After being homeless for five months, the Eighth Step has finally found a new home at Cohoes Music Hall.

The Eighth Step presented its first show there Sunday evening.

"That was a real dress rehearsal,'' says Margie Rosenkranz with a chuckle. Rosenkranz is the longtime executive director of the Eighth Step, who will serve as executive artistic director of the music hall. "The concert was kind of rough organizationally, but it was a lot of fun, and the music was just wonderful.''

The show was the coffeehouse's third annual Songs of Working America concert, presented in conjunction with the Hudson Mohawk Labor Coalition.

"And best of all, we had an audience of about 200 people at the event, even though we purposely kept the advertising and promotion to a minimum,'' Rosenkranz says.

When the Step gears up at the music hall for real in September, the show definitely won't be a secret. In fact, you can expect a number of folk music luminaries to grace the stage for the gala grand opening.

"The move to Cohoes is really a golden opportunity. It's very exciting for us, that's for sure,'' Rosenkranz enthuses. "The music hall is a magical place. It's on the historic register. It's up to code. And it has acoustics to die for.''

When Cohoes Mayor John T. McDonald III approached Rosenkranz about relocating to the music hall, she admits she didn't take the offer all that seriously at first. "I went over there just to be polite, after initially getting a call from the new mayor, but then I remembered how much I loved this place. I remember seeing a Eugene O'Neill play here back in the '70s and 'Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris,' too.'' The latter was a production of the now-defunct Heritage Artists Ltd., the last full-time tenant of the music hall.

The 125-year-old former vaudeville house located on Remsen Street has a capacity of about 400, which is roughly equivalent to the upstairs space at First Presbyterian Church in Albany that the Eighth Step called home for 33 years.

"But we'll have quite a bit of flexibility, because the orchestra seats are all movable,'' Rosenkranz explains. "So we can put a little thrust addition onto the front of the stage at floor level and arch rows of chairs around it to create a more intimate space.''

Last December, First Presbyterian Church informed Rosenkranz that it needed the Eighth Step space for its own programs, leaving the music organization homeless.

The spring season of performances had already been booked, and there was considerable scrambling to find venues to host the shows in recent months. Calling itself the Eighth Step In Between, the coffeehouse held most of its spring shows at Emmanuel Baptist Church on State Street. Some of the shows ended up elsewhere, however, including a performance by singer-songwriter John Gorka that took place in St. Joseph's Auditorium on the campus of the College of Saint Rose and this Saturday night's show by the Nields, which will be held at Trinity United Methodist Church on Lark Street in Albany.

Rosenkranz describes the newly struck deal between the Eighth Step and the city of Cohoes, which owns the music hall, as a partnership.

"We want to do some joint grant-writing and fund-raising, and work to make the music hall really reach its potential. We need to save this place, to use it and to really make it work. I guess you could say that we're adopting Cohoes, and they're adopting us. Hopefully, it will all work out to everyone's advantage.''

Rosenkranz admits that she's concerned about whether the Albany folk fans will follow the Step up to Cohoes. "I think that's going to be our biggest job, convincing people that Cohoes is not the end of the world. Once they get there and see what a charmer the music hall is, then I think they'll be back. But we really have to get the word out and get people to make the drive and find out just how easy it is to get to the hall. And I think that our ace in the hole is going to be the massive amount of parking that's available near the hall.''

The Eighth Step will be coexisting with the Clifton Park Players, a community theater group that has staged plays at the musical hall for the past several years. "The Eighth Step supports community arts groups, and we always have,'' Rosenkranz says. "We've always folded other performance organizations into our own programming.''

In addition, look for the Step to expand its own offerings. "We definitely want to incorporate some classical music into our presentations,'' she says. "And we'd like to present some more theater, too.''

And while the Step's performance season in the past has typically run from September through May, Rosenkranz says that may eventually expand as well.

"Air conditioning is going to be one of the first projects that we'll be working on here at the music hall, and once we have that in place, then we'll have the opportunity to start offering a few shows during the summer months as well.''

Despite the move north to Cohoes, Rosenkranz points out that the Step won't be abandoning Albany. "I expect that we'll be back to do shows in Albany periodically,'' she says. "We really, really liked St. Joseph's Auditorium at the College of Saint Rose. It's a great hall. The folks at Emmanuel Baptist Church were also so supportive of us. And the folks at Trinity United Methodist Church are considering hosting our weekly open stage nights, which would give us a Lark Street presence.''

There's a lot of work to be done at Cohoes Music Hall before the Eighth Step turns on the spotlight next fall, but Rosenkranz and the Step volunteers are excited about the new opportunities.

"We're definitely going to be keeping alive the Eighth Step tradition at the Cohoes Music Hall, but in a way, it's like starting all over. The trick for us is going to be finding that delicate balance.''