Curtain Falls Mike Kobluk Will Call It Quits After A Stellar Career On Stage And In The Box Office
When Mike Kobluk retires tomorrow as manager of the Spokane Opera House, the city may be hard-pressed to find anyone with his qualifications.
How many candidates have recorded three Top 40 albums? How many have traded harmonies with John Denver, Tom Paxton and Roger McGuinn? How many have performed on the “Ed Sullivan Show” three times?
“Mike brings skills that you just can’t replace,” said Kevin Twohig, who worked under Kobluk for 18 years and is now general manager of the Spokane Arena. “He has been such a tremendous mentor to me. His perspective is so good, because he has been on stage and in the box office.”
In fact, Kobluk, 62, has been on some of the world’s most famous stages.
He performed three times at Carnegie Hall, as a member of the Chad Mitchell Trio, the Gonzaga University-bred folk group that made a national splash from 1958 to 1967. You might even say Kobluk was the backbone of the group; he was in it longer than Chad Mitchell himself.
Then, beginning in 1974, Kobluk re-made himself as an auditorium-entertainment manager. As director of city entertainment facilities, he manages the Spokane Convention Center and Joe Albi Stadium as well as the Opera House. Kobluk has been the Opera House’s only manager since Expo ‘74. And that, it seems, has been just fine with promoters around the country.
“Mike has always treated me fairly,” said Nashville promoter Al Antee. “He is very highly thought of and is well-respected in the industry.”
“The thing about Mike is, he is internationally renowned for his abilities in arena and entertainment facility managing,” said Ed Clark, who served on the Sports, Entertainment, Arts and Conventions Advisory Board, which oversees the Opera House and other entertainment facilities. “He was even elected president of the International Association of Assembly Managers.”
That’s the professional organization for managers of big entertainment and convention venues. Carol Darby, a former Kingdome staff member and former Alamo Dome manager in San Antonio, said that during Kobluk’s presidential tenure, from 1990 to 1991, he was instrumental in giving women and minorities a voice.
“He did a lot to open the doors in this profession,” said Darby, now a Spokane-based consultant. “He was there with open arms.”
And not just for his colleagues, but for his customers. Managing the Opera House is like hosting a party for 2,700 several times a week. It requires people skills, financial savvy and tact.
Kobluk demonstrated the latter quality right from the beginning as director of performing and visual arts for Expo ‘74, the Spokane World’s Fair. Kobluk was trying to round up entertainment for Expo and its brand-new Opera House. He sent out letters to every city of any size in the country, asking them to send examples of their performing culture.
“I was expecting, for instance, the pipe band from Trail, B.C.,” said Kobluk, a Trail native. “But Los Angeles wrote back and said they would love to send the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Zubin Mehta conducting.”
However, there was one catch. They would come only if they could open the World’s Fair. Kobluk had already told the Spokane Symphony that they could open.
That’s when Kobluk demonstrated a creative touch.
“We worked it out so that the Spokane Symphony opened the Spokane Opera House on May 1,” he said. “The World’s Fair didn’t open until May 4, and the L.A.
Philharmonic opened that. So everyone was happy.”
With a career bookended by Expo ‘74 and this year’s monthlong run of “The Phantom of the Opera,” Kobluk has plenty of reason to feel fulfilled. Last month, he watched the seven-millionth audience member walk through the Opera House doors.
It’s the second career in which Kobluk has tasted success. His first career began way back in 1958, when he was at Gonzaga University. He had come to Gonzaga largely because he wanted to be part of the school’s well-known vocal music program. He joined the men’s glee club, where he met soloist Chad Mitchell.
The Kingston Trio and Harry Belafonte had just ignited a national craze for folk music, so Kobluk, Mitchell and Brian Finnegan started singing folk songs on campus.
The group began to attract some local attention. A young priest, Father Reinard Beaver, started helping them find off-campus bookings. Finnegan, a law student, couldn’t afford the time away from studies, so Mike Pugh replaced him in what was already called the Chad Mitchell Trio. Soon they were playing at the downtown Eagles Hall, Fairchild Air Force Base and the Early Birds Club in the basement of the Davenport Hotel.
Then, in the summer of 1958, Father Beaver came up with the idea of a folk-singing road trip to the Big Apple.
“He called and said he had to go back to New York for Army chaplain school,” said Kobluk. “Since the government was paying for the car, did we want to go with him? I thought about it for all of a minute and a half, and said, `That’ll really be fun.”’
None of them had any money, but Father Beaver had a plan. When they pulled into Miles City, Mont., for instance, he drove them straight to a country club because he had heard on the car radio that it was hosting an anniversary party that night.
