Tommy and Donna Rocker passionate about bar business, Golden Knights

Vegas Voices is a weekly series highlighting notable Las Vegans.

Tommy and Donna Rocker are the owners of a pair of local institutions: Tommy Rocker’s Mojave Beach Bar & Grill on Dean Martin Drive and its more upscale sister operation, Henderson’s Black Mountain Grill.

They’re also two of the town’s most colorful Golden Knights supporters, who frequently can be spotted in their sparkly gold garb on T-Mobile Arena’s Knight Tron, or sitting close to the ice at away games during the playoffs.

Tommy is a lawyer-turned-musician who came to Las Vegas to perform in 1984 and never left. His wife and partner, Donna, is a hospitality industry veteran who has worked in restaurants as diverse as McDonald’s and the pioneering downtown fine-dining restaurant Andre’s.

We spoke to them recently about the bar business, music and topless clubs.

Las Vegas Review-Journal: How long have the two of you been in Las Vegas?

Donna Rocker: I got here in 1979. Tommy got here in 1984. And the first Tommy Rocker’s opened in 1989.

Tommy Rocker: That was on Decatur and Spring Mountain. It was a leased building that we had for almost five years. That’s where I met Donna. She was a bartender there.

Tommy, tell us about your music career.

Tommy: I started in Oregon playing in bands in high school and college. Then I got tired of the rain and headed south and ended up here. Covers, singalong, bad jokes, that kind of thing. I played a lot of rowdy bars, and the whole object was sales. And I got pretty good at that. I worked at a place called Carlos Murphy’s that was a big deal back in the ’80s, over by UNLV on Maryland Parkway. Then I decided to cut the middle-man out and open my own bar. That’s where I met Donna. She has such a great background in the hospitality industry that, after we got married, she took the bull by the horns.

We were leasing a space. And somebody had told me when I first got in the business that if you can avoid it, don’t lease a building, own a building because the rent never goes up. So we found this piece of land here and got an SBA loan and built this. And then we built Donna’s pride and joy, Black Mountain Grill.

You still play every Friday and Saturday night at Tommy Rocker’s. So I guess you still enjoy it?

Tommy: Oh, sure, I love it. There’s nothing like it. It’s easy, not like work.

Donna: At our first location we had live music seven nights a week. But one of the owners of Kopper Keg told us that we have a casino — you don’t have a sports bar or a nightclub; you have a mini casino. And he told Tommy that as soon as he starts playing the songs, they turn around and want to watch Tommy. And everybody is having a good time, but revenues drop. So we went from seven nights to five nights and then three nights. And now it’s just a couple of nights a week.

Tommy Rockers operated briefly as a strip club. What was up with that?

Tommy: We actually operated as a strip club for a year and a half. We hated it. We just wanted to establish the license and let everybody in the neighborhood know we had that ability to do it. Because at this point in time, the highest and best use of this property is as a strip club. If we were to sell it to someone, it would be worth millions more than as a tavern.

You’re some of the most visible Golden Knights fans in town. Were you born and raised with hockey, or did you discover it here?

Tommy: I never thought I’d be a hockey fan. I remember watching it on TV and thinking you can’t even see the puck. But you go to a game and it’s just the most exciting sport you can watch. And the whole thing with the shooting at Mandalay Bay as the team was born — I’ve never seen a city go through a transformation like that in my life. It’s just amazing the sense of community it created, bonding with the team.

We’ve seen you on the Knight Tron at home games, and right on the glass at away playoff games. Do you always dress in gold?

Donna: We did white during the whiteout. We’ve got all these different Golden Knights outfits. (But) when we wore the gold is when we started getting noticed. And then when we didn’t wear the gold we didn’t get noticed, and we weren’t on the Jumbotron. So we realized one day, apparently this is our uniform now. And you see a lot of people wearing the gold. But I think with the bow tie and our ears, it’s cute. And when you go on the road and you’re already making the effort of buying the plane ticket, getting the hotel, you don’t want to sit up there. You want to sit way down. You want them to see you.

Contact Al Mancini at amancini@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlManciniVegas on Twitter.