Last week was a brutal one for Spokane's creative community as Red Room Lounge owner Craig Larsen died after succumbing to sudden illness at the age of 64.
After originally opening the newsstand-turned-restaurant Jimmy'z at 521 W. Sprague Ave. in 1990, Larsen converted the space into the Red Room Lounge in 2006. Over the years, the space grew into one of the most diverse hubs for the local music scene. Larsen's open-mindedness to various music styles — even those he didn't particularly care for himself, like EDM — made Red Room a place where folks in the rock, blues, dance, hip-hop, metal, open mic scenes and more could intermingle. Red Room was also where many area musicians got their first chance to take the stage.
With Larsen having been the bar venue's driving force, his family decided to close Red Room after a final show last Friday night (Jan. 24) to honor Larsen's life. Losing the space creates a void in the downtown nightlife scene that won't easily be replaced.
"Craig was always a huge supporter of anybody, and just a big music lover in general. Just a really encouraging dude to any artist at any of the open mics — cheering and carrying them on — and then also really being down to take chances on up-and-coming bands and younger artists like myself," says Lucas Brookbank Brown, the local singer-songwriter who hosted Red Room's open mic for seven years. "I remember plenty of nights when even if the show didn't necessarily go off quite as big as he expected, he'd pull an extra hundred bucks out of his pocket to pay the band; even though he didn't make [money] that night, he was still into it. He was like, 'At least I got a great show tonight.'"
"Craig never charged for the room, which a lot of places do. He just let them do the door, let them make their money. We get the bar," says former Red Room manager Jeremy LaBelle, Larsen's close friend and right-hand man. "He just loved the music and wanted to get people in here and have them enjoy it as well."
That isn't to say Larsen didn't ever have personality clashes — many of the former Red Room staff remembered wistfully how they'd get in heated arguments with Larsen, but nothing ever lasted long term.
"Sometimes he was an ornery motherf—er, but at the end of the day, he didn't hold grudges," says Kingston Prescott, a local promoter/musician and longtime Red Room employee. "He held on to love more than any grudge, and I think that would be the thing that I would want to share with people the most."
It's all the more impressive what Larsen fostered musically considering his lack of personal musical background.
"How Craig felt about music is something that's hard to find from somebody who isn't a musician," says Brittney Rose, who's worked as a bartender at Red Room since 2016 and helped create Red Room's EDM night with Jared Holman. "Craig never played any instruments, but he loved music."
Larsen's commitment to helping folks out didn't just extend to stage time, as Prescott can attest.
"I was homeless for about a year [in 2014]. And me and my cousin went into [Red Room] damn near every day," Prescott says. "He'd open for us early, like one or two in the afternoon and let us stay all day. [Larsen] gave us $2 pitchers of Coors and let us play pool for free, [as we tried to] figure out what we're gonna do."
After doing that for months, one day, Prescott was catching up with Larsen when one of the security guards couldn't make their shift.
"He was like, 'You want to do it?' After that, I started cooking there for a little bit. Soon enough, they needed help bartending, and I started doing that. Not long after that, I became the bar manager. And then ran that place for four years," Prescott says. "He gave me a chance to get [my] life back together. I owe him my life, not an exaggeration. So that's the kind of cat he was."
That welcoming spirit was evident for many who wandered into Red Room.
"It was the place for everybody," Prescott says. "It was like Island of Misfit Toys in there, and somehow he made it work. Like you could have a show, and then it'd be everybody from punk rockers to the hip-hop heads to everything in between."
Brown saw the same thing.
"It kind of felt like where a lot of the lost boys and girls go to hang out," he says. "It was a real home to so many different parts of the local creative community and brought us together. And it will be very missed."
"It was a safe place to walk into, no matter who you were," Rose says. "We didn't have a lot of violence. There's a lot of that outside, but when you walked through those doors, you felt safe."
Before his death, Larsen and LaBelle were partway through creating a new restaurant next door to Red Room, which they were planning on calling Latitude 47. LaBelle says Red Room's days were likely numbered anyway because the space was renting month-to-month, with condos being built above the venue. But LaBelle says he's already talked to investors and plans to continue getting Latitude 47 up and running "for the legacy of Craig."
While there is no replacing Larsen or Red Room, LaBelle hopes Latitude 47 can open and partially carry on the spirit of Larsen's open-minded communal creative legacy. And of course, the new space will try to carry on the sonic tradition with live tunes.
"It wouldn't be in the memory of Craig without music," LaBelle says with a melancholy laugh. ♦