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The Lobbyist and the Rock Club - Arlington Magazine - May-June 2016 -
Arlington, VA

http://www.arlingtonmagazine.com/May-June-2016/The-Lobbyist-and-the-Rock-Club/

The Lobbyist and the Rock ClubDoug Davenport doesn't play golf. His passion
is an underground tribute to all things metal.

By Jeff Dufour


*Photo by Ron Akiyama*

*Here’s what you might* expect from a high-powered Washington lobbyist:
He’s got an enviable Rolodex. He works a room with aplomb. He’s been a
partner in a major K Street firm. He’s got a couple of controversial
clients in his background. He might have an expensive hobby at which he can
throw his disposable income. He probably lives in a tony neighborhood like
Arlington’s Country Club Hills, where his neighbors include Congressman Joe
Crowley and *Meet the Press* host Chuck Todd.

Doug Davenport brings all those things to the table plus a few more you
probably wouldn’t see coming. Like the record label he started. Or the
charity shows he puts on with rock stars. Or the private tour of the White
House that he gave to Motley Crüe’s own Tommy Lee—the same Tommy Lee who
tells us via email that Davenport “is all things rock!”


*Touring the White House with Motley Crüe's Tommy Lee and Lee's fiancee,
Sofia Toufa*

Oh, and his basement. You definitely don’t expect that. Although that’s
where the disposable income figures in.

“I don’t play golf,” says Davenport, 44, a father of 6-year-old twins who
is perfectly at home in a T-shirt and baseball cap. “I don’t fit the
profile of the K Street guy. I go to rock ’n’ roll shows. This is my
outlet.”

So naturally, he built an underground rock club in his basement. It’s the
“stuff of myth, legend and wonderment,” says Billy Morrison, the longtime
guitarist for Billy Idol, who’s actually played a show in Davenport’s
subterranean lair. “You can’t really explain the depth of love and emotion
that has gone into building this shrine to rock music underneath a normal
family home. We don’t usually make a habit of playing people’s houses—these
days an arena is more the vibe—but Doug has a full-on stage/PA setup down
there.”

In fact, for rock fans, these four rooms may be the best thing to happen in
a suburban basement since *Wayne’s World*.

Truly, you can cue the Wayne-and-Garth-style awe anytime party guests walk
in for the first time and see not just a bona fide English rock star
onstage but a dance floor and a brass pole. And when they leave their
things at the coat check (painted blood red, under the stairs), grab a
drink at the bar and commence perusing the memorabilia—a dozen collectible
guitars in custom-made glass displays; a drum kit used by Megadeth on a
recent Asian tour; walls plastered with concert posters; album covers
and *Rolling
Stone* magazine clippings. Are there lasers? Oh yes, there are lasers.

You’d never know all this from the street. If there’s a party, you might
see a lone velvet rope outside the garage, signaling you to enter. But
regardless of how many guitars are plugged into amps inside, the dead-quiet
street is just that. Davenport’s had the space soundproofed to studio
specifications, such that he’s never had a noise complaint.

Not when he’s had a band down there. Nor when it’s just him hanging out
blasting a Foo Fighters concert DVD, or meeting with the occasional client
who doesn’t mind the same. “This is here all the time,” he says. “There is
no last call.”


*With Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins (who ended up claiming the Ringo
Starr collage for his own).*

As you might expect, the basement wasn’t exactly like this when he and his
wife, Kelley, a communications exec for the Amgen pharmaceutical company,
bought the place in 2008. It was just a nanny suite.

But then again, Davenport’s career hasn’t always been like this either.
Rewind to the early ’90s. As a young government relations pro, his star was
rising quickly. His firm, BMSK Public Affairs, served the likes of Donald
Trump. When Richard Nixon came to town, Davenport was his aide.

Before he turned 30, Davenport was overseeing lobbying for GTECH, then the
largest supplier of lottery systems to state and local governments. In
2000, he founded the lobbying practice at DCI Group, a powerhouse public
affairs firm. He was also ascendant as a behind-the-scenes player in the
Republican Party. In 2008, he was tapped by John McCain’s presidential
campaign to be its regional campaign manager in the mid-Atlantic.

