Built on rock

Herman's Hideaway makes it a quarter-century of solid support for local bands

Dave Flomberg, Special to the Rocky

Published October 26, 2007 at midnight

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All things considered, Allan Roth looks pretty good.

The 67-year-old owner of Herman's Hideaway sits in his worn leather office chair just a couple of weeks after doctors told him his colon cancer is in full remission. He's already talking about what he wants to do next, how to keep South Broadway's iconic rock hall relevant in Denver's competitive music scene. He wants to pack the place, give local acts a leg up and offer fans the sort of service and show that keep them coming back. He's looking ahead.

But first it makes sense to take a look back, because this week marks the 25th anniversary of Herman's Hideaway - a quarter-century as the city's grass-roots incubator for all things rock 'n' roll.

Or maybe it's next week. Roth isn't exactly sure.

But it was sometime at the start of November, 25 years ago, that his father, Herman, closed the book on Cunningham's, the neighborhood bar he'd owned since the '60s ("a double shot and a beer for 50 cents," Roth recalls), and reopened the joint as Herman's Hideaway, one of Denver's only local-music venues and the only one known to book bands playing original music at that time.

Herman knew how to run a business, but Allan knew how to book bands, although he needed a nudge from Jinx Jones to make the leap from cover acts to original bands.

Jones - one of the city's most prolific guitarists, with stints as a sideman for Solomon Burke, Natalie Cole and Chuck Berry - had been watching the local music scene bubble for several years. By the early '80s he was convinced that the timing was right for shows to move out of the private warehouses and rented-out banquet halls and onto the bar circuit.

"There was a growing underground scene going back to 1978," Jones says. "By the time Herman's opened, this had developed into a scene that would draw a lot of people. . . . Allan had a great deal of experience in the live- music business on a larger scale, and the idea of making Herman's more concert-like proved to be a great idea."

And the wall came down

"We called it the $20,000 wall," Roth jokes as he recalls the renovation that more than doubled the room's capacity and turned a small bar into a bona fide concert venue. "There was a piano store next door, and we finally got them out of there so we could knock down the wall between and open up the room. And then we discovered it was a bearing wall."

With the wall down (and a little engineering to keep the rest of the building up), Herman's became a scene unto itself, a place where new bands could get seen and cultivate a local following. For some touring acts, it was a small local house they could play in Denver on their way up.

And for one act in particular, it was a launching pad to stardom.

"When we first started playing Herman's, it was about half the size that it is now, basically a long hallway," says Todd Park Mohr, frontman for Big Head Todd and the Monsters. "Still, it was the place to play."

The venue's success was heavily intertwined with Big Head Todd's success. Herman's gave the band a place to grow and develop, and the band packed the house.

Says Mohr: "Herman's . . . was one of the only places in Denver that gave us a chance. We were so young when we started playing - I think I was barely legal to drink."

Says Roth: "They were here for five or six years straight. Every four to six weeks like clockwork. They grew from having 20 or 30 people to lines wrapping around the block to see them. I used to build my schedule pretty much around them."

He laughs as he recalls when his father finally caught the act. "He looked up on stage and saw the band standing there. 'Three guys? That's it? What's all the fuss about?' "

All in the family

Roth picks up a small framed picture of him and his father, all smiles, arm-over-shoulder. The elder Roth passed away at age 91 in November 1997.

"He was my best friend," Roth says with a slight shrug. "I remember he wasn't feeling too well that day. He told me to take the receipts to the bank first and then come back and get him here and take him to the doctor. Not even the hospital. Just the doctor."

A month later, the benefit show for the American Heart Association in Herman's memory brought bands out of the woodwork and filled Herman's namesake. "Everyone loved my dad," Roth says. "Everyone."

At Herman's, the close bonds transcended bloodlines.

"These people became my family," says Sharon Rawles, who worked for 12 years at the venue, graduating from working the door to managing the club. "I loved working with the bands."

She reminisces about the acts, remembering less about the performances than about the people themselves. Like the time the Psychedelic Zombies painted some less-than-appropriate images on the wall of the green room.

