The Elvis Room was a music club and coffee house opened in 1993 by Dawn Marie Pierre and Barbara Steinbach in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Soon after opening as a European-style coffee house, it began adding live music and art performances becoming a hub for a burgeoning music scene featuring punk, rock, ska, rockabilly, surf, hardcore and alternative.
Within months of opening the Elvis Room took over the space next door to build a dedicated performance space and stage. It welcomed a growing number of local, national, and international bands in what was becoming the popular New Hampshire seacoast music scene of the 1990s.[1][2] The Elvis Room soon became a famed venue of punk and hardcore bands due to local and regional bands like The Queers, The Bruisers, The Dropkick Murphys, Sam Black Church, Scissorfight, Pinkerton Thugs, Showcase Showdown, and The Unseen and it was after a Dropkick Murphys show at the Elvis Room that the band visited Portsmouth native Al Barr and asked him to come try out for the band.[3]
In addition to music it became a hub for local youth, art and counter-culture. It was considered to be one of the only places for seacoast teenagers to gather[4] and promoted an open environment that allowed writers, poets, and artists to interact and express themselves through blank journals left by the owners. At the time of closing, over 20 journals featuring over 4000 hand-written pages had been written by patrons.
The Elvis Room closed in 1999[5] due to increasing bills and liability insurance and when one of the co-owners decided not to continue after a violent attack at the venue.
The Elvis Room Journals were a unique staple of the coffee house. Each blank journal (8.5 x 11 inch, 200+ pages) would be placed out for patrons to write in and read. The platform and anonymity of these journals gave readers a peak into each other's lives and a voice to those who wanted to share their thoughts and often deep secrets. The popularity of the unedited and unfiltered journals was immediate and they quickly filled with poetry, drawings and personal writings.
