E-Mail This Article to a Friend RAWK AND ROLL Linwood’s live music on hiatus BY CAMILLE DODERO

You’d be forgiven for being confused about the Linwood Grill’s published winter line-up — wasn’t Little Walter, slated to play last Saturday night, dead? And since the key pages on the Fenway venue’s Web site (http://www.linwoodgrill.com/) were temporarily inaccessible (it was finally updated on Tuesday), the only option was to call the Boston rock-and-roll haunt to find out what had happened.

Unfortunately, the dive bar’s automated phone service wasn’t very helpful. Thank you for calling the Linwood, answered a recorded female voice. If you know your party’s extension, you can dial it at any time during this message. For the company directory, press the pound key. For a schedule of bands, please press one. If you pressed one, you got another womanly narrator, this one chattering away like an automaton. Hi-thanks-for-calling- the-Linwood-Grill-band-listing-line. On-Halloween-October-31-it’s-the-Humanoids-Gein-and-the-Graverobbers ..." She stopped at mid November. Further confusing matters, the Internet home of Gein and the Graverobbers stated that the horror-surf body snatchers hadn’t played the Linwood in 2003, but in 2002 — this past All Hallows’ Eve, the grease-painted ghouls instead rocked out at Ralph’s in Worcester.

So what was going on here? Maybe dialing back to the main menu would help? No such luck. For all other questions, please stay on the line and someone will be with you shortly. [Pause] Exiting the system. Goodbye. [Click.]

The secret, it turns out, was to phone the Linwood Grill & Barbecue, the flame-themed restaurant next door. There you could find the Linwood’s new manager and club booker, Matt Dohanian. "Basically, what happened was that the business was sold last week," Dohanian said over the phone this past Monday. The pulled-meat restaurant is still open — "There will be some small changes to it. But for now, it’s still the same" — but the adjacent joint known to advertise cheap cover charges and drink prices "was just so rundown that it needed to be fixed." The Fenway-area bar is slated to be back in business by April, for Opening Day, he added.

Although there’s been speculation that the Linwood won’t reopen as a rock club under its new ownership, Dohanian insisted it will. "One hundred percent we will reopen; one hundred there will be live music once we do." Dohanian said he’ll still be booking rock shows, but "some of it will be a little different." Although he shied away from specifics, it sounds like the Linwood won’t be the sticky-floor watering hole of "loud music" it used to be, where bands with monikers inspired by decaying body tissue, severed appendages, or violent weather conditions could break strings, scream loudly, and frighten the barkeep. "Sometimes the bands tended to be a detriment," Dohanian noted. "Sometimes the bands would compete with the Fenway [Red Sox] crowd. So instead of having [Red Sox fans] complain about the bands, we’re going to try and get good bands so they will actually like it."

For more information, visit http://www.linwoodgrill.com/, or call (617) 267-8644 and dial "3" to reach the restaurant next door.