State-Journal.com - Couple reopens Buster's from the rubble

Buster's Billiards & Backroom owners Clark Case, formerly of Frankfort, and his wife, Jessica Case, pose for a picture around the ceramic dog that used to be at the original Buster's located on Lexington's Main Street. Recently, Buster's Billiards & Backroom was reopened in a new location in the Lexington Distillery District at 899 Manchester St.

Pamela Meredith fixes a mixed drink at Buster's Billiards & Backroom.

Jamie Adkins has a drink at the front bar of Buster's Billiards & Backroom now located in the Lexington Distillery District at 899 Manchester St. Buster's Billiards & Backroom features two bars, a stage and six pool tables.

Tim Vice of Lexington hits the eight ball into the corner pocket in a pool game against Thomas Cornett at Buster's Billiards & Backroom.

When Frankfort native Clark Case and his wife, Jessica, learned their favorite dive bar would be torn down to make way for a 35-story luxury hotel, they helped fight an unsuccessful battle to save it.

But the Lexington business attorneys hope to win the war by launching a nightlife revival out of the rubble.

“We always kind of had an eye to do other business stuff,” Clark said, sitting outside the couple’s new music hall and bar, Buster’s Billiards and Backroom, as patrons filed in.

“We kind of love bars.”

His wife answered with a laugh.

“Do what you love, you know?”

The original Buster’s – along with 13 other buildings along Main Street in Lexington – was demolished last summer to make way for the CentrePointe hotel complex.

The block held several bars, and the lights were temporarily turned out on the city’s downtown scene.

The lot still sits empty, aside from a blanket of grass planted by developers late this summer.

“We didn’t want the whole CentrePointe thing to cause Lexington to lose an institution,” Clark said.

The Cases were Buster’s regulars for a decade, starting in the late 1990s when they were undergraduates at the University of Kentucky.

“Since before we probably should have been,” Jessica joked.

It was eclectic, Clark said, attracting college kids, skateboarders, country music fans, and 40-somethings alike.

They got to know the former owners, who approached them about buying Buster’s when its lease expired. They had tired of the bar business after 17 years, Clark said.

“Heck, I’ve been in it for less than two weeks and I’m tired,” he said.

But you can’t just move a bar – especially the kind of bar that people call “an institution.” Places like that have a crowd of regulars, a character and spirit that can be hard to replicate.

The original Buster’s was characterized by old vinyl booths, wobbly tables, pitted dartboards and walls covered with chalk-written messages. The drinks were simple: beer in cans and bottles.

It was a hangout, where friends came to shoot pool, drink together, and watch people turn the corner of South Upper Street through the plate-glass windows that lined the building.

“It’s hard because your instinct maybe is to recreate it, but you can’t,” Jessica said. “It’s gone and it will never be the same.”

The Dame music hall, a former next-door neighbor of Buster’s, relocated several blocks away. But its doors closed 10 months later. Regulars said it just never felt the same.

Clark and Jessica say they’ve tried hard to incorporate elements of their predecessor in its new “gritty, laid back, edgy” reincarnation.

The concrete Doberman – named Buster, of course – that once guarded the door of the bar on Main Street moved to the new building with them.

“I think the feel is the same, and the use of the building – the way it’s decorated – is kind of similar,” he said. “We wanted the same vibe, and I think we got it.”

The couple’s 11,000-square-foot music hall and bar opened Sept. 4 at in Lexington’s Distillery District, a half-mile stretch on Manchester Street near Rupp Arena.

The formerly blighted area is undergoing a renaissance, as old distilleries and industrial buildings are being transformed into nightclubs, offices, and an indoor haunted house.

Buster’s new digs were built in 1860 as a warehouse for the Old Tarr Distillery.

There are still reach-in beer coolers, newly felted pool tables, and a jukebox that they keep stocked with the old-school punk music that characterized it in the early ’90s.

Clark says people stop by when there aren’t shows to shoot pool and hang out.

“I’m really bad at pool, like, really bad,” Jessica said. “That’s OK, you can play here, even if you’re really bad.”

But there are a lot of differences too.

The most obvious is that a hole-in-the-wall bar has become one of central Kentucky’s largest music venues – more than three old Buster’s could fit inside the new facility.

Clark and Jessica got a liquor license and installed 24 beer taps along the two copper bars. They serve another 100 brews in bottles and cans.

They’re even planning to offer a beer named after the place. A friend of the Cases is opening a microbrewery in the district, and he plans to make a porter called Buster’s Black, which will flow from a tap adorned with a black dog.

There is a VIP room upstairs, lined with mismatched chairs and tables, for music lovers who want to avoid the crowd.

A clarification in state liquor laws allows Buster’s to open shows to 18-year-olds, when tickets are sold ahead of time. That opens the venue to thousands of area college students who haven’t turned 21 yet, and can’t enter traditional bars.

They signed a lease in February, started construction in June, and opened their doors – and taps – three months later. They paired up with old friends, who handle the impressive sound system and book musicians.

When they started, the building had no plumbing. The Cases had to rewire the electrical system and add ventilation.

They traveled to the Orange Peel in Ashville, N.C., to get advice from its owners. They bought books about running a bar, wrote a business plan, and secured a loan.

Farmers Bank in Frankfort financed the project.

“They were real supportive,” Clark said.

The Cases are still practicing law together as Case and Case Law, a business services boutique they run out of their home.

Clark graduated from Western Hills High School in 1996. He is the son of Phil Case and Susan Case. Phil Case is State Journal sports and Spectrum editor.

Jessica is a former State Journal intern.

After finishing law school in 2003, they both worked for big firms, but they weren’t happy. They opened their firm two months before they bought Buster’s. The flexibility it offers them is the only way could practice law and run a bar at the same time, they say.

Jessica says they often get home from Buster’s at 4 a.m., go to bed a couple of hours later, wake up at noon and head back to the bar by 5 p.m.

The Cases say Buster’s will offer central Kentucky music-lovers a place to see bands without traveling to Louisville or Cincinnati. Clark hopes it also encourages agents to book bands at the region’s smaller venues.

“What musicians everywhere remember is a city, and what they look for is to stop in a city,” he said. “It hits that gap that will stimulate the entire music scene.”

They hope their proximity to the nearby interstates and location between major cities like Chicago and Atlanta will help drive musicians their way.

“We really do want to provide a market for indie rock to whatever extent we can,” Jessica said.

But they’re also considering a blues or jazz concert series, and curtaining off the main room to make it cozier for smaller shows. They hope diversity will draw more people to Buster’s.

Clark called traffic at the bar “phenomenal” over the last few weeks, averaging 500-600 patrons a night.

Buster’s Monday night show, a triple bill of Silversun Pickups, Manchester Orchestra and Cage the Elephant, sold out five days beforehand.

A recent Blues Traveler show was 15 short of selling out on a rainy night. There have been three other shows in recent weeks that sold 900 tickets, he said.

And for the first time he has seen residents of Louisville, Cincinnati and Nashville traveling to central Kentucky for concerts.

“We’ve just been so appreciative of everybody’s support,” Clark said.

“Central Kentucky, old friends from Frankfort – everybody’s been supportive and coming out. That’s good for music, that’s good for bands, it’s good for everybody.”