Bar mitzvah excepted, Michael Dorf says that his affinity for wine began in high school. “For whatever reason, I was attracted to Blue Nun,” he says of the sweet white German wine that took off in the 1970s when Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara advertised it on the radio.

Trips to Europe while producing tours under the auspices of Knitting Factory — the avant music club he opened near CBGB in Lower Manhattan in 1987 — refined his tastes. “All of a sudden, I was relishing being in Europe, trying more wine,” he says, adding that, “the bells went off on a trip with my wife to Montrachet after the MIDEM convention. I was like, ‘this is sublime.’ I drank the Kool-Aid and caught the bug.”

In 2008, about six years after walking away from Knitting Factory, Dorf channeled his obsession with vino craftsmanship and opened his first City Winery on Varick Street in Manhattan’s SoHo district — a space featuring performances by a procession of enduring artists that included Ian Hunter, Alejandro Escovedo, Joe Ely, Willie Nile, Graham Parker and Graham Nash. Unlike other clubs, those performances were paired with elevated cuisine and fine wine.

Seventeen years later, the flagship has moved to a sleek new space on a Hudson River pier in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, and Dorf has opened 14 more locations in Chicago, Boston, Atlanta and Philadelphia, among others, that he says earn $120 million in annual revenues, making him one of the largest independent music venue owners in the business. He also produces an annual tribute to major music artists at Carnegie Hall. In March, Billy Joel will be feted by his daughter Alexa, Rufus Wainwright, Rob Thomas, Bettye LaVette, Mary Chapin Carter and other artists — all backed by the Piano Man’s touring band..

In early 2025, Dorf opened his latest venute, El Bar NYC at the Meatpacking District City Winery. The space offers 400 different iterations of the music mogul’s latest obsession: tequila and mezcal.

In this interview with Billboard, Dorf talks about the agave spirit’s relationship to music, the business strategy that distinguishes him from Live Nation and the reasons he’s booking more comedy these days.

Why open a tequila bar when you’ve done so well with wine?

Up until doing this project, I never really understood the seven-year growth cycle of the agave plant and all the nuance that goes into making tequila and mezcal, which is really kind of cool. It’s what fascinated me about wine: the depth of the craftsmanship that goes into the product.

I used to think of tequila as just what I got drunk on at college. Then things started changing with sipping tequilas and rums and single-malt Scotch. It’s all fun, but tequila in particular has that craftsmanship and nuance. That’s what I’ve liked about music since the days of the Knitting Factory when it was really about avant garde craft and artistry regardless of commercial intent.

Tequila is artier than vodka, that’s for sure. So, for the purposes of this interview, vodka is Live Nation and tequila is City Winery.

How has the live music business changed since you opened the Knitting Factory and how is the City Winery different? You’ve got 15 locations?

Yeah, 15 locations. The biggest observation is that live music venues today have to deal with real estate prices and the challenge of being in an urban environment where most people who are going to buy an apartment or live in a neighborhood don’t want a club in their building, or in their neighborhood. Ten years ago, the East Village and Brooklyn were vibrant spots for venues. And when you have that, a whole community of synergistic components springs up — it starts with musicians and then industry, studios, places for collaboration. Back then, you didn’t need an email or a text to learn about an artist’s show. You knew which café or venue they’d be at. There was community. That’s all gotten very disenfranchised or disassociated because of the spreading out and now technology interfering with that sense of community. Real estate has pushed venues out, and even in Brooklyn it’s hard to sustain financially a 10,000 square foot space in a neighborhood that has residential components.

Does that extend to markets outside New York?

Nashville got very busy with the artistic community and now it’s overrun. So, venues are getting pushed out there. From my vantage point, real estate is maybe the single biggest factor affecting live music. Technology has had a positive and negative effect. From a marketing standpoint, you can save money if you smartly promote using the internet, social media, et cetera. Geotargeting is the buzz phrase in digital media, but the reality is you could geotarget at the restaurant on the corner of St. Marks where everyone was putting up their posters for their shows that week. You get that corner with your show poster for an hour, and you’re going to get 200 to 300 people looking at it. And those are exactly the customers you want.

