SAN PEDRO, Calif. — The building itself is from the 1940s. 

What used to be San Pedro Hardware Company has been home to The Grand Annex Music Hall since 2009. 

Taran Schindler works with the "Grand Vision Foundation," which runs The Grand Annex. In fact, their offices are right above it. 

Schindler says the music venue hosts all kinds of regional, national, and international artists.

"Some of the high points [were] Jackson Brown played here. David Lindley played here," she said.

A full house is about 145 seats but can be pushed to 150. It's an intimate space, she says, where every seat is a good one. There's even a private kitchen backstage for the performers.

"There's nothing like coming into a place where you recognize so many people from your own community, and you're all experiencing the same musical journey together," Schindler said.

But when the music stopped during the lockdown in 2020, like so many other performance venues, the COVID-19 pandemic and shutdown cut into their profits.

"We were in shock, and we were certainly not sure of our future as presenters," Schindler said.

"It's been a very long road to recovery," said Cat Henry, Executive Director of Live Music Society. "Audiences did not come back. Understandably people were quite hesitant to be around crowds, especially in small places without adequate ventilation."

Her group is devoted to saving small music venues and helping them thrive.

"We were founded just a few weeks before the lockdown and quickly transitioned into emergency funding, long before the 'Save Our Stages Act,'" she said.

Since then, Live Music Society says it has donated $3 million in total to roughly 150 small performance spaces. Their most recent "Toolbox Grant" provides up to $10,000, depending on the project, to help small music venues improve their operations.

"The 'Toolbox Grant' allows us to extend our marketing, especially sort of 21st Century social media efforts, so we can find the new people who want to come," Schindler said.

And [it will] hopefully bring back their pre-pandemic audiences as well. The Hotel Cafe plans to use its funds to incorporate technology to modernize operations for customers and staff. Henry says the selected venues have all kinds of projects.

"Some people have even said, 'We need to build another bathroom,' so they're not so glamorous," Henry said.

As for Schindler, who's been here from the beginning, she says the Grand Annex is more than a room.

"It's a gathering place. I notice more and more people are able to come by themselves and just enjoy a show and probably meet someone they know in the audience," she said.

It's a chance to boost the profile of an intimate space that many say has become an integral part of San Pedro's music scene.