Pacific Electric is a new flagship for the team at TVG, which has become an independent-scene force in the U.S. and U.K. over the last decade. Beyond his band, this project plants Lovett\u2019s flag as an L.A. live music entrepreneur too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve never had such a significant moment around a venue launch,\u201d Lovett said in the soon-to-be dressing room at Pacific Electric. \u201cIt\u2019s the seventh venue we’ve done, but it has never coincided with such an important creative moment with the band. I have to be very disciplined right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mumford & Sons led the 2010s folk revival that minted a generation of plaintive, earnest singer-songwriter acts atop the charts. While their genre peers\u2019 fates have varied, Mumford & Sons remained perennial arena and festival headliners, with an ambitious midcareer streak in the studio. As pop culture\u2019s tastes shifted, and his band moved around New York, L.A. and the U.K., Lovett returned to his show-producing roots in 2016 to build the 320-capacity nightclub Omeara in London.<\/p>\n
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Los Angeles, CA – February 19: Exterior view of the new music venue Pacific Electric, which is under construction in Chinatown and owned by Ben Lovett of the Grammy-winning folk band Mumford & Sons. (Allen J. Schaben \/ Los Angeles Times) (Allen J. Schaben \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of rooms in America are owned by the promoter, so unless you are working with that promoter, you can’t play that room. I don’t like that. I think there’s something fundamentally broken with that practice,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted to prove out that idea, but I had to learn everything, like how you get a liquor license. It wasn’t perfect, but the intent was so pure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two years and a couple U.K. venues later, TVG got an unexpected call from the city of Huntsville, Ala., to build the Orion Amphitheater, an 8,000-capacity anchor venue for the massive civic project Apollo Park. The futuristic Grecian agora, which opened in 2022, was beyond anything they\u2019d built before \u2014 similar to Red Rocks in Colorado or Forest Hills Stadium in New York. Suddenly, Lovett and TVG were players in the U.S. too.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I’m off the road, I drop my kid at school and I go to work. I sit in an office from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.,\u201d Lovett said. \u201cThat\u2019s not common, but there are people I really admire like Pharrell Williams who have a foot in entrepreneurship while also being a creator of songs. By doing a day’s work with TVG, sitting down at the piano can still feel like a hobby.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read more:<\/b> This legendary L.A. music venue is closing after 25 years. But its story isn\u2019t over<\/a><\/p>\n Lovett, who lives in L.A., had long wanted something closer to home. The industrial northern pocket of Chinatown housing Pacific Electric is well-known to ravers and foodies \u2014 Insomniac\u2019s Naud Street warehouse is close by, and the upscale cocktail bar Apotheke and pan-Asian restaurant Majordomo are around the corner. But besides festivals at Los Angeles State Historic Park, there hadn\u2019t been much of a live music presence in the area (a plan to open an outpost of the NYC venue Baby\u2019s All Right was thwarted by the pandemic).<\/p>\n Pacific Electric will be on the small side for a theater, a more intimate peer of downtown\u2019s Regent or Bellwether<\/a>. But Lovett\u2019s plowed 20 years of notes from touring into the space \u2014 from the serene sandstone-hued dressing rooms with a piano and built-in laundry facilities, to a fully-separated horseshoe bar area to keep fan drink lines moving. There\u2019s no bad sightline in the space, from either the ground floor or upper level balcony, which looks out over a stage wreathed in pink neon and wood cutouts evoking the industrial cityscape outside.<\/p>\n \u201cKeeping the dirt under my fingernails with projects like this, and watching shows as often as I do, you realize how hard and how much creativity and magic there are around shows,\u201d Lovett said. \u201cIt\u2019s never a given to have an audience.\u201d<\/p>\n Read more:<\/b> First look: Inside Meow Wolf L.A., a psychedelic wonderland that celebrates the movies<\/a><\/p>\n To manage the venue, TVG brought on Stacey Levine, a veteran of the Palladium, Wiltern and Theatre at the Ace Hotel (now the United Theater on Broadway). While her management experience is in larger, historic venues, the chance to build something from scratch with an artist\u2019s insight was enticing.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople really want to get off their phones and back into independent venues, and this little pocket of downtown is about to pop off,\u201d Levine said. \u201cIt\u2019s very cool and close to different areas of L.A. But the venue is also really artist-focused. At 750 capacity, do you often have really nice dressing rooms? Probably not. But this is like welcoming artists into a nice hotel.\u201d<\/p>\n Pacific Electric is independent in the sense that it\u2019s not wholly exclusive for either promoter conglomerate (they plan to work with both Live Nation, AEG and others). Lovett, who cited the San Francisco concert impresario Bill Graham as a model for his company, said, \u201cI love the opportunity to back an artist and be their advocate, and they should be able to work in any room they want to. I’ll die on that hill.”<\/p>\n The music won\u2019t lean especially Mumford-ish. Its first show, with the synthwave group TimeCop1983, is slated for March 20, with a Robyn-themed club night, heavy rockers Militarie Gun and a big comedy slate from the Netflix Is a Joke festival up next.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/b> The Eaton fire tore a music community apart. South Pasadena’s Sid the Cat Auditorium may help revive it<\/a><\/p>\n L.A.\u2019s nightlife \u2014 particularly in downtown \u2014 is still recovering from the pandemic-era culling of live venues and hospitality. After the malaise that\u2019s ripped through L.A.\u2019s entertainment economy of late, and a year of fires, ICE raids and other withering events in Los Angeles, Pacific Electric will have its work cut out to build its regular audience.<\/p>\n But new venues like South Pasadena’s Sid the Cat Auditorium and Re:Frame in Atwater Village have taken similar big swings in recent months. Lovett sounded hopeful that L.A. has plenty of room for more.<\/p>\n \u201cI operated five venues in the pandemic, and conversations abounded like \u2018Is this the death of live experiences?’\u201d Lovett said. \u201cMy take was different, which was the one thing that we couldn’t figure out how to fix, was how to spend time together. Our greatest void was human interaction. We’re always going to trend towards congregation. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t do this.\u201d<\/p>\n