That’s when that phase of his life came to an abrupt halt. After the media
noted that DCI Group had represented a faction of the repressive military
junta in Burma in 2002, Davenport (along with DCI Group’s CEO) resigned
from McCain’s campaign so as not to become a “distraction.” Davenport would
leave the firm soon after.

He retrenched, working out of his home and taking on clients himself,
keeping a low enough profile that he didn’t even establish a Facebook or
Twitter account (he still hasn’t). As part of his second act solo, he’s
worked with NASCAR on voter registration and with the NHL on sustainability
issues and invested in a D.C. bar (Bar Civita in Woodley Park) and a luxury
limo company. He’s also begun to scratch the rock ’n’ roll itch he first
picked up as a teenager—seeing as many shows as possible whenever he’s
traveling.

Which is how, in 2010, he found himself in Los Angeles meeting the
musicians who would eventually form the Royal Machines, a sort of superstar
cover band whose members include Dave Navarro of Jane’s Addiction, Mark
McGrath of Sugar Ray and the aforementioned Morrison—all “idols of mine,”
says Davenport.

“I decided with my Rolodex I could raise the money” to do something with
them in D.C., he continues. A year later, he brought them to the 9:30 Club
to play a benefit show for wounded veterans. That success started him down
the live-music production path, and more shows followed.

“Music guys don’t tend to be in D.C.,” Davenport says, but he remembers
thinking, “There’s really something here, career-wise. One thing that
looked like fun has become work has become fun.”


*A private show featuring the Black Sabbath tribute band Children of the
Grave. Photo by Ron Akiyama/akiyamaphotography.com
<http://www.akiyamaphotography.com/>*

While all this was going on, Davenport started getting ideas about that
nanny suite and sketching out his vision on a piece of foam board (which,
naturally, he still has). In talking to designers, architects and artists,
a couple of things became clear: He wanted a place to showcase the hard
rock and hair metal memorabilia he’d been collecting ever since he first
got into Van Halen and Aerosmith as a teenager. And he wasn’t going to go
halfway. “Any band can come in and plug in and play a show,” he says. “Not
some unplugged thing. A full show.”

Occasionally, there’s even a host. Eddie Trunk, host of VH1’s *That Metal
Show*, makes an annual appearance and does stand-up comedy and rock trivia,
followed by a Black Sabbath or Motley Crüe cover band. This private event
serves as a kick-off to the annual M3 Rock Festival at Merriweather Post
Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland.


*Davenport (right) with VJ and music producer Eddie Trunk. Photo by Ron
Akiyama/akiyamaphotography.com <http://www.akiyamaphotography.com/>*

Other regular guests include Erik Huey, the head lobbyist for the
Entertainment Software Association (the video game industry’s trade group)
who also fronts a country-rock “cowpunk” band called the Surreal McCoys. He
and Davenport met right before that first 9:30 Club show, and found they
were of like mind. “We had a lot of conversations that so many people in
D.C. are buttoned down,” says Huey. “They have to pack their freak flag,
put it in a box never to be seen again.”

Last year, when Huey’s band was looking for a label to release its second
album, he and Davenport decided to start their own, called Across the Aisle
Music (ATA). They’re now talking to various political campaigns about
designing music playlists for candidates and handling rights clearances for
the songs they use. This summer, ATA will produce a Royal Machines concert
in Cleveland during the Republican National Convention. Davenport says they
hope to have a presence at both conventions.

“There’s a lot of tentacles and overlapping between labels and live shows,”
Huey says. “And the whole base of operations is Doug’s basement.”

Naturally, Davenport is also looking forward to hosting a few political
fund­raisers in the coming months. “You put some pretty uptight Washington
folks down here and you’ll see another side of them.” Just about everyone
who experiences the basement club gets it, he says—everyone except maybe
his father-in-law.

“I have a short attention span,” Davenport says. “Adulthood doesn’t mean
growing up. It means doing all the awesome shit you said you would when you
were a kid.”

*Jeff Dufour is a senior editor at* National Journal. *He’s also written
about restaurants, spirits, music and sports for* DC Magazine, *Capitol
File and UrbanDaddy*.


Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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