Jordan Strong of Uniting Souls puts on this new weekly mix of dub, downtempo and house. The club is located right on Main Street but it's black door, set off from the road a bit, hidden behind gates made it somewhat difficult to find. But, after tracing the street numbers, we finally stumbled upon it. Though the interior is inviting with low red lights (in my opinion, the lighting of any good house music club), brick walls and not to mention extremely friendly bar tenders, my first thought was, "This is too small to be a dance club." I tried to keep an open mind, sometimes small can work.

Jordan Strong spun low-key Latin inspired downtempo, dub and hip-hop. The place stayed empty. Then, suddenly, at the strike of midnight, as if some bar down the street had kicked everyone out and sent them to the Bar Copa, the place filled up in a matter of minutes. I stick to my original theory-this place is too small for a dance club! It's too bad because Rick Preston really is an amazing funky house DJ. Also, one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet! Unfortunately, it was one of those instances where you bumped into people constantly, the sound wasn't that great and the poor DJ had no monitor. After struggling for most of the night, he started to play some old school songs like Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" and stopped mixing. Fortunately, I got to hear my most favorite house song right now, Jully Black's "Sweat Off Your Brow", so the night was not all wasted.

Bad sound aside, I was also entertained most of the evening by a girl who kept asking everyone to dance with her brother. I felt special because I was the first to get approached. Ha! Overall, I think Jelly Roll could work but maybe at a different location. Bar Copa should be a bar, like it's name implies. In a place this small, the music is too overwhelming and the quarters too tight for the dancing crowd. The job of a location is make the DJ sound good, not work against them.