Port Townsend musician Jarrod Bramson is honored to have a chance to open this weekend for a Seattle-based ’90s punk rock band that inspired him as a teen.

“They’re a huge reason why I started playing music,” said Bramson of Coffin Break, which he helped book for a Saturday-night show at Cellar Door in downtown Port Townsend.

“I used to go see them play when I was 15 in the early ’90s,” said the Solvents member.

“It’s a huge win for our town,” said Cellar Door owner Dominic Svornich, noting that Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain called the band one of his favorites.

The collaborative effort by Svornich and Bramson to bring Coffin Break to town represents for Svornich another step toward placing Port Townsend “on the map” as a recognized music community.

COLLABORATION, COORDINATION

Over the past two years, Svornich has coordinated with other music venues to create and maintain a shared booking calendar.

“We started collaborating so we could see what’s always booked at other places,” Svornich said.

Currently on board along with Cellar Door are the Uptown Pub, for which Bramson books bands, and the Disco Bay Detour in Discovery Bay. Svornich is also working on getting Sirens Pub involved, he said.

The shared calendar helps ensure that there aren’t, for example, three jazz shows going on over one weekend.

“We’re all kind of working together to give each other a few good nights,” Svornich said.

Coordinating venues can also leverage combined resources to help bring better-known bands to the area. They can also invite bands to play at more than one location to help them justify the costs for coming over to the Olympic Peninsula.

“We want to be recognized as a legitimate enough music community so that larger touring groups can put the Olympic Peninsula on their circuit,” Svornich said, noting that Port Townsend already is seeing success as a touring stop.

MUSIC MECCA

Cellar Door celebrated its 499th concert on New Year’s Eve, Svornich said, and over the past couple of years has brought in acts such as world-renowned jazz flugelhorn player Dimitri Matheny, who’s set to give another concert Feb. 4; Seattle “dream pop” group Lemolo, which garnered a few “best albums of 2015” awards; and Szkojáni Charlatans, a Gypsy folk band from the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania.

“When we lost the Upstage, we lost the one space that brought in huge, big-name acts,” Svornich said of the Upstage music venue, which operated in the Terry Building from 1998 to 2013, when it closed.

“It’s taken us a couple of years at Cellar Door to build up a rapport,” he said.

Svornich would also like to see Port Townsend become an official arts and entertainment district, and has been talking with the Port Townsend Main Street Program about this possibility.

The district would be under the umbrella of a nonprofit and could thus secure federal grants established to help promote rural areas.

He’d like to bring in the Port Townsend Film Festival and Key City Public Theatre, along with music venues, as partners, and future dreams include running ads in publications like Seattle’s The Stranger to help bring more young people into town for concerts.

“It would be really cool to be able to do that,” Svornich said.