Stockroom East: The Rock Club Behind the Dry Cleaner

Venue has hosted more than 100 acts since 2022, and most people driving past on Jefferson Boulevard have no idea it's there.

BY KIRBY SPROULS // POSTED OCTOBER 15, 2026

By day, Stockroom East is a co-working, conference and events spot in the city's East Race Village. Step inside and you're likely to find individuals hovering over laptops and maybe a group gathered in a conference room.

Come back at night and you hardly recognize the place. With the house lights dimmed and the stage lights on, Stockroom East turns into a music venue, one that Nashville singer-songwriter Lilly Hiatt gushingly called a “real rock club” when she played there last spring.

It is also the best-kept secret in town.

It is fair to assume most passers-by are unaware that the Ziker Cleaners building on East Jefferson Boulevard, across from Howard Park, is more than a place to drop off your wool and cashmere to be cleaned.

Housed in the northern half of the Ziker building, Stockroom East doubles as an intimate concert room that has hosted more than 100 shows since 2022, featuring national, regional and local acts. But not enough people know about it, according to Matt Ingle, who is part of a three-person team that handles the bookings.

“Over the last two or three years we've worked hard to expand our reach to make sure people know we exist,” Ingle says. “We are still barely scratching the surface, but I do think we definitely are becoming a bit of a go-to place for people looking for live music.”

Ingle and his team are doing their part to increase the number of mid-level rock, folk and indie concert offerings in the South Bend area.

Such recording artists as Josh Rouse, Eddie 9V, Great Lake Swimmers, members of Umphrey's McGee, Joe Pernice, Tommy Prine, Blessid Union of Souls, Marc Scibilia, and Ax & the Hatchetmen have played at the 400-person capacity venue.

Upcoming shows include Drive-By Truckers co-frontman Patterson Hood on December 12 and Josie Edwards, a Plymouth High School graduate whose appearance on December 4 comes between Chicago shows at the House of Blues and legendary Schubas Tavern.

Rouse, who recorded the critically-acclaimed albums “1972” and “Nashville” in the early 2000s, has played Stockroom twice, including one of the venue's first concerts in 2022. That show came after Rouse reached out to Ingle, a longtime friend, about playing in South Bend.

At the time, Ingle was not yet affiliated with Stockroom East but was acquainted with one of its owners, Michael Yoder, so he asked Yoder about booking Rouse at the venue.

“Michael was using this as a communal work space, but there also was a stage … and a pretty crappy sound system,” Ingle says. “Michael was really into booking Rouse, so that's what we did. We had such a fun time doing that show that we said let's just keep going and try some more of these.

“I started reaching out to some of my contacts and to booking agents. I would be cold-calling them, saying I've got this emerging concert venue next to Notre Dame … let's get some of those artists who need a space to play between Grand Rapids and Indy, or Chicago and Detroit, whatever. We are able to bring in some artists who otherwise are not going to be playing here.”

It helps that Ingle, who formerly worked in Nashville as a promoter of Christian music, has contacts in the music industry.

“We started booking some smaller acts and even regional acts that happened to be coming around,” he says. “Some of these artists we weren't familiar with, but I would hear their music and say ‘this sounds pretty cool. Let's get them in here.'”

But there were two stumbling blocks.

“A, nobody knew about this place and B, they didn't know about the artists we were booking,” he says. “There were shows with maybe 15 or 20 people here, if that.”

Stockroom East is run by a team that includes Yoder, his wife Lindsay Yoder, and Nathan and Rachel Kain. Ingle, Michael Yoder and Gary Riggs head up Stockroom Live, the concert component of Stockroom East.

“For everyone working here, it is a labor of love because we all have other full-time jobs,” Ingle says.

Ingle's primary job is promoting Christian music to radio stations across the country, the same work he did for Sony in Nashville before moving back to South Bend to be closer to family. He also has started indie record labels and lobbies to have clients' songs placed on TV and radio commercials.

Ingle grew up in Bremen, graduating from Bremen High School and then Bethel University, where he got bachelor's degrees in communications and education. Wanting to work in the music industry, he moved to Nashville, but his first job there was as a high school English teacher. As a side gig, he wrote freelance concert reviews for a magazine published by The Tennessean, Nashville's daily newspaper.

“Working for the Tennessean in their music department was a dream for me,” he says. “I was talking to all these artists, got to go to concerts, and was getting CDs mailed to me for free.”

While covering the local music scene, Ingle established contacts in the industry that led to the full-time job at Sony.

“I'm doing the same thing now that I did for Sony, only I'm doing it independently,” he says.

When not doing that, Ingle is working to line up shows at Stockroom East at 625 East Jefferson Boulevard. Longtime residents will remember Rubin Cleaners at that address before Ziker moved there in 2017. Stockroom's 4,200 square-foot room was once used for dry-cleaning, a service Ziker now farms out to one of its other sites.

Concerts aside, the primary function of Stockroom East is its co-working arrangements and corporate conferences and retreats. It also hosts weddings, baby showers, and private parties.

“There is something here almost every night of the week. Even church and faith groups meet here,” Ingle notes.

For concerts and comedy acts, tables are cleared to make room for chairs, or in some cases, depending on the artists, it's standing room only. There's a stage, a bar, and an impressive lighting and sound system that more than one performer has complimented.

The venue is versatile enough so that “we can bring in a DJ, or a full rock band or a person with a guitar. It all works in this room,” Ingle says.

Ingle loves their location in the vibrant East Bank.

“If there is any place I would want this to be, it is here,” Ingle says. “We're close to Howard Park and the other great places around here. It's nice to have these other places similar to us who are trying to build community.”

He doesn't consider Stockroom East a competitor to other local music venues.

“It's very important to me that we are all building each other up,” he says of the other venues. “I make sure I am aware what his going on at The Rocki Button, LangLab, and even Ignition Garage in Goshen. We want to promote their shows too.”

“There might be some natural competition but it's too small of a community … and I think we all benefit if we are working together.”

See Stockroom East's upcoming shows at StockRoomEast.com.