Fans enjoy Fender Benders performance during a Kids Rock Free program in The Rhythm Lounge at Fender Center in Corona. (2011/File Photo)
My colleague Peter Fischetti just broke the news of the sale of the Fender Center of the Performing Arts in Corona, which housed the Fender Museum, to the city of Corona.
Here’s the good news: The Kids Rock Free program, which offers low-cost and free music lessons to kids, will continue.
Here’s the bad news: We’re losing a venue for live music. The Fender Center hosted major talent such as guitarist Steve Miller and Bad Company singer Paul Rodgers, both of whom raised money for the aforementioned Kids Rock Free Program with concerts on the outdoor stage. Those concerts were more of a one-a-year event, but the Rhythm Lounge, which was on the ground floor of the facility, next to the museum, hosted regular entertainment.
Venerable blues band Big Papa and the TCB (who will be featured on tomorrow’s new batch of PE Live videos, coincidentally) recorded their first album, 2007’s “Nice ‘N’ Greazy,” there.
Lukas Nelson and the Promise of the Real, The Legendary Mustangs (a band that features Riverside County Supervisor John Tavaglione) and local artists such as Castle Pines have also performed at the venue. That doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the performances from the in-house bands made up of the students in Kids Rock Free.
I’m hoping with the Kids Rock Free program moving to the Civic Center in the future and the plans for the current site to be a community center, we can have sorely needed venues for live local music in Corona.
Musicians and fans in the Corona area–did you ever play at the Rhythm Lounge?
Just a note, the Fender Museum is separate from the Fender corporation’s Visitor Center, which is down the freeway a bit at the Fender factory in Corona and opened in 2011.