Boomers rock club still growing

Granted, one-year anniversaries of anything are about as momentous occasions as junior high graduation ceremonies and pet hamster funerals.

But seeing as how many music venues in this town last about as long as a Hershey's bar in hell, the fact that the homey Boomers is turning one as a rock club is worth noting.

Having gradually grown in the past 12 months from a dark hang for local bands to a more active, two-room venue that can draw bigger names, such as punk rock hedonists the Dwarves, who packed the place last month, Boomers is emerging as the little club that could.

Booked by husband and wife duo Roxie and Jesse Amoroso, longtime music scene fixtures who play together in local rockers Pigasus, Boomers really turned the corner in November, when the pair added a large PA to the back room and had a 40th birthday party for Presidents of the United States singer/guitarist Andrew McKeag, with such notables as members of the Supersuckers and producer/Fastbacks guitarist Kurt Bloch partaking in the festivities.

"That was kind of the moment that we looked at each other and were like, 'Wow, this has gotten bigger than we are,' " Roxie Amoroso recalls recently. "We looked around and we were like, 'This caliber of musicians should never be in a bar like this, and here it is.' It just kind of grew from there."

Amoroso has promoted shows for years at various spots around town, from shuttered all-ages venue The Club House to gigs at Texas Station, and with Boomers, the goal was to start small and foster an artist-friendly atmosphere, with bands getting all the money from the door.

Since then, it has developed into a steady outlet for local and smaller national bands with a fairly diverse roster of acts intermingling with one another, especially during regular hip-hop gigs overseen by local rapper HighDro.

"We can have a hip-hop show in the back and a full-on punk rock show in the front room and these two crowds live in complete harmony," Amoroso says. "I can absolutely admit now that when HighDro came to Boomers, I was definitely one of the naysayers, saying: 'This will not work. We cannot have these two movements collide.' But it just got to the point where the hip-hop scene was rockin' out in between sets to the punk and the rock bands, and the punk people were going in the back, checking out the local hip-hop music."

And so when the club celebrates its one-year anniversary of shows this Saturday with U.K. ragers the Bermondsey Joyriders, along with locals The Mapes, The Objex and others, it'll be a small moment that, ideally, portends bigger ones.

"We're getting there," Amoroso says. "We're becoming part of the game. Boomers is becoming a contender."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.