A MYTHIC MUSIC HALL
RESURFACES
Words By
GAVIN HEANEY
Photos by Jessie Lee Cederblom
Underneath the Redondo Pier, there is buried
treasure. A forgotten music hall that has laid
shuttered like One-Eyed Willie’s fantastic
pirate ship in “The Goonies”, hidden all this time in
plain sight. The club names and the performers on the
marquee have turned with the tides for nearly 60 years,
but one thing has remained constant at this lost paradise
under the pier — the storied stairwell that leads down
to a musical underground. Now, after twelve years of
silence, strange new lights and sounds are emerging
from down below. The stairway has re-opened and now
steps into The Deep End Live, the South Bay’s newest
music venue and the latest chapter in this legend. And
new tales are already being told.
Over 50 years ago, those stairs led to jazz legacy. In
1971, legendary bassist Howard Rumsey christened
it Concerts by the Sea, carrying his vision of jazz at
the beach down from the Lighthouse in Hermosa
Beach, where he had spent two decades helping build
the West Coast Jazz sound. He seated 200 people in
a tiered room beneath the pier and proceeded to fill
it with the greatest jazz and blues around — B.B.King,
Deep End Live founders Daryl Swensson, Brent Reger, and Joe Smith.
Sarah Vaughan, Freddie Hubbard, Gil Scott-
Heron, George Benson, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, a young
Poncho Sanchez sitting in with Cal Tjader one night
and launching a Grammy-winning career before the set
was over. The historic El Niño of 1988 ripped apart the
Redondo Pier and ended Rumsey’s run, but the stairs
still stood.
In the late 80’s, they fell down to Fashions, an all-
ages dance club. Julian Douglas, aka “Mr. 80’s,” recalls
those hair days in his blog Listen, Journey, Savor: “The
South Bay was home to many emerging metal bands
and Fashions always seemed to have them playing the
club or hanging out. There wasn’t a week you didn’t see
the likes of members from Mötley Crüe, Ratt, Dokken,
Great White, and Silent Rage.” The new wave crowd
followed, with KROQ’s Richard Blade spinning the
soundtrack of a generation that dressed for the night
like it was a casting cattle call. Then came Humphrey’s
Underground through the 90’s and into the 2000s,
absorbing a decade’s worth of musical fracture with
grunge rock versus hip hop fighting for the same
floor, bass shaking the walls while the Pacific patiently
undermined them from outside.
By 2002 the space had
reinvented itself again as Club Curves, a plus-size dance
club that threw open those stairs to a much larger and
more diverse crowd. Harvelle’s followed around 2007,
a brief blue note before it became The BriXton — and
the room finally found the X that marked the spot.
In 2008, BriXton opened: a renovated speakeasy-
style room with a long bar spanning the length of
the club, red leather VIP booths set against a brick
wall, and a connected smaller stage called The Dive
for more intimate sets. The pier had been rebuilt, the
neighborhood was shifting, and BriXton planted its flag
at the bottom of those famous stairs and the South Bay
saluted. The club held about 450 people and on many
nights ran two separate shows simultaneously
— the main room and The Dive operating in tandem,
letting the crowd drift back and forth
between whatever was happening on either side of the wall.
That was the beauty of it. You never quite knew which room was going
to be on that night, and you never knew who might
walk through the door. 80s hair metal holdovers like
Dokken, Skid Row, Warrant, L.A. Guns and Winger
alongside new wave old guards The English Beat,
Berlin, Wang Chung, Missing Persons, Bow Wow Wow,
Flock of Seagulls and Men at Work all came down the
stairs. SoCAL punk pioneers Circle Jerks, NOFX and
Hermosa’s own Pennywise brought the local flavor to
the stage. And then there were the nights that passed
into legend so quietly that half the people who were
there still aren’t sure they believe it. Leon Russell arrived
with Cameron Crowe in tow. Iconic surf guitarist
Dick Dale flooded the room with reverb. Prince sat in
with Sheila E. “He comes in the side door, sits down
and jams for 20 minutes, gets up walks back out the
door and I swear to God disappeared into the night,”
recalled Adam Spriggs, BriXton’s booker who started at
the Galaxy Theater and the Coach House and has since
booked KAABOO and the first BeachLife festival. But
the seascape sadly changed. The economy, rising costs,
and competition in other places beached the mighty
BriXton. The room went dark in January 2013 and the
stairwell fell silent for 12 years. The music moved on
and the galley became a ghost ship, recalled only in the tall
Booker Adam Spriggs with Skid Row’s Scotti Hill during BriXton’s heyday.
tales of townsfolk and lost to legend.
