The Troubadour: the small room that still makes careers

The Troubadour has been on Santa Monica Boulevard for so long that it is easy to forget how small it is. The room holds about 500 people. It dates itself to 1957, and in nearly seventy years it has belonged to only two families.

Hootenanny nights

Doug Weston started the club as a small room on La Cienega Boulevard before moving it to West Hollywood. In the 1960s its Monday Night Hootenanny became a night when record-label scouts came looking for new acts. Buffalo Springfield, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor played early shows there.

On Tuesday, August 25, 1970, Neil Diamond walked onstage to introduce a young British pianist making his first American appearance. It was Elton John, at the start of a run of shows that launched him in America.

Two families

In the early 1980s Weston turned to Ed Karayan, a mechanic, who became a co-owner and helped bring the club back. The Karayan family owns it today. Weston died in 1999.

When the pandemic shut every stage in the city, a GoFundMe campaign raised $70,000, and owning the building outright helped the club turn down offers to sell. It remains independent, booked outside the Live Nation and AEG systems that run most rooms of its size.

Why it matters now

Independent rooms are where artists learn to hold a crowd before they ever see an arena. The Troubadour has done that job for nearly seventy years, under the same two families, in the same small room.

• Shows and tickets at troubadour.com
• Capacity about 500
• Independent, booked outside the major promoters