Business Monday: The Booch Bar expands with new live music venue in downtown Hilo

The Booch Bar owners Brendan Roberts and Kela Cosgrave were struggling to find space in their 12-year-old restaurant to accommodate live music, despite doubling the space two years ago when they took over the adjacent lease vacated by Bears’ Coffee.

“We’ve been trying to fit music in some corner of the restaurant for so long,” Cosgrave said. “But really, there just hasn’t been space to have music and have enough space to properly give to diners.”

But then another neighbor in the century-old Pacific Building in downtown Hilo decided to relocate. The Booch Bar took over another 2,000-square foot space, which had been the home of RK Woods Gallery.

“Finally, we had somewhere to put the music,” Cosgrave said.

The Rainbow Room, the newest live music venue in downtown Hilo, opened on Nov. 5.

Roberts said it “came down to the wire” to get the final inspection, which was stamped at about 4:30 p.m., just a half hour before the Kalapana String Band was set to open the Rainbow Room for the annual Black and White Night festival.

“We had already been doing some open mics and things of that nature, but the space was tight,” Roberts said. “So we decided to take on the space and dial up what we’re doing for entertainment a little bit in hopes of bringing in more evening business. And also because we’re starting to do alcoholic beverages.”

Jahred Darius, a musician with PunaKat and an experienced sound engineer and talent booker, is managing the Rainbow Room. When he first saw the space, it was a “big empty box.”

Darius said Roberts and Cosgrave got their entrepreneurial start on the Big Island by making kombucha, an effervescent, fermented tea. But they also are also music lovers and “didn’t hold back” with the purchase of stage lighting and the sound system.

“They went top of the line on everything and took all my suggestions,” Darius said. “We’re taking music very seriously.”

The sound system includes Turbo sound speakers, a Yamaha mixer and drum set, Ampeg bass amp and Shure microphones. Big Island Cymbals also is sponsoring the Rainbow Room by providing a full set of custom cymbals.

After that was done, Darius said he told Roberts and Cosgrave they also needed to open the wall up more and add sound paneling.

“They’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, how much is that going to cost?’ But they trust me and they just keep saying yes,” said Darius, who used to run a recording studio in Leilani Estates until much of it was destroyed by the Kīlauea eruption of 2018.

Roberts said the space renovation, including about $20,000 for the sound system, has cost about $150,000.

The opening also was timed around the temporary closure of the Hilo Town Tavern on Nov. 9.

“We saw a big opportunity when the tavern shut down,” Roberts said. “We know it’s going to reopen and we want it to reopen. Of course, we want it to be part of the fabric of this community.

“But in this little moment when it’s not open, it created a really nice moment for us to get people in that might not have come to see us.”

The closure of the Hilo Town Tavern also changed Roberts’ original plan to “limp in” with music two nights a week.

“All of a sudden, we were getting called by all these musicians that wanted to play as well as all these people who had nowhere to go in the evening,” he said. “So then we just started doing some more.”

Now, the Rainbow Room has music six days a week and last week there was music all seven days.

Darius said his knowledge of most things music includes booking talent stemming from his five years “throwing a massive festival” in California called the Santa Cruz Rejuvenation Festival. It had five stages and ran from 2011-2015.

At the Rainbow Room, Tuesday nights feature Kanakapila Live! The Hawaiian music and hula were a staple at the Hilo Town Tavern, which is scheduled to reopen in April under the new name Hale Kanakapila, according to its Facebook post.

Wednesday nights are open mic, with children welcome to sing. Thursday nights are “Booch and Beats,” with live DJs. And Friday and Saturday nights are live music. The music runs from 6 to 9 p.m., although hours on some nights may go longer in the near future, Darius said.

There also is a Sunday serenade from 10 a.m. to noon. It usually features Hawaiian music.

“We have been throwing shows in other times, but that’s like our regular schedule,” Darius said.

Future performers coming up for what Darius calls an “epic month” are Mary Isis Drew Daniels Lopaka Rootz Neriah Negus Tyler Gibson Stan Combis Rob Taylor Ydine Robert Savery Angel Kay LeMaster Paul Izak Sierra Marin Jana Moonfire and Dennis-Christy Soares.

The Rainbow Room just held a free tribute concert Sunday night for the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir featuring PunaKat, in which Darius plays several instruments and sings, and Steve Fundy of Uncle Charlie.

Darius said the Rainbow Room has done a few shows that require tickets, including the upcoming Jan. 30 show with Paul Izak, Tubby Love and Sierra Marin.

“But starting February, we’re soft opening this idea of instead of doing free shows and ticketed shows, we’re doing all shows with a suggested donation of $5 to $20 dollars with nobody turned away,” Darius said.

“I think that this is kind of a revolutionary idea, rather than the typical model where it’s a free show and the bar makes enough money to pay the artist, but oftentimes it’s not very much. We’re doing this new style in hopes that we can give living wages to musicians.”

So instead of a free show where you can tip the musicians, “We’re saying we’re paying musicians. You just donate to make this whole thing keep happening, and we’re going to put on show after show after show.”

Darius said he is sad to see many of his close, talented musician friends on the Big Island being poorly taken care of, playing for tips, and if lucky, food.

Roberts added that putting on shows that are either very low cost or free to people while also being able to pay musicians has been “a little bit of a magic trick, but it’s going well so far.”

This model also enables the Rainbow Room not to turn away people who don’t have tickets and want to eat or drink from the menu of The Booch Bar, whose motto is “living food for living folks.”

Darius said with The Booch Bar’s extensive menu “you can literally walk in with six people, a vegan, a carnivore, a vegetarian, and there is something for everyone.”

The Rainbow Room got its name from Cosgrave, who said: “Rainbow is my favorite color. I have rainbows tattooed on my arm twice in two different ways. I have more rainbow clothing than most people I know. And my my partner Brendan tells me that when I wear rainbows, the outside matches the inside. I know it’s really sweet.”

The Rainbow Room is brightly colored to match the rest of The Booch Bar, with yellow and orange on the walls and blue on the ceiling like the sky.

“When I first took on the lease for the space (in 2014), we were moving out of a little 400-square-foot spot (in Puna) where we started our business and we had a little kombucha tasting room and we were brewing everything there,” Roberts said. “And so we moved up to this new space and we thought it was huge at 2,000 square feet.”

He said the people who had been leasing the space were trying to do a nightclub and had painted everything jet black.

“So I was sitting in there on the first day, I was like, we have to brighten this up,” Roberts said. “We have to bring some color into this place.”

Temple Children, an arts and sustainability organization, also will be doing some mural art in the new space, Roberts said, “so there’ll be more rainbows on the way.”