AUBURN – Paul Morency pauses while the answering machine at the Midnight Blues Club answers the call last week.

“If there are still tickets available to Sunday’s Debbie Davies show, I’d like to reserve them.” The caller leaves his phone number and hangs up.

But the Debbie Davies Sunday show was moved, according to Morency. He said her performance was canceled a couple of weeks ago when he decided to end the regular Sunday night blues shows.

Instead, guitarist Davies and her blues band will perform on Tuesday at Morency’s other Midnight Blues Club in Waterville.

For now, the Sunday night blues show is the only change. But Morency said there might be more at stake if he can’t get some regular customers in soon.

“I still believe in the club,” Morency said. “I believe in the spot. I believe in Auburn. I believe in live music. But I can’t continue to do it if people don’t come in.”

The Auburn night club has lost a lot this year. It stopped serving lunches earlier this summer and was forced to close the neighboring Cellar Door, a popular nightspot, in August.

He continues to book live acts for week nights, and he still serves dinner.

“But people don’t know that,” Morency said. “They think we closed when the city shut down the Cellar Door.”

Councilors granted Morency a liquor license for the Blues Club in August, on the condition he shutter the neighboring Cellar Door. That club, located in the basement below the Blues Club, drew a younger and rowdier crowd – and a fair number of police calls. Closing it hurt him financially and he had to lay off 25 of his 35 employees.

“It was bringing in a lot of business,” he said. “There is a real market for that kind of a club somewhere in this area. That’s obvious, because we were so busy.”

He thinks the publicity surrounding the Cellar Door might have hurt the Blues Club. “We used to have kids in the Blues Club, but who wants to bring their kids to this place if there are all of these problems?”

Morency insists police calls have never been a problem at the Blues Club, which draws a calmer crowd.

“It’s just tough getting past that perception,” he said. During the summer, the club’s kitchen was serving 150 meals a night. That’s down to about 10 now.

In contrast, his Waterville operation is a booming success. The restaurant is packed, national acts are coming in for Tuesday night blues and Waterville’s Cellar Door – a duplicate of the defunct Auburn operation – is packing them in.

“The concept works,” he said. “It worked here, and it’s working there. It’s just a matter of getting the people to come in.”

Morency owns the building, so he’s not likely to walk away from it. He might consider closing the blues club and opening it as something else.

“If people want a dining establishment, that’s what I’ll give them,” he said. “If they want a DJ with music, I can do that. But they need to come in.”

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