Hall of Fame’s new mural can help get music fans where they want to go in Bakersfield

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) – So much of history is lost simply to the passage of time. So it’s cause for celebration when a place like the Bakersfield Music Hall of Fame preserves Bakersfield honky tonks and music venues right in the front of the building.

Preserves their memory, that is. Most of the buildings themselves are long gone or unrecognizably transformed. But if you or your favorite Bakersfield Sound tourist would like to know where these modest landmarks once stood, here’s a point of reference. It’s a giant map located on an exterior wall of the Q Street recording studio, museum and live music venue. It was the brainchild of Kyle and Kim Carter, owners of the BMHOF. They were inspired by a visit to the wine country town of Sonoma.

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“We were walking around and noticed that they had a lot of art work and maps and stuff,” Kyle Carter said. “And Kim goes, ‘That’s what we should do on that wall right there, is put a map of all the different music places that Bakersfield had over the years.’”

“We have a lot of murals already downtown,” Kim Carter said. “That’s what we have originally thought, that we’d put a mural up. ‘What are we gonna do that’s different from everybody else if we do a mural?’ We thought, ‘Well how about it we don’t don’t a mural but something that — people traveling through Bakersfield — whether or not they know about the Bakersfield Music Hall of Fame, with the different places, can look at and go, ‘Oh, I remember that,’ or ‘Oh, let’s drive over there, there’s the map.’”

A map that’s both visually striking and useful: Directions to the Blackboard, Trouts, the Clover Club, the Lucky Spot, Chet’s Club, Tex’s Barrel House, the Crystal Palace, Ethel’s Corral, Banaceck’s, Fishlips, Earl Wong’s Mandarin Club, Freddie’s Top of the Hill, the Tam O’Shanter, the Fox Theater, the Padre Hotel, the Beardsley Ballroom, the Rainbow Gardens, World Records, the Rustic Rail.

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“This is of course the Music Hall of Fame,” said Kristina Steinke, the mural artist. “And everyone can be nostalgic about the places they used to hang out at when they were younger, and a lot of these places are long gone but a lot are still here and revitalized.”

Places like: the Pumpkin Center Barn Dance, the 18th Street Bar and Grill, Maison Jaussauds, the Dellwood Club, the Hacienda, the Casa Royakle, the Funny Farm, the Bakersfield Inn, Gary Paxton’s Recording Studio, Buck Owens Recording Studio, Tally Records Recording Studio, Pete Jones Music, Gene Moles Guitar Shop.

Well, you get the idea: A little something useful for music fans, right here on Q Street.

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