“He changed into his clerical collar, walked into the country club and told these folks that he had a singing group that was on their way the `Ed Sullivan Show,”’ said Kobluk, laughing. “Did they want them to sing at their party?
“They said, `Gee, we don’t have any dollars, but if they would like dinner …’ So we sang, and they took up a collection and we ended up with dinner, $300 and a place to stay the night.”
They were not, of course, booked into the “Ed Sullivan Show.” They were booked into precisely nothing at that point.
When they finally got to New York, they found that breaking into show biz wasn’t easy. They trudged from club to club and audition to audition. But through Father Beaver’s persistence, they hooked up with Milt Okun, an arranger who had worked with Harry Belafonte.
Okun became their musical director, and within a year the trio was playing posh Manhattan nightclubs, doing a regular stint on Arthur Godfrey’s radio show and recording an LP. They had also acquired a new instrumentalist (the trio members didn’t play), whose name was Jim McGuinn. He later changed his name to Roger McGuinn, and became the leader of the Byrds.
Pugh decided to go back home and finish his degree, so Mitchell and Kobluk auditioned 150 singers for the third spot in the group. Tom Paxton auditioned but didn’t get the job. Joe Frazier did, and he brought with him a new political consciousness.
That was reflected in their first hit, “The John Birch Society.” It started getting radio play in 1962, while the trio was in Latin America on one of President Kennedy’s cultural exchange trips.
“That song started to define us,” said Kobluk. “The more social and political material we did, the more different we were from any other group that was recording.”
That hit, along with “Marvelous Toy” (a Paxton song acquired during his audition), made the trio an in-demand act on the college circuit. They went on tour as Bob Newhart’s opening act, but before long, it was obvious that the show worked better for Newhart to open for them.
“Some other big-name stars would never have put up with this, but Newhart was the most easygoing person in the whole world,” said Kobluk.
The trio made it onto the “Ed Sullivan Show” three times, finally making an honest man of Father Beaver. They also made the first recording of Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind,” but their record company wouldn’t release it as a single, saying a song with the word “death” could never be a hit. (Peter, Paul and Mary had a No. 2 smash with it a year later.)
The era from ‘62 to ‘64 was the group’s popular and artistic peak, and Kobluk was an important factor in its success.
“He was less demonstrative and often had the least exciting vocal parts - the low end,” said Chad Mitchell, now a real estate agent in Spokane. “But when I went back and started really listening to those records, I found that his solos were just really choice. I don’t think anybody could touch him.”
The folk boom imploded following the Beatles invasion in 1964, and the Chad Mitchell Trio was not left unscathed. Mitchell left in 1965 to pursue a solo career. The group continued as the “Mitchell Trio,” with a replacement member named Henry Deutschendorf, aka John Denver.
The group had some success in the next two years, even recording Denver’s song, “Leaving On a Jet Plane.” Once again, however, it was Peter, Paul and Mary who scored with it on the charts.
By 1967, Kobluk decided to go back where he left off - to Gonzaga to finish his degree (in English literature, with minors in philosophy and mathematics). He had gotten married in 1963 to a University of Texas student named Claire Foran, whom he had met in Mexico City while on that cultural exchange trip. By this time he and Claire had three kids (all of them now grown).
He was working for Gonzaga as the director of alumni affairs when he heard about the plans for Expo ‘74. He “camped out on King Cole’s doorstep” until the Expo president gave him a job, at first as manager of special presentations. However, Kobluk had developed experience in the concert booking and touring industry, not just with the trio, but also because of a sideline business he had been running since 1965 called American Theater Productions. He and a partner booked bus-and-truck tours of Broadway shows.
With this experience, Kobluk made himself so indispensable that by the time the fair opened, he was the director of performing and visual arts.
As he looks back on his time at the Opera House, Kobluk thinks most fondly of the Broadway tours that have been filling out the season for the last 10 years. He used to relish slipping into the house during rehearsals, and getting what amounted to his own private performance.
“Sometimes the rehearsals were better than the performances,” Kobluk said.
He’s retiring now because “the time is probably right” in a personal sense. He said the unsettled political situation in City Hall was only a minor, if “disturbing,” factor in his decision. He and Claire will spend some time at their remote lake cabin in British Columbia (“no electricity and no plumbing”) and devote more time to his hobbies, golf and fishing.
Meanwhile, let’s allow one old friend, a fellow veteran of that legendary road trip to New York, to have the last word.
“He’s one of the most gracious men I’ve ever met,” said Chad Mitchell. “Really a gentleman in every respect.”