That’s how I met Jamie Kitman who is the manager of They Might Be Giants. We were both wheat-pasting our flyers on that corner. You’d wait for the other guy to go away, then cover up his poster. I’d cover up Jamie’s They Might Be Giants poster with one for Swamp Thing. But he would go around the block, come back and cover up Swamp Thing. That’s how critical that corner was. Today, Meta pretends to give you all kinds of ways to do it, but it’s just not as effective. So, you have to work harder even though you’re spreading the word in a bigger way.

Back at the Knitting Factory, I would get the addresses of our fans, and each month I’d do a mailing. Ultimately, it’s still about word of mouth — getting people’s attention one way or another to come to a show.

Are you competing with Live Nation and AEG, or are you in your own lane?

I’m definitely in my own lane. At this point, we are the largest independent chain of music venues which puts us in an interesting position. All of our City Winery locations are right around a 300-seat capacity. That’s our sweet spot. That’s not a capacity that the duopoly of Life Nation and AEG care about. Live Nation started to dip down into the sub-1,000 capacity for a little bit, and they’re back to staying at 1,500 and 2,000-seat spaces or larger. Look, they’re friends. We work with Live Nation and AEG when an artist wants to do a three-, four- or five-night run. Comedians like John Mulaney could have worked anywhere. He didn’t need to do 37 nights with us. He wanted an intimate space where he could work out his material before doing a big theater or stadium or arena tour. But we’re definitely under their radar because of our size.

So, how do you make your business work with such small-capacity venues?

It’s the old axiom: In sports and entertainment, the profits are in the popcorn. That’s our internal mantra. Most of the ticket money from the box office is going to the talent, and after the Knitting Factory I had a chance to really think about business models. I didn’t want to do anything with intellectual property rights anymore. I want to put on live shows and figure out a way to make money from them, which is really hard.

The money is in the popcorn, and I was like, all right, I’m going to make a lot of the popcorn in the form of wine. I’m going to focus on really good food, and those margins are good. I decided to go all-in on the hospitality side. I know Madison Square Garden and the Sphere — places like that are trying to upgrade their food and their beverage, no question. That’s been a trend for 15-20 years. But it’s not any kind of Danny Meyer-level experience.

Your menus offer elevated cuisine.

The hardest thing we do is trying to provide that restaurant level service and hospitality and quality of food, so that it’s an elevated restaurant and concert experience. Live Nation and AEG — their job is to compete hard for the biggest names in entertainment, give them a really good environment and let as many people see them as possible at the highest price. The food and beverage sales are all ancillary thoughts — it’s just a side hustle.

For years, I’ve heard that City Winery pays artists more than other venues.

I don’t think we pay them more. I think we pay them a pretty high percentage of the overall box office. For agents that I’ve worked with — Frank Riley at High Road Touring, one of the great agents — I’ve worked with him for 40 years. He knows that we’re honest, and we might just do an 80/20 split of the gate, or in some cases, 90/10 — don’t say that too loud — but if we have to go to that extreme, we recognize that, for artists these days, live shows are their main source of income. So, if Graham Nash would prefer to be in a more intimate environment for three or four nights in a row — or we’re very close to announcing 30 nights of Todd Rundgren between all of our locations — wouldn’t their audiences prefer to sit than stand? Yes. Would they like to have some good food and wine served in a glass versus a plastic cup? Yes. Will they stand for the encore, and will we break 30 glasses because of this scenario? That’s fine. A really good show means we’re breaking a lot of glasses because that means people are getting up, and we appreciate that. Riedel, our glass partner, is very happy with City Winery. We buy more Riedel glassware than any other restaurant in the country.

And Riedel makes high-end glassware.

When I built the first City Winery location on Varick Street, I reached out to Maximilian Riedel, and I said, “How do I position City Winery to be a legitimate wine-obsessed place?” And we basically started a partnership. If Live Nation ever bought us, and they looked at our numbers, they would be like, “What are you doing with the Riedel glassware?”

I firmly believe that when an audience member who knows something about wine, sees that the glass we’re pouring wine into is Riedel, they care about that. It’s why we have Meyer sound. When the tour manager and the roadies see that the quality of the PA system is better than where they just came from, it means we’re taking it seriously.

If Live Nation wanted to buy you, would you sell?

Anybody would sell for the right price. We are a very capital-intensive business, and I was very lucky that we survived the pandemic. We’ve done some private equity over the years. Small stuff. Nothing institutional. We’re able to play a little bit in the fast-growth hospitality financing world. We get some good valuation stuff there.

