Ash Grove Dream Will Move to a Church

Ed Pearl’s dream of creating a new folk-music club as influential as his old Ash Grove has been put on hold.

With financial burdens mounting, Pearl has abandoned his plan to convert a facility at 6820 Santa Monica Blvd. in Hollywood into a multifunction club centered on a 600-seat concert hall/restaurant.

Instead, he will move the new Ash Grove in October or November to the basement of the First Unitarian Church at 2936 W. 8th St., where he will continue to put on the kind of music, poetry and art shows he had been staging in the 100-capacity temporary room at the Santa Monica Boulevard site.

“We have this opportunity to move sideways and a little up and disconnect ourselves (from) what looks like a financial albatross here,” Pearl said, noting that the church will allow a permanent coffee-house setting with a capacity between 200 and 250, with a rent at around one-tenth of that at the Hollywood location. He will also be able to use the church’s 600-seat main auditorium for special shows. Pearl said that he will continue to look for a permanent site for the Ash Grove.

Pearl launched his attempt to create a new club last spring, hoping to match the impact of his original Melrose Avenue club, which in the ‘60s served as a center of the Los Angeles folk, folk-rock and left-wing activist scenes. The club closed in 1973 after a series of fires. Many of the performers who were regulars at the old club recently played at two Wiltern Theatre concerts to benefit Pearl’s new project.

But Pearl had trouble raising enough funds for the completion of the planned facility. The biggest setbacks came last month when the club was unable to obtain a beer-and-wine license, and when the hot weather revealed that the building would need a new air-conditioning system, at an estimated cost of $50,000.

Pearl said that the change in locale will not effect the scope of the Ash Grove’s activities. He plans to continue offering blues, jazz and acoustic music, plus such regular events as an ongoing series of hootenanny-style evenings of Latin American music and poetry. The events will be billed as “Presented by Ash Grove Productions,” Pearl, said, because “I want to save the name of the Ash Grove for our ultimate location.”