Next Door Comes Out Singing

Standing in the corner of the back room at Next Door on Saturday evening, Seth Adam rearranged his mask without dropping a beat. The rhythm he had looped stayed steady behind him, and he turned the pause into something musically dramatic, then kept going, singing, and into a lithe solo.

“That was tough with a mask on,” he said at the end, when the audience gave him its applause. He mused on the possibility of having a mask that would somehow make it easier to perform music while wearing one. ​“Someone’s going to design one — you know it.”

Adam’s performance was the second night of music at Next Door on Humphrey Street, its first being on Friday, the night before, featuring Stef Harris. Next Door’s well-ventilated back room had five tables set up in it, each one at least seven feet from the next. Each table could seat six. The restaurant also had seating available in its front room and outside.

A small but steady audience filtered in and out of the place, everyone wearing masks when they entered. They took them off only to eat.

Adam offered a mix of covers and originals that hit differently as the city moves tentatively toward some form of reopening. Songs about travel — even just to New York City — felt like they were written about another time. ​“Big Yellow Taxi,” Joni Mitchell’s lament about progress, hit the current situation sideways, with some lines seeming like the problems of a more prosperous past (“paved paradise and put up a parking lot”) and others feeling about as current as ever (“don’t it always seem to go / that you don’t know what you got ​‘till it’s gone?”).

Adam used the chance to try out new material (“This is a song that’s going to feel weird — first time singing it”) and talk a bit about what it was like to be back playing again. ​“I haven’t done this much in the past four months,” he said, stretching his arms about halfway through his set. But soon he was bantering with the crowd as musicians have always done, telling a story, for instance, of a meal he ate while on tour in the Midwest that was ​“probably the unhealthiest food I’ve ever eaten in my life.”

“Comfort food,” said one of the diners in response.

“Yes,” Adam said, ​“but it was like, ​‘would you like a side of butter with that butter?’”

Playing It Safe

Keeping food quality high, it turns out, was one of the reasons Next Door closed for a time, even to takeout, at the beginning of the pandemic-related shutdown in March. Billy McKane, one of the managers at Next Door, explained that ​“once the big scare happened” around St. Patrick’s Day weekend, ​“we saw a big decline in New Haven.” When Yale announced that it was closing, Next Door shut down entirely. The restaurant was keen to try to keep even the quality of its food presentation high — including for its takeout menu — and it spent some time figuring out how to do that. ​“We’ve been planning and working on this forever,” McKane said.

For a time, as restrictions loosened and it became possible to reopen, Next Door aimed for a June reopening, which would have marked its second anniversary in business. Instead, they worked on making sure that the restaurant would also adhere to the conservative end of guidelines for reopening, ​“giving everyone as much space as possible” in the restaurant, McKane said. ​“We wanted to look out for our customers.”

With its reopening, Next Door is offering its full menu for takeout as well as eating inside or outside the restaurant. ​“I’m happy to be here,” and everyone who elected to return to work is ​“happy to be back in it,” McKane said. He explained that Next Door contacted the employees it had furloughed when it was planning on reopening. Some employees were uncomfortable with returning to work, which McKane understood. ​“The door is always open to them,” he said.

Next Door is also operating at hours reduced from pre-pandemic levels. The restaurant is currently closed Monday to Thursday, and open for business Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons and evenings. ​“Once we see the renaissance of the area,” McKane said, the restaurant will consider adding more hours, though he also explained that even before the pandemic, Friday, Saturday and Sunday ​“were always our really strong days.”

McKane mentioned that Next Door’s first Friday back proved to be a strong business day, and Saturday had steady business as well. The pizza truck and Next Door’s abilities to cater private parties and other events are also back up and running, provided that said parties and events can adhere to social distancing restrictions to keep everyone safe.

“We’re open. We’re ready,” he said.

Back inside, Adam remarked on the strangeness of getting back to the business of playing music after months away from it. He had gotten used to wearing a bandanna around his neck all the time as an impromptu face mask when needed, a practice he was considering making permanent, ​“as a reminder for when we had to do this,” he said.

“It’s a strange new universe, indeed,” he added.

Next Door will have live music regularly for the next few weeks. Check its Facebook page for details.