All-ages music venue to open at the Angle Lake light-rail station – Crosscut

Taking a cue from Jimi Hendrix 

Since 1998, STart has worked with national and local artists to create large-scale artworks to elevate the Sound Transit system.

A few notable works include Ellen Forney’s 2015 murals “Crossed Pinkies” and “Walking Fingers” at the Capitol Hill light-rail station; Leo Berk’s immersive electric-blue artwork “Subterranium” at the University of Washington station and Barbara Earl Thomas’ glass and metal images at the forthcoming Judkins Park station. 

But until now, all the STart projects have been stationary works of visual art — not performance venues. 

The Roadhouse’s beginnings trace back to Seattle installation artist Sarah Kavage, who in 2017 was named the STart artist-in-residence for the Federal Way light-rail extension.  

Kavage isn’t from South King County — she lives in Seattle. So she, along with The Roadhouse’s feasibility consultant Darryl Crews (hired by Sound Transit), started conversations with residents about the area’s cultural connections. What they found was a rich music legacy. 

“It had its own history of having clubs and music venues, roadhouses, dance halls, all through here,” Kavage said. “As I understand it, that was something that really got going during the Prohibition era, when South King County was out of the reach of the cops — Seattle cops and Tacoma cops.”

The most famous roadhouse in South King County was the Spanish Castle Ballroom in Des Moines, where teenaged Jimi Hendrix used to hang around and ask performers if he could join them onstage, long before he became an international superstar. He penned his song “Spanish Castle Magic” after the venue. 

Kavage and Crews also found that residents felt community gathering spots were lacking, especially live music venues, and especially for young people. 

This local feedback — along with Sound Transit’s decision not to bring a retail business into the Angle Lake space, as originally planned — opened the possibility of creating a performance space for local artists and music lovers. 

“We’re hearing that there’s a need for space like this … it’s going to be a big experiment to see who’s interested and what might come from it,” said STart deputy director Barbara Luecke. 

And while the name suggests a dark bar with beat-up stools, The Roadhouse radiates brightness with a facade of floor-to-ceiling windows.

Inside, an array of fake leafy ficuses brings the outdoors in. The walls “backstage” — an area sectioned off with curtains — boast fresh coats of lime-green paint. The majority of the translucent drapes on the windows are sheer black, but a few are adorned with tropical leaf patterns. Cozy black couches in the audience section sit on a green carpet.

“The green is very intentional,” Kavage said. “In these conversations with folks … who are new immigrants to the area, so many people mentioned the nature of [Washington].” Green happens to be a personal favorite of hers too. “It is very calming, and yet it has some nice energy to it,” she said. 

On one wall, Seattle-based artist Juliana Kang Robinson painted a mural of nested arches in varying hues of blue surrounded by bursts of pink and yellow, with a center of bold metallic gold. The effect is a virtual doorway — a visual welcome into the space.