Cutting INTO COMMUNITY
Before deciding to open Axe Play, neither Shane Stephens or Savanah Sheets had ever thrown an axe.
They were on one of their escape room pilgrimages. Stephens and Savannah have done somewhere north of 300 escape rooms together, traveling to cities like Pittsburgh to feed what he freely calls an obsession, when they ended up talking shop with a venue owner who found out they were in the business. “He said, let me show you something,” Stephens says. “And he went in the back, and he had one target set up in the back of his warehouse. We didn’t throw an axe. We just saw it.”
The guy wanted them to franchise his concept. They passed on the franchise but committed to the idea of opening a place of their own. They were going to bring something new to Jackson, it was going to be downtown, and it was going to be theirs.
“We believed in the idea because we believe in Jackson,” Stephens says.
Axe Play is unique in that it’s a sanctioned and dedicated ax-throwing venue. Typically, a lane or two of axe throwing is set up in a bowling alley, arcade, or other entertainment venue.
“They give you an axe, say throw it at the wall, and they walk away,” Stephens said.
But here at Axe Play, every lane gets a World Axe Throwing League certified coach. Three disciplines: hatchet, knives, and big axe, the full-size fireman’s variety. There’s a duals component where partners throw at the same target simultaneously. And occasionally, if the universe cooperates, a Robin Hood: the second axe embedding in the handle of the first.
The coaching philosophy carries over directly from what they learned running escape rooms. “Sometimes you go to an escape room, and the goal of the people who make it is to just make sure you get stuck. But we want you to have fun, and part of having fun is being successful. We want you to fall in love with what we’re doing so you come back over and over again. The way to do that is to help you be great at throwing axes.”
It’s working. Their league currently runs over 70 members across multiple nights per week, eight-week seasons, four seasons a year. At a world championship event, Stephens says, Axe Play had the largest league sending competitors.
Because of how seriously (fun) they take axe throwing, it might seem that the bar at Axe Play would be an afterthought. But Stephens and Sheets took the same “seriously fun” philosophy to their cocktails, researching concepts and cocktails before opening.
“That just means we drank a lot,” Stephens laughs.
He’s half-right.
For one research expedition, they drove to Chicago to visit one of the world’s top-ranked bars, where individual drinks have their own dedicated stations and bartenders, and a single cocktail can run over fifty dollars. They hit speakeasies in Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor. They studied the showmanship—drinks set on fire, ingredients frozen inside ice that transform the cocktail as they melt. They sipped some of the greatest (and not so great) drinks in the world and brought what they learned back to Jackson.
One cocktail they developed was inspired by something they’d tried in Chicago. While Axe Play doesn’t have space for lots of showmanship and setting drinks on fire, “Everyone who knows that place and then tries ours says ours tastes better,” Stephens says with a wink.
If you need a recommendation, the Blackberry Moonshine Lemonade—their bestseller by a mile—uses a secret lemonade recipe from Stephens’s father, who ran a food truck selling hot dogs, curly fries, and lemonade at fairs. Each one gets shaken with a fresh lemon.
While a majority of visitors to Axe Play are there for fun and cocktails, the venue being World Axe Throwing League certified creates an opportunity for serious competition. Every October, Axe Play hosts the Tournament of the Full Moon, the largest WATL-sanctioned tournament in the Midwest. Competitors fly in from as far away as Canada, Florida, and Texas. They stay for three or four days and ask Stephens where to eat around Jackson.
Winners earn bids to the world championships, and two of their league members are the current world champions in big axe duals. They wore Axe Play Jackson shirts on ESPN.
Stephens wants to expand the tournament into something bigger with some festival ideas that are secret for now. “Coney dogs and axes,” he says, trying the phrase on for size. “I mean, that could work out.”
When you ask Shane Stephens what makes Jackson worth it the 11 years and two businesses, he mentions that he owns one of Jackson’s 100 Homes initiative houses. A program through the City of Jackson, participants can receive up to $60,000 in downpayment assistance to purchase a new home built on one of the vacant lots in the city.
Jackson gave him something and he wants to give back.
“Around the time we opened Epic Escapes in 2015, there was this meme going around Facebook. It used a scene from The Lion King—Mufasa holding Simba above the savanna, gesturing toward everything the light touches,” Stephens says. “And over the dark patch, the elephant graveyard, they had written the word ‘Jackson’.”
Stephens still looks angry about it. It got under his skin.
“There is this rebellious, smart-alecky part of me and Savannah,” he says. “You said we’re not good enough? We’ll show you. We believe in Jackson and we believe in this place. We want to build community and make it better.”
Axe Play is located at 133 W Michigan Suite D, Jackson, Michigan.