"But they didn't get paid for that show until they came back and repainted the whole room," she says.

Rawles wasn't tough only with the local groups, either. She remembers admonishing the frontman from a touring group for smoking a pipe full of something other than tobacco.

"I marched up to him and took it away and told him, 'You can't do that in here!' A few years later, I was backstage at the Blues Traveler concert at Red Rocks and there was John Popper, and I thought, 'He won't remember me.' But he did. He walked right up to me and said, 'Can I have my pipe back?' "

The show Roth and Rawles remember best was memorable mostly for what was going down in the bathroom. Or, to be more accurate, not going down.

"We were packed one night during a Big Head Todd show," Roth says. "And the water in the ladies bathroom stopped working. We were bringing in water from the hotel next door to flush the toilets manually."

Rawles recalls standing outside the men's room with a stopwatch. "Men got two minutes, women got five. It was a mess."

And then there was the Beat Farmers shows. "People would buy cases of beer at a time," Roth says. "They'd shake them up and spray beer all over the band all night long. It was a horrific mess when they played. But so much fun."

A niche in a new era

Those heady rock 'n' roll days aren't as common anymore, the capacity crowds not quite as frequent, thanks to the proliferation of local-music venues that's occurred since Herman's opened its doors. Many of them, like Cricket on the Hill and the Larimer Lounge, use a formula similar to the one that Herman's basically invented.

"We'd give anyone a shot on a Wednesday night," Roth says. "We'd print up tickets for them and let them pass them out or sell them or do whatever they want with them, and we'd keep track of how they'd draw and, based on that, they'd move up to a Thursday or weekend slot."

And it wasn't just local bands getting a shot in the room. Before the Bluebird and the Gothic got makeovers, Herman's was where local promoters let national acts start to build a Denver following.

"I booked 311 there," says Jesse Morreale, who promoted concerts with Gess Presents and Nobody in Particular Presents. "And Leon Redbone and a bunch of other bands you've probably never heard of who didn't go anywhere."

Yet while national acts come and go, the locals always remain - and remain true to Herman's.

Opie Gone Bad still consistently draws large crowds to South Broadway a decade after the band started playing there.

"We started playing there for whatever gigs they'd give us - at first it meant a lot of playing for nobody," says Opie frontman Jake Schroeder. "But we got a lot of help from the service industry. The guys in the group were waiters and bartenders, and so we'd draw from that world. The women were all hot and everyone drank like fish, and it was great for business.

"We got to the point where we'd sell out and there'd be lines around the block. We kind of still pat ourselves on the back about those shows."

But the experiences at Herman's grew to be more than just a business relationship.

"I remember we were doing a show one night when my dad was real sick," Schroeder says. "And I remember Sharon (Rawles) coming up to me during a set and slipping me a note that said he'd come out of the coma. That's the kind of place it is. Very much like a family."

While some things have changed, the family atmosphere remains. Allan ran it with his father, and now his son Mike handles the daily bar management and steered the venue while Allan was sick.

"I know it's probably tough on him with me coming back and taking back over a lot," Roth says. "But I can't help it. I love this place too much not to be here."

He's gotten a second wind, or at least a second chance, and he's looking ahead to the next 25 years.

"I'm having more fun now than I ever have," he says. "I love everything about this - the booking, the bands, the people. I'm so excited about the future.

"I don't want to ever leave."

A month of celebration Herman's is lining up a spate of anniversary shows for November. Already on the list:

• Thursday: big anniversary party - half-price drinks all night, special guest to be announced

• Nov. 2 - Tab Benoit

• Nov. 3 - Pomeroy CD- release party

• Nov. 9 - Judge Roughneck, Byron Shaw Projex

• Nov. 10 - all-reggae show with Lion Souljah and Irie Still

• Nov. 16 - Mercury Project reunion show

• Nov. 17 - P-knuckle, Desciples, Tormented Religion and the John Hughes Fan Club

• Nov. 21 - The Railbenders

• If you go: Herman's Hideaway, 1578 South Broadway; 303-777-5840,

hermanshideaway.com