Wooden fort evolves into comics’ playhouse
LENY AND RAY INVERNON occasionally mute their television and open their windows to hear the splendid sounds of the North Idaho wilderness that surrounds their Naples home.
“Ha, ha. Ha, ha, hee, hee, hee.”
Leny and Ray smile at the call of the Panhandle chuckler. They hear owls and red-winged blackbirds all the time. Only the last weekend of each month do the Panhandler chucklers gather within the Invernons’ earshot.
“Only Rick would do something like this,” Leny says about her neighbor, Rick Reed. “The comedians he brings in are hilarious.”
Rick Reed runs the Tower, the World’s Smallest Comedy Club, two miles off U.S. Highway 95 down a rocky dirt road where no light pollution obscures the night sky. The Tower began two years ago as a quirky treehouse and has grown into an elaborate wooden fort with balconies, towers, lofts, patios and hidden passages.
On the last weekend of each month, the Tower offers audiences of up to 50 the best of comedians from Los Angeles, Seattle, Spokane and elsewhere. Rick has no problem booking the talent or filling the cushy green seats he procured for a song from the Kootenai River Inn.
“He’s got something uniquely special there,” says Rod Long, a Seattle comedian who performed at the Tower the last weekend in June. “I absolutely will come back, and I’d recommend it to friends.”
Rick began the fort while he was recovering from a car accident. It was supposed to be a greenhouse for his wife, Cathy. But one room led to another, and stairs pulled it all together. Cathy’s greenhouse never materialized. Rick had booked comedians in past jobs and performed on the comedy circuit. He saw potential in this pseudo-treehouse built from larch and cedar off his property.
The Tower was just testing life in the spotlight in 2002 when Rick’s boyhood friend Jim Hagel moved up from Sacramento, Calif. Jim is a cabinetmaker. He moved into a mobile home on the Reed property and pulled out his tools. The treehouse sprouted an artistic gazebo in no time.
“We built treehouses together in Sacramento in the sixth grade and we’re still building treehouses together,” Rick says, grinning.
Jim shared Rick’s love of a simple lifestyle in a natural environment. He also shared Rick’s need to laugh. The two men built a sweeping staircase with broad steps to a level that leads to several balconies a few steps up or down. The balconies overlook a hot tub and small stage where comedians perform. Ladders lead to higher rooms, balconies and sky-viewing towers.
Everything is natural wood from the Reed property or local mills. Jim flew his family to Idaho to see the Tower.
“How do you explain this to someone?” he says, leaning on a wooden railing around a balcony.
Rick put out the call for comedians, and plenty answered. Rod performed at the Tower two years ago and was ready to return. He wasn’t disappointed. He earned unplanned laughs when a bat swooped on stage and startled him into momentary silence.
“I’ve done cruise ships, weird places, stood on a pool table, performed in Tokyo and London twice,” he says. “I’ve never seen a place like the Tower.”
Rod is black, and his family, worried about racism, initially begged him not to go to North Idaho. But Tower audiences loved him and Rod, a big-city guy, was richly entertained by the survivalist gear at the Naples General Store and the Bonners Ferry kids rocking out at the Texaco station to the same music his four boys love.
“It’s always fun for me to go places where they don’t see black folks,” he says. “I have funny things to say. My message is not one of divisiveness. The audiences there are very good.”
The Invernons heard Rod at his first Tower performance and he turned them into regular Tower customers.
“He was great,” Leny says. “Rick is not shabby himself. They’ve been our neighbors for 18 years and they’re good neighbors. We hope for the best for them.”
Rick plans performances the last weekend of each month year-round. Bones, a drummer with a single name formerly with L.A. Guns, and Steve Burnham, a guitarist, perform regularly in a “Tonight Show” format. Rick starts off each show.
The Tower serves no food or drinks but encourages people to bring their own. The Reeds even have a barbecue area. Rick discourages much alcohol and raunchy comedy. The Tower most likely would earn a PG-13 rating. Rick doesn’t want to shock; he just wants to have fun – and keep building.
“It’s taken on a life of its own,” Cathy says, chasing her grandson, Carson, across the stage below five balconies. “And I still don’t have my greenhouse.”