Local Rock Club Asks For Help From… the Foo Fighters

The Room is housed in a nondescript looking building in an industrial park on Federal Road in Brookfield.  Once you're inside, the club is anything but generic.  There's a professional stage with good lights and a great sound system, the kind of club that every high school kid that's ever been in a garage band dreams of playing in.

Vern Nickerson and his partner Jim Guptill opened The Room four years ago as an all-ages club to give local kids a safe, positive and encouraging place to play.  Along the way, they've hosted all kinds of music from folk to hip-hop to alternative to death metal, had national recording artists on their stage, had a series of Battle of the Bands contests and done benefit concerts for suicide prevention, breast cancer awareness and anti-bullying campaigns.

The one thing Vern and Jim haven't been able to do is get all the bills paid.  This is very much a from-the-heart venture, and with a primarily teen clientele and no alcohol sales, The Room is finding itself in a tough financial spot. With the threat of The Room closing looming overhead, Vern has asked for a hand from a dark-horse ally: Rock superstars the Foo Fighters.

Dave Grohl and his band will be in New York City all next week, doing a nightly spot on the David Letterman show to promote their new album.  Vern has mounted an aggressive social media campaign appealing to the Foos to make the short trip to Brookfield, play a show at the club, and put The Room on the map once and for all.

Why the Foo Fighters?  As Vern explains in a letter on The Room's website, the Foos have played in pizza joints, in fans' garages, and in small clubs under a pseudonym. Beyond that, they "get it." As Grohl himself famously said in a Facebook post denouncing American Idol-style singing shows,  "Musicians should go to a yard sale and buy an old f--king drum set and get in their garage and just suck. And get their friends to come in and they’ll suck, too. And then they’ll f--king start playing and they’ll have the best time they’ve ever had in their lives and then all of a sudden they’ll become Nirvana. Because that’s exactly what happened with Nirvana. Just a bunch of guys that had some sh-tty old instruments and they got together and started playing some noisy-ass sh-t, and they became the biggest band in the world. That can happen again!"

Sounds like Grohl and Vern are on the same wavelength.  And when you think about it, is there a huge band in the world that seems like they are grounded enough, sane enough and just plain COOL enough that they'd actually think about it?

The Room encourage you to get in on the effort at #FooTheRoom.