White Rock Lounge brings hard rock energy back to St. Paul’s Lowertown, on top of ’80s trivia, heavy metal karaoke and competitive pole dancing

Frederick Melo, Pioneer Press
·7 min read

When Steve Williams opened a seven-seat bar in downtown St. Paul last summer, he figured it was well past time to bring some heavy metal back to Lowertown. It’s been a decade since the old Station 4 night club closed on 4th Street, leaving headbangers and metal heads — among other fans of underground music — a bit adrift.

Half-hidden directly behind the Amoco gas station on Seventh Street where Broadway Street becomes a frontage road, the new White Rock Lounge offers a performance stage that has brought out the beast in audience members as young as 10 years old. Bands play at least four times per week, leaving a night or two for ’80s trivia, heavy metal karaoke and other draws.

“I haven’t been there when it’s not packed,” said Thomas Tier, a St. Paul drummer who has performed at White Rock with the death-metal band Sentenced2Die and the thrash band Bare Knuckle Brawl. “He filled a void, and he’s been flexible enough to offer some all-ages shows. A lot of young people came out of this pandemic time with a lot of pent-up energy.”

Williams, 50, a former restaurant manager who has been a guitarist and vocalist with the “stoner metal” bands High Graves and The Wolf Council, sees himself as a member of the punk rock generation paying homage to younger metalheads. “We’ve been doing pretty much sold-out shows with new music,” he said. “People don’t understand how popular this culture is.”

Thrashers, moshers and headbangers aren’t the only ones who have sensed an emptiness needing to be filled. Given Lowertown’s recent struggles with business closures, some unlikely supporters from Mears Park to St. Paul City Hall are keeping fingers crossed that Williams’ latest venture will be a success.

Located in the J.H. Allen Building across from CHS Field and launched in August by Williams and Mike Johnston, the White Rock Lounge hosts wide-ranging live music and private events with a full bar near a street corner sometimes more associated with panhandling than with commerce.

“They seem to be great guys, and they’re good tenants and seem to be responsible and doing a good job,” said Sandra Erickson, who manages the six-story, 1905-era building in partnership with her husband, building owner Tom Erickson. “I think having the music scene there will help because there will be more presence — more bodies around. Steve’s been around the music business forever.”

The day the music revived

Williams, a lifelong St. Paul resident who has run the “Lowertone” recording studio in the basement of the Allen Building for 22 years, sees some of his commercial neighbors as partners in efforts to revive a bit of Lowertown that has struggled amid closures of recent artist hangouts like the Creator’s Cup Coffee House and Black Dog Cafe.

The Allen Building’s other musically-inclined tenants include Empowered Percussion, a drum maker that has maintained a longstanding presence in a basement work studio, and the organizers of the Twin Cities Jazz Fest, who moved into an office space about a month ago.

Just down Broadway Street across from CHS Field, the new Metronome Brewery hosts live jazz, string quartets, cabaret and other musical acts in its basement barroom dubbed Fingal’s Cave. Walking in the other direction down East Seventh Street, the #1GameDay bar — a one-room sports bar and restaurant — opened this past fall next to Pomeroy’s Animal Hospital. It may not be Alary’s, the storied (some might say infamous) sports bar that closed last summer, but Williams sees it as a start.

Even the Amoco, a former Speedway immediately next door to the White Rock Lounge, is in transition, with new management as of just a few months ago. “The guys who took over Speedway, there’s a drastic difference in that place from the beginning of summer to the end of summer,” Williams said.

The musical acts Williams books lean toward metal and hardcore, especially for Sunday matinees, though White Rock has also hosted jazz shows and other singer-songwriters. He hopes White Rock also can be a boon to Lowertown’s visual arts community and host art shows, as well. A door sign invites stand-up comedians to pitch a comedy night.

Heck, he’s even inviting performers out for competitive pole dancing this March. More on that in a moment.

A ‘speakeasy vibe’

In true underground fashion, accessing the White Rock Lounge — which can hold nearly 100 people — can be a bit of a mystery, given its tucked-away location behind the gas station. Its limited outdoor advertising, like the unpresuming dive-bar environment, is by choice. During low-key ’80s trivia nights each Wednesday, the bartender tends to bring out her dog, a playful black lab.

“It’s definitely got that speakeasy vibe,” said Williams, who managed a Grand Avenue restaurant — Billy’s on Grand — for 22 years until 2021. “I grew up in St. Paul, and the bars were the place where you went to meet the guy who was going to be your next mechanic or do your taxes. That’s how St. Paul used to be. It’s nothing like that today. It’s hard even to get waited on.”

The lounge, which occupies the former location of a School of Rock music studio, takes its name from “Imnizaska,” the Dakota word for St. Paul’s white rock bluffs, Williams said.

That’s rock, as in cliffs, but also as in “rock ‘n roll.”

“Steve takes care of bands there better than any place in town,” Tier said. ”When he designed that space, he did a really good job of thinking about backstage and where to store gear. In a lot of places, it’s just an afterthought.”

Volant, a pole dancing competition

An old axiom has it that those seeking distraction and redemption, not necessarily in that order, head to Minneapolis to sin and to St. Paul to pray. The dichotomy is evident in their two downtowns.

In downtown Minneapolis, long-running nude and semi-nude clubs like Deja Vu Showgirls, Dream Girls, the Seville and the Spearmint Rhino draw gentlemen nightly. No such indulgences bespot the Saintly City, which purged itself of most of its adult bookstores, peep shows and other questionable hang-outs in the 1980s and ’90s. St. Paul’s last strip club — the Lamplighter Lounge on Rice Street — closed in early 2022.

Still, shades of the spicy and taboo are still summoned downtown through the occasional performance art, such as a burlesque show at the Amsterdam Bar on Wabasha Street or drag show at the Camp Bar on Robert Street. If ever there were proof that pole dancing has gone mainstream, “Volant” — a pole dancing competition — is on its way to downtown St. Paul, courtesy of the White Rock Lounge.

“Volant,” which was initially scheduled for February, advertises professional, mid-level and amateur pole dance contests, with cash prizes awarded across five hours of competition. The March 8 event, while 18+, promises no nudity, lap dancing or sexual contact of any sort.

Williams said he was familiar with professional pole dancers whom he shoots publicity video, pictures and business cards for, many of them affiliated with the Dollhouse Pole Dance Studio in northeast Minneapolis. There’s even been a push by two international pole dancing associations to get the art form added to the Olympics.

“I just reached out to some of those girls I work with and they said absolutely, let’s do it,” Williams said. One of his employees hopes to launch her own pole dance troupe and would like to use the event to recruit talent.

For “Volant,” tickets are $15. The adult acrobatics run from 7 p.m. to 11:50 p.m. on March 8 at 417 Broadway St. The show is 18+. Visit WhiteRockLounge.com for details.

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