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In the magazine's Best of Rock issue hitting newsstands today, the club is lauded along with the Orange Peel in Asheville, N.C.; Stubb's Bar-B-Q in Austin, Texas; the Bowery Ballroom in New York City; and the Magic Stick in Detroit.
"I think this just validates what a lot of people already knew," said Rick Mersel, a partner in NorVa Productions LLC. He said that musicians regularly tell him that the 1,500-capacity venue is their favorite place to play.
The club's famous backstage hot tub helped secure the honor, it seems. The Rolling Stone piece mentions the hot tub as well as other amenities behind the velvet curtain: basketball court, sauna, a fully equipped game room.
"I think the entire back stage has a lot to do with it," Mersel said. "When artists play here, it's more of a vacation than it is a workday."
Mersel and partner Bill Reid are working to replicate the success of The NorVa in Richmond with The National, a recently opened downtown concert space. The National sports a Jacuzzi, a sauna and a steam room backstage as well as a well-stocked theater room. Audience members experience the same high-fidelity V-Dosc sound system at The National that impresses music fans at The NorVa.
From the beginning, The NorVa was conceived as an over-achieving ballroom.
"Before The NorVa was built, a lot of the northern tours ended in Washington, D.C. and Southern ones would end in Raleigh or Charlotte," Mersel said. "Oftentimes we were skipped over. We had to make it better than anywhere else, so artists would demand to come here ... They want to come back and they spread the word."
The NorVa opened in April 2000. Read the full Rolling Stone story at rollingstone.com.
