Temple Bar owners want to go out on top
MID-CITY When the music is silenced at Temple Bar at the end of this month, the Westside will lose one of its most iconic entertainment venues.
Such is the sentiment of performers who have made appearances at the famous Wilshire Boulevard night spot over its nine-year run in the local music scene.
Owners Louie and Annette “Netty” Ryan announced last month they were closing the Far East-themed club on Sept. 30, choosing instead to focus on their three other bars — Zanzibar, Little Temple and newly-acquired The Townhouse in Venice.
Their reasons were not for financial reasons as the Temple Bar does still draw sellout crowds. Rather it was because the husband-and-wife business partners felt the world music genre for which they opened the club was becoming lackluster.
“The era is changing and the music is changing,” Louie Ryan said. “For us the Temple Bar is known to be a special place to see live music and we wanted to go out on a high note.
“It’s just time to retire something that has been great.”
The couple opened Temple Bar in 1999 after running several restaurants in the Los Angeles area. The Ryans also owned the famous Scrap Bar in New York City before closing it down and moving to the West Coast.
They opened Zanzibar in Downtown in 2002, followed by Little Temple in Silver Lake in 2004.Both are also late-night venues.
For the owners, the goal with Temple Bar was to introduce the sounds of world music, a genre that includes everything from salsa to Afrobeat. The bar often collaborated with local station, KCRW.
The club has seen some of the most famous performers of the past decade, including Sara Bareilles, the Black Eyed Peas, Macy Gray and Stevie Wonder.
Singer Suzy Williams, who has performed at the club since July 2007, said the Temple Bar provides a whole different experience from other venues in the area.
“When you’re playing there, you’re playing in a real classy place and you raise yourself accordingly,” she said. “You get excited about the gig and you work a little harder to do a bang up job because you want to be worthy of the room.”
Williams, who began her career at the age of 18 and has performed at Carnegie Hall, has seen many clubs come and go, venues where the owners are all about the money and not the music, she said.
“The Temple Bar is not like that,” the 55-year-old singer said. “The Temple Bar has been art first.”
Williams will perform at the Temple Bar on Sept. 23.
For R&B group O.N.E., the bar has opened up other opportunities, including a recent gig performing for the BMI Awards’ tribute to Jackson 5 last Thursday.
The group, whose members include Justin Hunt, Guy Morton-James, Eric Bellinger and Brandon Lucas, has performed at the bar for three years, including a recent gig over Labor Day weekend.
Lucas added that the bar also led to opportunities at the House of Blues, the Honda Center and Gibson Amphitheater.
“But there’s nothing like the Temple Bar,” he said.
The members of O.N.E. said they flourished artistically at the club, the intimate setting allowing the musicians to better connect with their audience, unlike other places they have performed.
It was also a venue that allowed the group to reach out to a local audience.
“That was definitely a place where we can be artists and really try different things,” Hunt said.“The Temple Bar is an opportunity to go out of the limits, to do certain things that you wouldn’t do in a regular setting.”
The group said it was shocked to hear about the closing.
“We performed there so many times and they had so many great turnouts, I wondered why it would close down,” Morton-James said.
It’s a question that’s been repeatedly posed to the owners.
“The Temple Bar is a lifestyle,” Ryan said. “It was my wife and I creating an atmosphere and presenting music that we listened to at home.”
The couple is hoping to one day replicate the success of Temple Bar through another uniquely-themed venue. For now they are focusing on The Townhouse and the Del Monte Speakeasy, the neighborhood’s original speakeasy that was constructed by Abbot Kinney in 1915.
“It’s bittersweet,” Ryan said of the closing. “I have no regrets because it’s been nine glorious years and we’re going out on top.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 8, 2008. Read the original PDF.