Rockey's Piano Bar — Restaurant in Round Rock

We were told to claim our reservation by 8 or they would give it away so we show up at 7:55 and we're literally the only ones there. No one playing at the piano, one or two bartenders, the place was pretty dead. When asked when the musicians would start playing, we were told they'd come out at 9. What we were supposed to do for a whole hour I'm not sure but we asked if they could hold our reservation while we went and got a pizza as they don't serve food. They agreed to hold it until 8:30 for us which was nice. We got our pizza and came back at 8:30 and only three other tables in the whole restaurant had been claimed, so it was still pretty dead. Miller lite was doing a promotion there so we each got a free beer so that was cool. We waited for 9 until the musicians came on, by then it had filled up a bit. The musicians started out ok, they made a few jokes and the music wasn't bad at first. They kept repeating the same "joke" over and over though about how the more you tip with a song request the higher priority it gets played, but saying people should tip tens and twenties, and even "a Benji". Honestly they weren't good enough to get more than a few singles and a few times they came off as rude. I tipped them $10 over three song requests and not a single one got played. They weren't terrible requests either, it was Fortunate Son by CCR, Staying Alive by the BeeGee's, and Old Time Rock and roll by Bob Seger. We tried the Mexican candy shots from the bar which multiple people recommend but they were pretty nasty, so we got two of their other shots instead which tasted like riot juice (literally grain alcohol and gatorade mixed together). When asked for shiner Bock, we were told they only had ziegen Bock, which there's nothing wrong with ziegen Bock I just found it odd that a bar in Texas didn't have Shiner. Then my date wanted to order Irish car bombs and had asked about them earlier, however 30 minutes or so after asking about them we tried to order them and suddenly their Guinness tap wasn't working. By that time the musicians had skipped over all our song requests except for Uptown Girl, and was absolutely slaughtering a queen song (like screeching to the point where I began to feel physically uncomfortable and ill) so we left. Bartending staff was nice, but... that's kinda part of their job too, so idk. I am glad they were willing to replace our mexican candy shots with something else but when closing out I had to get the attention of a bartender who was on their phone. This place had great reviews so we thought we'd check it out, and I don't know if we came on just a bad friday night for the establishment or if it's always like that but the whole night just kind of got progressively worse. Maybe we weren't drunk enough to not care, who knows? Anyways, we won't be coming back for the foreseeable future. We just did not feel like it was worth the time and...

I had so much fun. A table reservation is a must, you just have to commit to one or two in your party to arrive at 8 pm (Friday night) to hold the reserved table. I think personally 8pm was a great time to arrive and start enjoying the live music, break for the recorded music, then have a blast with the actual piano show at 9pm! Both the live musician and piano+drums performers were fantastic. I loved celebrating my birthday here. Something they did here that made a huge difference is the A/C must have been set at 60 degrees. It was almost chilly when it was only half full and then when it was packed by 9-10pm, it didn't feel like it at all -- like most places get so warm with all the body heat! This bar did a wonderful job staying cool during all that.

One thing I'm just hoping they had running was some air cleaning process. I'm pretty sure I got covid from a karaoke bar in Austin for the first time many weeks ago and I realized I was having a similar kind of night here, with a ton of people singing and dancing along to their favorite songs in a closed indoor space. I'm going to have to assume they did because the A/C was working so well!

They let us bring in a pizza from the restaurant/food trucks nearby (not outside drinks of course!) But I would suggest next time we'll try harder to eat before coming. The pizza took 45 minutes to be ready after ordering online and by that time, I didn't want to eat a lot as I was having so much fun participating in the show!

As far as song requests go, I'd have cash or your Venmo/paypal on your phone ready to go to scan the card our pianist passed out at the beginning. I wasn't sure how much to donate and saw a dollar bill with one and a 20 with another. I did 5 on venmo and he played it! I really liked the mix we ended up having of some 80s, 90s, 00s, and some Classics and Country. Never in my life did I think I would see so many people from all walks of life go nuts at a fantastically rapped Eminem's...

I had a really terrible experience here for a few reasons:

They put another person in my party's drinks on my tab without asking me about it and without asking the person that ordered the drinks to start a tab. It was a busy night and I understand that mistakes can be made in a busy atmosphere, so I was very gracious as they rang up the transaction several times trying to fix the tab. I confirmed with them at the bar that night that only one transaction would be charged and they assured me yes. However, the next day I saw the 3-4 pending charges on my card, so I called back to confirm that only one would be charged and they assured me yes again. A few days later, there are 2 transactions that were officially charged to my credit card and another one still pending (none of them the correct amount), and now I'm having to dispute the charges with my credit card company.

The drinks were shockingly watered down and consequently way overpriced. For your reference, I am a 120 pound, tiny girl that has very low tolerance for alcohol. I had 3 shots and 3 cocktails in the span of about 2.5 hours, and left the bar very confused because I felt more sober than when I arrived. When I left the bar, I took a breathalyzer test which showed only 0.02. According to several different BAC trackers, a woman my size should have a BAC of ~0.2 after 6 drinks, ten times more impaired than I actually was. My friend with me felt the exact same way and had a breathalyzer which showed a BAC of 0.03. To claim to serve alcohol and charge the price of alcohol, while only serving people juice is frankly...