I’ve talked to both Live Nation and AEG in the past, and they’ve studied us. We would need to get to a little bigger scale before we would become attractive.

I’ve noticed that you are doing more comedy — or at least promoting it more.

Yeah, it has been super fun to play host to Kevin Hart and Jon Stewart. I think what happened post-pandemic, in 2021 and 2022, was comedy clubs — the small, low ceiling, 150-capacity packed, packed spaces — got a little uncomfortable both for the artist and the fan. City Winery obviously doesn’t have that atmosphere. I think there was a desire to work out material in a little bit larger room. And we were in the right place at the right time. So, more and more artists and agents – [WME’s] Mike Berkowitz was a big one — started waking up. Seth Meyers, who lives a few blocks away, came in and was like, “Wow, I can make a little more money; my audience is going to be happier, and I can just walk here.” So, we started getting some momentum.

I also think there was a slight zeitgeist change post-pandemic. The world has gotten a little kookier politically, and between the various wars and what’s happening from a social standpoint, the cathartic need to laugh has never been greater. Seeing comedy at The Beacon or Town Hall is great, but to get the material to a place where it’s really working, there need to be development rooms. And we’re in a good place to do that.

So, we’ve not become best friends with our comedy club colleagues. They’re a little irritated that we’re doing more comedy. I feel bad about that, but we’re just a stage and our role in the ecosystem is to provide a really good room and an appropriate space for what people want.

You produce annual tributes to major artists at Carnegie Hall. How did those come about?  

I guess it was the end of the Knitting Factory time for me, and I got invited to be part of this UJA- Federation sub-nonprofit called Music for Youth Foundation. It was all of the big shots in the music industry — the head of BMI, head of ASCAP, Sony, Universal. They held a luncheon every year called The Man of the Year Steven Ross Humanitarian Luncheon. It would honor David Geffen and Ahmet Ertegun and the Walter Yetnikoff, and it would pull in a lot of money.

But In 2000 and 2001, obviously, the music industry started having some hiccups. This luncheon went from making millions of dollars to pretty much drying up.

I’m at BMI’s table, and we’re discussing what do we do. I nervously raised my hand and said, “What about putting on a show. I’ve got this hankering for doing a series of rock honors at Carnegie Hall. My mentor, George Wein, works at Carnegie Hall with JVC Jazz, but I think if you did something in the rock genre, it could really stand out.” I’m like, “I think the first one would be the music of Joni Mitchell.”

They were like, “Kid, it’s a crazy idea. You’re meshugana. You’re going to lose so much money. We’re not behind it.”

So, my foot is deep in my mouth. I did not have the money for this, but I said, “This is what I’ll do. If I could just get everyone to help — with talent and please buy some tickets. If it loses a penny, I’ll take full responsibility. I’ll pay for it and give 100% of the net profits back to the organization. So, no lose.” They said, “Go ahead.”

We did the first one in 2004 and sold out. We made $100,000 and I gave it all to the organization. Year two, the thing was still part of Music for Youth, and they’re wanting to get more involved. I’m like, “Can I see where the money is going? I raised $100,000 but I think we only distributed $50,000 or $60,000 of it.” They’re like, “There’s a lot of overhead here.” I said, “I’m going to do this independently. I’m just going to write the checks directly to the organizations.”

It has been 21 years, and we sell out and make about $100,000 every year. This year we’re going to do a little better. I’ve raised over $2 million for music education programs, and it’s been fun as can be. Half the honorees attend. Bruce Springsteen came out on the stage and played his encore, and David Byrne wanted to do a marching band in his show. He did it coming down the front aisle. R.E.M. did its last performance as a group in New York during their encore.

Billy Joel is your next tribute in March.

I saw the Billy Joel documentary and thought it was amazing. Billy is such a good guy, and his songs are incredible. He should be the next honoree. I sent a note to Billy’s team, and the next day they responded. They said, “Billy loves music education. Sure, go ahead.” We went on sale without mentioning any performer who would be playing the tribute — we usually trickle out names as the tribute date approaches — and we sold out, which we’ve never done. So, I think two things. One, there’s a lot of love and respect for Billy. And two, we’ve had 21 years of really great shows.