Collective Soul’s Ed Roland helps the Roasting Room celebrate 6 years in Bluffton

Sitting above Corner Perk Brunch Cafe & Roasters in Bluffton, South Carolina, the Roasting Room has developed a reputation as one of the best small music venues in the area. Boasting a great sound system, a tasty selection of bourbon, and a consistent line-up of quality acts, the Roasting Room has been able to weather the pandemic and return stronger than ever.

The Roasting Room is proudly celebrating 6 years of great music with a special anniversary show featuring two performances by Ed Roland of Collective Soul, and some of his friends.

Roland has been a regular guest of Roasting Room over the years which makes him the perfect choice to mark the last 6 years of operation.

More: The Roasting Room venue to soft reopen Corner Perk bar

“We struck up a friendship with him and Jesse Triplett, the guitarist for Collective Soul,” said Jordan Ross, founder of Roasting Room, and Captain of Live Acoustical Taming & Talent Acquisition. “He comes to Bluffton quite a bit, so he knows the area, loves the area. He’s moving here eventually which is great for us, and the arts community all around.”

Collective Soul formed in 1992 in Stockbridge, Georgia, and are currently based out of Atlanta. They became hugely successful in the alternative and modern rock charts in the ‘90s and 2000s on the strength of songs like “Shine,” and 1995’s multi-platinum selling self-titled album. Frontman Ed Roland is also active with his side project Ed Roland and the Sweet Tea Project.

“He’s going to bring his friends, and when he said ‘friends,’ I don’t know what that means,” Ross said of Roland’s upcoming appearance at the Roasting Room. “It could be one friend, it could be the entire band. I don’t know. He’s keeping it pretty close to the vest.”

This being an anniversary show, it’s a time of reflection for the Roasting Room’s owners and patrons.

“I think for anyone who owned a venue during COVID, it was up and down, for sure,” said Ross. “But we really learned a lot about the resilience of the community, the resilience of the arts community especially, which was really hit hard. We figured out right away who our friends were, who were the guys who wanted to see us succeed. We felt like we were going to close in October 2020 because we just hadn’t done anything for months.

“As a last ditch effort, as a plea to the people we had been working with and buying tickets from us, we reached out and said, ‘If you want us to exist, we need you guys to buy tickets to stuff. We’re going to start listing shows and you can be come an exclusive member.’ People came out of the woodwork and really did great things for us. Sponsors stayed on, even though they didn’t really get anything on their end of it, but just knowing that they propped us up. Not a single one of our sponsors dropped off for 2021. That was huge.”

The Roasting Room 6-year Anniversary is not just about the venue’s birthday. It is also the last hurrah for Ross, who recently announced that he has sold the venue to Corner Perk’s owner, Josh Cook, who helped open Roasting Room. Ross and his family are moving away, but he is immensely proud of what he has accomplished over the years.

“I started it with the idea that this place is so perfect for this community, it’s just the right size, it’s the right vibe, it’s the right everything for what this community needed,” said Ross. “There was a little hole that we filled and I think that will continue. The Corner Perk downstairs is exactly the same thing. There was no coffeeshop in town when they started. It was a big enough town to support it and it went from operating out of a little strip mall to being kind of a big deal in the area. That side of the business, and the Roasting Room side of the business coming together, I think it’s what it should have been from the beginning.”

Ross has helped set up the calendar for 2022, so expect to see the same level of quality performances in the coming year. Roasting Room already sold 110 tickets for a show in January, which is a remarkable achievement for a tiny venue in a small town.

“It’s not slowing down,” Ross promised. “The things we have on our books for 2022, even right now, this is going to be a great year.”

“I really feel super solid about who’s taking over, their mindset, their ideas for what they want to do. I think I’ve been holding it back because my bandwidth has been low for certain types of entertainment. I don’t know anything about comedy. We’ve had requests for burlesque shows which I don’t know anything about. There are a lot of things we could do there in that room...The tip of the iceberg has been shown so far.”

Proceeds from the show will go to Deep Well Project’s Santa Shop. Roland will match donations for his charity of choice, Hoops4Heroes. The two shows sold out quickly, but tickets are still available to watch the stream of the 8:30 performance.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Bluffton SC music venue the Roasting Room celebrates 6 years