ORANGE BEACH — The Red Haven Live has opened its doors as a new place for live music and good eats.

Located at 25637 Canal Road, it is run by Josh Newcom, a musician who carries over 30 years of touring experience and has shot and directed videos for artists such as Merle Haggard and Blackberry Smoke. Having been in and out of bars and restaurants, Newcom always wanted to start an establishment of his own.

After moving to the Gulf Coast from Nashville during the COVID-19 pandemic, his aspirations later became a reality when a spot in Wolf Bay Plaza along Canal Road became available, a location he has always kept his eye on. Now open, Newcom is aiming to create a comfortable hang out spot for locals and visitors alike.

"We just wanted the vibe to be homey," Newcom said. "You can sit around, you can look at things and feel like (you can) take your mind off everything else, and we wanted it to be different. There's a lot of other bars that they can go to for beach bars and beach restaurants and all that stuff, so we wanted our spot to be, you know, coming here and eat and not have the weather or pollen or anything in that nature or in the heat when it's going to be blistering hot — you won't have that. When it's freezing cold, you won't have that. We'll be able to be consistent year round."

Newcom described the live music aspect as a "dinner and entertainment" approach where around four to fives bands perform, spread across the day, with genres ranging from rock and country to the blues.

On the food side, they serve a cracker-like, thin crust style of pizza, similar to St. Louis-style, with St. Louis, Missouri, being Newcom's birthplace. Along with pizza, they also serve massive sandwiches such as hot ham and cheese and a turkey bacon club with pepper bacon. Newcom is also planning on adding cheeseburgers and an onion burger, a family recipe of Newcom's, with an onion flavor mixed into a quarter-inch patty.

Despite not having a sign up outside just yet, Newcom said word of mouth has helped launch the establishment. He said they sold out of everything their first weekend.

"We couldn't ask for a better start," Newcom said. "We kind of thought to ourselves in the back of our minds, we would like to have a slow start so we could kind of get our feet wet and this and that, but at the same time, you don't want a slow start, and it wasn't a slow start at all. It just took off, which is great."

The Red Haven Live is open Thursday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to midnight.