But now, this lost city of Atlantis, silently scuttled
for over a decade, has resurfaced as Deep End Live.
The resurrected concert hall is the flagship of a seasoned
crew of restaurant, brewery and entertainment experts.
Brenton Reger is ever present at the club, like an old
sailor who’s seen every kind of storm and knows which
way the wind blows – his able hands, that built Project
Barley and brewed its beer, built the stage and bar at
Deep End, furthering his passion for live music and
craft beer. The club arrives at a moment when the
music needs it most. Saint Rocke, which served as a
genuine anchor of the South Bay scene for years, has
closed and Hermosa Beach, once a crucible for original
music, finds itself increasingly populated by second
hand cover bands. “We’re trying hard to keep it fresh,
original and true to our own taste in music,” Reger said.
He and Project Barley partner Joe Smith, both musicians,
share a concerted conviction that live music is the
cornerstone of a community. Smith was a Roadhouse
rocker before he spent 35 years as a corporate executive
in food services, and his twin disciplines of music and
business keep the boat afloat.
“We didn’t do this to come in and duplicate what
came before,” Smith said. “We want to bring in more
original music, national and bigger name acts. We know
the South Bay deserves it. We know the community
still wants cover bands, but not all the time.” His vision
for the calendar runs deliberately wide — folk singers
to rock bands, punk shows to jazz to DJ nights. “If the
community is going to support those different types of
things, we want to continue to push that,” he said. “I
think they’re ready for it.”
The room’s submersed identity comes from Daryl
Swensson, whose path to the pier ran through Southern
California’s rave scene, Grateful Dead lots, and decades
of producing events under his company Presence
Productions. His vision is on every inch of the place —
the Meyer Sound audio system, the $70,000 worth of
concert lighting and lasers, the Mark V diving helmets,
the nautical artifacts, the twelve-foot shark that greets
you at the entrance like a bouncer who’s been here since before you were born.
Swensson first walked into
this room as a teenager at Fashions and left one evening,
looked back at the doors, and made himself a promise.
“Deep End Live is the realization of a lifelong dream,”
he said, “to create a place where exceptional music,
immersive production, and community come together
in a way that leaves a lasting impression on every guest
who walks through the door.” It took 40 years to
manifest. Now he and his mates man the mainsails.
Adam Spriggs joins the Deep End partners to book
the bands, returning to the room like Jack Sparrow
rightfully restored to the Black Pearl. He has tended the
South Bay music scene since BriXton like a lighthouse
keeper, leading its imperiled culture back to harbor.
“The South Bay still has these punk rock, rock and roll
roots that kind of got paved over with McMansions,”
he said, “but I feel like this room can still keep them
alive.”
Spriggs remembers what it felt like to be a kid calling
a radio station asking if Rancid was coming to town,
and he won’t stop believing in that feeling of wanting
to take part in the music he loved and of sharing the
collective heartbeat of a live music scene.
”I believe in the power of rock and roll,” he said. “I
believe it can save your soul.”
The ghost ship lost at sea is now anchored at Deep End
Live by the festivarian fellowship that Project Barley has
cultivated — a like-minded community that believes
music should not merely be observed but experienced.
Music alone is too on-demand, too accessible, and
anonymous, streaming on smartphones and isolated on
headphones. Anyone, anywhere, anytime, without the
slightest participation, can hop on any bandwagon by
barely lifting a finger. The exclusivity of the live show
is what creates a music scene, and what births vibrant
cultural tribes like punkers or the Deadheads. That
shared, real-life experience is the heartbeat of music
culture. The stairway to heaven actually leads
down. You have to descend to transcend,
as Dante discovered. You must make the
pilgrimage in person and face the music,
because you cannot stream your way into
the live music scene. You cannot algorithm
your way into the experience. You must
descend downstairs to discover this treasure,
just like the souls who went before you.
at Concerts by the Sea