as a concert theater.

Folgner closed the deal in September. Pasadena’s vice mayor, Rick Cole, who had supported the grass-roots push for the theater’s preservation, was among those who thought that the Raymond’s prospects had been renewed.

Folgner “seems to be genuinely excited about restoring that building to its splendor from days gone by,” said Cole, who thinks that the newcomer’s lack of show-biz affectation will grow nicely on low-key Pasadenans.

“He’s incredibly laid back,” Cole said, “to the point of virtual inertness, which is one of the endearing things about Gary. Pasadena is not a place where you blow into town and make a big splash and people love you.”

Somehow, though, Folgner has to find a way to make a splash at the box office.

One problem he will face, according to observers in the concert industry, is that the splashiest acts capable of filling a 1,900-seat venue all want to play in Los Angeles proper for the extra glitter value.

“It’s all perception. (Los Angeles) is where the record labels want them,” said Paul Goldman, a partner in Monterey Peninsula Artists, a major pop booking agency. “The Wiltern has its own sort of cachet. The Raymond Theatre at this moment probably doesn’t have cachet.”

But Goldman still sees a promising role for the Raymond. “It may very well be that being in Pasadena will never be the equal of being in L.A.,” he said. “But so what? You can be a competitor without being a victor. And you can be very successful without having to be on top. There may be a very nice place for that theater to back up the Wiltern, as it were.”

Making the Raymond Theatre profitable will not be easy, Folgner acknowledged. For his plan to work, he said, he will have to develop a successful office and restaurant complex on the adjoining property within the next two years, the idea being to implement the dinner-and-show format that has worked at the Coach House.

Meanwhile, he said, the Raymond needs to book eight or 10 successful shows a month. Folgner will try to attract the same wide range of acts that play the Coach House and the Ventura Theatre.

Country music could find a prominent spot, he said, since Los Angeles lacks a theater-level country venue smaller than the 6,200-seat Greek Theatre and Universal Amphitheatre.

The Raymond will also try to carve out a slot as a stage for acts that have outgrown smaller clubs but have not established their status as theater headliners. The theater will feature a regular diet of shows geared to draw about 1,000 people, rather than a full house. At that level, Folgner said, the Raymond can still make profits.

After the Toto show, which promoters say has enjoyed brisk advance sales, the Raymond’s lineup includes Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir with Rob Wasserman, Nov. 30; country shows by Vince Gill on Dec. 1 and Highway 101, Dec. 7; heavy-metal guitar hero Yngwie Malmsteen, Dec. 9; jazz-funk bandleader Joe Sample, Dec. 14, and comedian George Carlin, Jan. 12.

The Raymond’s prospects will depend heavily on the highly regarded ability of Phebus to book winners. A longhaired, full-bearded, deep-voiced man, Phebus has a gift of gab and a ready way with a quip that might have made him Merry Prankster material had he been on the San Francisco scene at the dawning of psychedelia.

But this key operative has had his concerns about the new venture, Folgner said: “Ken is a little more pessimistic about being in the L.A. market and getting into competition with the Wilterns, the Greeks and the (Universal) Amphitheatre. Maybe Ken’s a little bit more of a realist, but I don’t feel it’s a major problem. I think there’s a lot of room here.

“I may do the first concert and find out I’m not right at all. But you’ve got a strong local base to work from. I think it’s going to be a very attractive market. With the look of the theater, and the revitalization of (downtown) Pasadena, it’s going to be a place people want to go.”

If the Pasadena venture collapses, Folgner said, it will not drive him to the poorhouse or jeopardize his two established clubs. He said his “security blanket,” if all else fails, is a stake in the property his father bought 34 years ago in Dana Point, the parcel on Coast Highway at Del Obispo Street that houses the motel and restaurant.

“There’s quite a large financial (return), a lot of money to be made” from the family’s plans to tear down the existing buildings and redevelop the property, Folgner said.

When it comes to the external trappings of wealth, Folgner does not seem to have a great deal to lose or to gain. This is a man whose friends guffaw over the old cars he has driven over the years, a man whose entire list of household effects when he filed for bankruptcy five years ago consisted of a $200 coin collection, $600 in cash, and $100 in clothes, jewelry and personal possessions.

“I’ve been involved in a lot of deals with Gary, and he’s never talked about money from a personal standpoint,” said Jeffrey Benice, who has been Folgner’s attorney and friend since the early 1980s. “He’s never said, ‘I hope I make this deal so I can buy this or that.’ I don’t know what he does with his money, and I know him pretty well. He doesn’t wear it, he doesn’t drive it and he doesn’t live in it.”

“Money is nothing,” Folgner said. “My lifestyle is real easy. Automobiles are something that gets you from point A to point B. A big house means a lot of yardwork to do. I’m what you call a good hotel dweller. I like it when the maid comes in and cleans up.”

The glamour that attends the concert business is another common inducement that Folgner said he can do without.

He said he has no desire for wide acclaim as a high roller, a major player: “There’s a lot of ego in this business. It’s not something I’m looking for. I’m not much of a social person. I haven’t been at any industry parties, ever.”

According to Phebus, Folgner gets on well with most musicians who play his clubs because “he’s real down home. He’s not star-struck. It’s kind of disarming to the artist because it’s totally without pretense.”

Folgner said he likes to avoid the limelight. The man who remains unruffled when a show flops financially said he has lost his cool on the few occasions when TV crews have asked him to go on camera. “I forget everything I know,” Folgner said. “I don’t know how Bill Graham does it.”

The one passion that Folgner does like to indulge in public is his zest for political debate--bar-stool variety. In the concert guides he distributes each month to advertise shows at the Coach House and Ventura Theatre, Folgner devotes the last page of each issue to a column of rambling, offhand political musings under the heading, “A Little Common Sense.”

The content is an odd combination of libertarianism (Folgner hates taxes with a passion), utter disdain for politicians, praise for the old-fashioned work ethic and a liberal stance on social values (his jottings have called for a national system of health care and a job at a living wage for anyone willing to work).

“I like Gary because he’s funny, and also serious about his political passions,” said Los Angeles rocker Stan Ridgway, who has headlined frequently at the Coach House and Ventura Theatre. “It’s rare you meet a club owner like that. I always look forward to going down there and picking up the calendar and seeing what kind of rant he’s got. We’ve had many discussions that have gone on (after) the show, maybe with a few shots included. We’ll toss a few back and argue a bit. Gary’s the type of person who carries some of the better ideals of the ‘60s into the ‘90s.”

In the end, it seems to be the work ethic, more than anything else, that has made this reserved, unadorned man move forward in a field that thrives on suaveness and extroversion.

“I enjoy working,” Folgner said plainly, when asked why he wants to compound his 16-hour days with the risk and added worry of launching a new theater in a tough market. “To make it successful is what’s fun.”