How the Troubadour Keeps Its Indie Heart Beating After Nearly 70 Years: ‘We’re All Kind of Insane’

Christine Karayan, owner of Los Angeles’ Troubadour, has a million stories to tell about the famed venue. There was the time when Tom Petty was set to perform three songs for a benefit, but was feeling the atmosphere so much he played his greatest hits for an hour. There was the time Karayan helped Bonnie Raitt type up lyrics for her show and Raitt kept kindly asking for the font to be bigger. Then there was the time Karayan quietly cried during sound check when her favorite band Depeche Mode finally played the Troubadour for the first time.   “Right before doors, I ran in front of the stage and told everybody, ‘I’m not working. I don’t care if the building falls down. I don’t care if it catches on fire. Leave me alone,’” Karayan recalls of the 2013 show. A photo of that night’s performance has been her computer background screen ever since.   Trending on Billboard Sitting in the 500-capacity venue on the heavily foot-trafficked Santa Monica Boulevard with no lights, just the sunlight from the front windows illuminating the nearly 70-year-old wooden bar and original stools on a Thursday afternoon, Karayan can sound a little exasperated by
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