Ninety Years of Last Call: Why the Torch Club Still Runs This City's Blues

There is a version of Sacramento history you can reconstruct entirely from one narrow room at 904 15th Street. The Torch Club opened in 1934 — the year Prohibition's hangover was still lifting — and it has been booking live music with a stubbornness that borders on civic service ever since. Nearly a century in, it remains the beating red heart of the region's blues scene, and it did not get there by accident.

The club describes itself, without irony, as "a fiery family melting pot" that has spent nearly 90 years lighting "the way for musicians." That is marketing copy, but it is also just true. The Texeira family has stewarded the place through multiple generations — Frank Texeira bought in back in 1969, and the reins passed down the family line to Marina Texeira and partner Mark Mitchell in 1996. Continuity like that is why the Torch feels less like a bar with bands and more like an institution that happens to serve drinks.

The roll call is the real argument. Little Charlie & the Nightcats, Joe Louis Walker, Janiva Magness, Popa Chubby, Chris Cain — and, crucially, a young Jackie Greene, the Salinas-born, Sacramento-raised songwriter who worked out his craft on this stage before the wider world caught on. The Torch has always been a launchpad as much as a landmark, giving local acts like the Golden State Lone Star Blues Revue a room to become themselves in front of people.

Why does this matter in 2026, when a phone can stream a century of blues for free? Because the Torch offers the one thing the algorithm can't: proximity. This is a room where you stand close enough to see the guitarist's calluses, where the between-song silence has weight, where a Tuesday jam can detour into something nobody planned. The blues was built for spaces exactly this size, and Sacramento is lucky to still have one operating on its original footprint.

The larger point is preservation. Cities lose rooms like this constantly — to rent, to redevelopment, to the slow bleed of a generation that streams instead of shows up. The Torch has survived by being irreplaceable and by being loved, in roughly equal measure. If you have never gone, treat this as your notice. Ninety years is a long time to keep a light on. The least we can do is walk toward it.

Sources: Torch Club — Wikipedia; The Torch Club; Torch Club — Sacramento365