All Time Low‘s Jack Barakat is now the co-owner of a Baltimore bar called Rockwell. Barakat spoke about how he became involved in the bar with Alt.

How did you get involved with the Rockwell?

The bar’s actually been open since earlier this year, and I’ve quietly had in an involvement in it. More recently, my involvement’s been bigger, and I’m part owner now. It’s just a rock bar, you know? It’s kind of a rare thing to find these days.

I started to go to this bar a lot just because I liked the music they played, and the owner, Bryan, is a friend of mine. He approached me and was like, “I want you to come in on this. I think it’s something that you’d really be interested in. It’s right up your alley. It’s something that I think together we could make a pretty awesome place.” Bryan is also the owner of the Sound Garden, which is one of the most successful record stores in the U.S.

What was it that attracted you to the bar?

I go out a lot; I have a good time, I like to party. There haven’t been that many bars I go that have a rock ’n’ roll vibe like there used to be, kind of a craziness to them. It’s all about hip-hop and pop and mainstream music. I was like, “Let’s fucking do a bar that plays old ’80s rock and metal, new rock, old school, whatever it is—just plays good music. We don’t leave that genre. We don’t have a night where we do club night or whatever. We just want it to be purely a rock bar.

When bands come through Baltimore to play, there aren’t that many places to go out—for rock bands. that is. When bands come through we want to have them do DJ sets, and have a place for them to go after the show.