The Crystal Palace, a music and eating joint in Bakersfield launched by Buck Owens — which hosted nearly each nation music star in America through the years — has abruptly shut its doorways.
The closure of the temple of nation music, an essential piece of San Joaquin Valley historical past, prompted an outpouring of grief from followers throughout the nation — together with determined pleas to stars similar to Dwight Yoakam, Garth Brooks and Taylor Swift, who all performed there, to avoid wasting the day by shopping for the place.
“This is so sad,” one individual wrote on the Crystal Palace Instagram, tagging Dwight Yoakam and Garth Brooks and pleading with them to “keep the Crystal Palace open!”
Archival photograph of Buck Owens Crystal Palace, situated at 2800 Buck Owens Blvd.
(Eliza Inexperienced / The Bakersfield Californian)
Jim Shaw, director of the Buck Owens Non-public Basis, which has owned the Crystal Palace since Owens’ loss of life in 2006, stated the closure, which was introduced Monday, has “been coming for a while, and I’ve dreaded seeing it happen.”
Shaw stated the pandemic, together with a slowing financial system and the more and more tight margins for the restaurant enterprise, all mixed to make it “a tough business.” Plus, he added, members of the Owens household concerned within the enterprise “are in their mid- to late 70s. We’ve done what we can.”
Shaw himself, who’s a keyboard participant and a former chief of Owen’s band the Buckaroos, is 78. He’s been with Owens since he left Fresno State to hitch the band within the Seventies.
By that time, Owens had already modified nation music — and Bakersfield.
Patrons take pleasure in their dinner whereas Cody Gates, the night time’s musical visitor on this September 2022 picture, performs on stage at Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace.
(Eliza Inexperienced / The Bakersfield Californian)
A toddler of the Mud Bowl, Owens was born in Texas and spent a lot of his childhood in Arizona earlier than popping up in Bakersfield‘s nascent music club scene. He brought a twangy sound to country ballads, and by the 1950s and 1960s, that sound had turned his city into a western rival to Nashville. Some of his hits included “Together Again,” “Crying Time,” “Love’s Gonna Dwell Right here,” “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail” and “Under Your Spell Again.”
It additionally included “Streets of Bakersfield,” which grew to become a late-career hit with Yoakam and included these lyrics: “How many of you that sit and judged me ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?”
The “Bakersfield Sound” was additional cemented by one other one-time member of Owens’ band, Merle Haggard, who performed with the Buckaroos briefly within the Sixties.
In 1996, Owens opened the Crystal Palace, an all-in-one restaurant, live performance venue and museum of the star’s life, situated at 2800 Buck Owens Blvd. Although it has fewer than 600 seats, well-known nation music stars made common pilgrimages.
Shaw stated he’s attempting to keep away from heartbreak by specializing in “the fact that we had an incredible 28 years. Pretty much anybody in country music played here … Taylor Swift, and Garth Brooks, and Willie Nelson, Dwight Yoakam, Brad Paisley.”
Brooks, he famous, famously proposed to his spouse Trisha Yearwood there in 2005.
Swift performed the stage on the age of 16, he stated, accompanied to Bakersfield by her mom.
Garth Brooks carried out at Buck Owens Crystal Palace in Bakersfield as a part of his 2005 Dive Bar Tour of small venues within the midst of his summer season stadium tour.
(Randy Lewis/Los Angeles Instances)
And Yoakam performed the palace too many instances to rely. “I loved him,” Yoakam informed The Instances in 2007, shortly after Owens’ loss of life, noting that their relationship was “part friend, part sibling, and a whole lot surrogate parent.”
The Buck Owens Basis listed the constructing on the market final yr. Whereas there was loads of “tire kickers,” Shaw famous, there have been no takers.
The web site SavingCountryMusic.com famous that the Crystal Palace is becoming a member of different small nation music venues which can be scuffling with the brand new economics of the music enterprise, which favor giant arenas. “The plight for legendary, midsized country music venues continues to worsen.”
Followers who’re hoping {that a} music lover with deep pockets will swoop in and save the place can discover each despair and inspiration in Owens’ lyrics.
He did, in any case, warn in “The Heartaches Have Just Started” that “when you see the backdoor swinging, you’ll know I’ve run out of hope.”
However he additionally famously promised that “love’s gonna live here again.”
