Brewery Blues
After a Covid-induced Pause, the Music is Back
Titanic Brewery has served the University of Miami community and Coral Gables residents burgers and beer for the last 25 years. It’s consoled the Hurricanes football team (and its fans) through losses, helped them celebrate wins, and even survived the pandemic – when many of its peers were forced to close their doors, Titanic put tables outside in a shady yard behind the building. During COVID, however, the brewpub was forced to cancel all its live entertainment. Steadily, it has resumed its music nights, and the popular weekly blues sessions are now back.
Every Wednesday from 9 pm to midnight, Titanic Brewery transforms into a blues club. Suddenly, you’re not in Miami anymore – you’re in a dive bar somewhere in Tennessee or Mississippi. You’re in one of the last-standing breweries that haven’t been overtaken by hipsters.
The blues jam session is an open-stage event. Anyone with a sense of rhythm and a passion for blues is welcome to take the stage and play – as long as they first find UM professor Chris Cosner. He is the unofficial organizer of the jam session, and when he isn’t teaching calculus and differential equations to his students, you can find him on-stage playing blues renditions of Grateful Dead songs.
Cosner has been playing in the jam since it started more than 20 years ago, and he now runs the event, setting up the equipment and deciding who gets to play next. And while his day job at the university requires extreme precision and leaves little room for creativity, one of Cosner’s favorite things about the blues nights is how improvised and imperfect they are.
“Nothing is really rehearsed,” he says. “But everyone plays a similar style of music, so once you start playing, it just kind of flows.”
Kevin Rusk, the owner and founder of Titanic Brewery, echoes Cosner’s remarks. “You never know what’s going to happen,” he says. “Sometimes you’ll get a group of younger kids, maybe five or six. Or you’ll have a four-piece group grow to a nine-piece group with a horn section. It’s just amazing to be in and be a part of.”
UM sophomore Daniel Coppola started playing in the jam sessions around March 2021 and has gone almost every Wednesday since. While his first live performance at a Titanic jam made him nervous, he says that the sessions have since made him fall in love with performing. “It’s really thrilling being up there, playing for other people, because I love music and it almost feels like I’m speaking through my guitar when I’m playing,” he says.
Titanic also hosts karaoke nights every Sunday from 9 pm to 11 pm, and has various live music performances every Saturday night. Drop by for the jam session and enjoy a freshly brewed beer, a good burger, and an escape into the more underground Gables music scene.
Titanic Brewery
5813 Ponce De Leon Blvd. 305.667.2537
11:30 Am to 11 Pm Daily, Till Midnight Fri. & Sat.
https://titanicbrewery.com