Phoenix music lovers donate more than $30,000 to keep the Rhythm Room from closing

The Phoenix music scene has rallied around the Rhythm Room, a beloved blues club whose owner Bob Corritore launched a GoFundMe to raise the $30,000 he needed to the club's insurance company from canceling its policy.

In less than a week, local music fans donated nearly $34,000 to save the club.

Corritore knew the parking lot outside the Rhythm Room was in a state of disrepair.

He hadn’t planned on doing anything about it in the next two months, though.

Not until he heard from his insurance company, which said it would cancel the insurance on the roots and blues club he’s been running on Indian School Road in Phoenix since the early '90s if he didn’t get the parking lot repaved by the end of March — a $30,000 job he says he couldn’t afford to undertake right now.

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The Rhythm Room's GoFundMe: 'We could use the community's help'

That's how Corritore came to pin his hopes for the Rhythm Room's future on GoFundMe, where he hoped to raise the $30,000 through a crowdfunding campaign.

“The Rhythm Room works very hard to present great music and has done so for 32 years with a slight break for COVID,” Corritore says.

“We have presented a lot of music for a relatively inexpensive price, at times taking losses just because they’re things that we feel are within the realm of what we need to do. And we could just use the community’s help to do this because there’s just not enough money coming in to cover this.”

He doesn’t like to ask for help, he says.

“I wish that we could be self-sufficient and it would take care of itself. But here’s the thing: We’ve found ourselves in a bind. Can the community help out?”

Corritore launched the GoFundMe campaign on Wednesday, Jan. 24.

As Corritore explained on the GoFundMe page, he’ll use the excess funds “for other badly needed improvements such as new furniture, new carpet, signage, perimeter wall repair.”

'If I didn’t do it, I don’t know that anybody else would'

A harmonica-playing bandleader who grew up in a city famous for its blues, Chicago, where he launched his musical career, Corritore moved to Phoenix in 1981.

He opened the Rhythm Room at 1019 E. Indian School Road a decade later on the former site of a music venue called the Purple Turtle, where he'd booked his first show in the Valley with Louisiana Red.

A sign outside the Rhythm Room proclaims it "Phoenix's Roots & Blues Concert Club."

Corritore also hosts his own radio show, "Those Lowdown Blues," Sunday evenings on KJZZ-FM (91.5).

“We do this because we’re dedicated to our mission statement and because it’s important for me to be able to do this as part of who I define myself as being,” Corritore says.

“If I wasn’t a musician, this would never have happened, because as a business, there’s not enough bottom line, but as a lifestyle, this really goes along with what my goals are.

"I want to live a life surrounded by music, doing good things for our community. I want to be able to bring in artists from some of my recording projects. I’ve got a segment of people that just love what I do. And if I didn’t do it, I don’t know that anybody else would.”

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Follow him on X @EdMasley.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: How Phoenix blues fans kept the Rhythm Room from going under