MilkBoy entrepreneurs set sights on movie producing

After a tumultuous 2011 in which they opened a new Center City coffee-and-music venue amid a nasty labor dispute, no one would have faulted rising entertainment entrepreneurs Jamie Lokoff and Tommy Joyner for taking it easy in the new year.

But that's not how they roll at MilkBoy, a blend of java- and music-brewed business ventures that seeks to reinvent itself in 2012.

Joyner and Lokoff are focusing on Center City after a decade running a recording studio and their now well-known coffee house in Ardmore (and a smaller one in Bryn Mawr). The two recently took over one of Philadelphia's top recording venues, Larry Gold's Studio on Seventh Street, hoping to create business harmonies with their new club as well as with commercial clients.

That seems ambitious enough, but the two MilkBoy owners are also plunging head-first into the world of movies, teaming with a locally based Oscar winner to coproduce a romantic comedy.

"There's a little bit of a feeling if we're not moving forward we'll die, like a shark or something that has to keep swimming," Joyner, 41, said. "Maybe it's just that there's so many cool things to do and we want to do them."

The pair certainly made news in 2011 - most of it welcome, some not so much. For instance, they were in a running battle with the carpenters' union, which picketed the Ardmore coffeehouse for months after a contractor rebuilding MilkBoy's space at 11th and Chestnut Streets in Philadelphia employed nonunion workers.

But Lokoff and Joyner see the two new ventures not only as too-good-to-pass-up opportunities, but also as ways to reconnect with their urban roots from the early 1990s, when the two musicians first paired up at a studio in North Philadelphia.

"We started in the city and now we're coming back," Lokoff, 46, said. "I think it's where it should be."

The move is a reversal of their odyssey into the western suburbs in 2001, when the lease expired on their studio above Zapf's Music in North Philadelphia and they moved to Ardmore to tap into advertising and other commercial forms of recording. Four years later, they opened their coffee emporium to showcase the bands they worked with at the studio.

But a decade later, Joyner and Lokoff say getting talent to come to the Main Line has become more difficult.

"In some ways, we maxed ourselves out at the Ardmore studio," Lokoff said. "We couldn't get more commercial work. Businesses don't want to leave the city. Bands don't want to leave the city."

In the spring, at the height of the labor controversy, Gold serendipitously entered the picture. A Philadelphia cellist and music giant, his remarkable career has ranged from backing Frank Sinatra at the Latin Casino to a longtime gig with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff's famous house band, MFSB, to more recent work recording or creating string arrangements for the Roots, Jill Scott, and Jennifer Lopez.

Gold, now 63, had been running the Studio since 1996. But in an era of rapid change in the music industry - with more and more artists recording on less-expensive do-it-yourself equipment - running a large, old-school studio was becoming a drain.

"I got tired of the responsibility. The business isn't as good as it once was," Gold said. "This studio was very, very popular for many, many years, and it still is. We still get a lot of work there, but nowhere near what I used to get."

The new digs are more than double the size of their Ardmore studio and have a bank of windows looking out onto Center City. Gold and platinum records line a wall, and the Roots maintain an office there. The site is adjacent to the Electric Factory, which books shows at MilkBoy.

"We just felt like with the new place on Chestnut Street, the synergy was happening downtown," Lokoff said. "Nobody else has a music venue attached to a recording studio. We can maybe have an artist before the show come to the studio and do a live session here."

But as they plow forward in 2012, Joyner and Lokoff will need the studio humming and the premium coffee flowing to propel what may be their riskiest venture of all. What the MilkBoy entrepreneurs really wanted to do, it turns out, was produce.

The motion picture business is not as big a leap as it sounds. Lokoff has a degree in theater arts from the University of Miami, and has had a few small roles in independent films and has worked as an extra in movies starring Denzel Washington and Nicholas Cage. At MilkBoy, the studio work has included movie sound work, including the critically acclaimed Lebanon, Pa.

Lokoff and Joyner teamed with Brian O'Connor, a pioneer in online CD sales who sold his share in that business and caught the movie bug after one of his friend's songs - recorded at MilkBoy - was used in the background of Lebanon, Pa. They also forged a connection with a local movie producer, Tammy Tiehel-Stedman, a native of Ridley Park whose film-school project, My Mother Dreams the Satan's Disciples in New York, won the Academy Award for best short film in 2000.

"They're just fun guys to work with - I thought I'd really love to work with them someday on something, not knowing what it was going to be," said Tiehel-Stedman, who lives in Malvern with her husband and three children.

A couple of years ago, Joyner and Lokoff were pushing an idea for a film about the Philadelphia rap star Schoolly D. "I've been thinking about doing a movie forever . . . forever," Lokoff, the dormant actor, said. "It's always in the back of my mind."

Tiehel-Stedman came back with something simpler: romantic comedy. She had already optioned a script by New York writer Heather Maidat called Bad Boys, Crazy Girls, the saga of a high school guidance counselor and a librarian who aren't as lucky in love as their students.

"The first time out I thought it would be easier to raise money," Tiehel-Stedman said.

Lokoff and Joyner went back to O'Connor. "I told him, if you're looking for a high-risk investment, I think I've just the thing for you." He put up $100,000. Now the push is on to raise $2 million.

As their business grows, their day-to-day goal is to get back to the beginnings - Joyner making and writing music and Lokoff daydreaming about one day acting in regional theater.

But there are just too many opportunities in Philadelphia right now.

"There's never a bad day for us," Joyner said. "We're always on the ground and scrappy, doing better than ever. At a time when other places are folding, we're thriving."