A buzzy energy emanated from the front door of the Ivy Room, a small bar and music venue in Albany, on the evening of Aug. 3, 2017. By 8 p.m., a horde of people, most of them in black hoodies and jeans, were standing around outside on San Pablo Avenue. Old friends greeted each other, shared cigarettes, caught up on marriages and divorces and kids. In less than two hours, on the Ivy Room’s tiny stage, Jawbreaker — the beloved Bay Area punk trio who broke up in 1996 but whose cult following grew exponentially in the decades that followed — would play its first show in 21 years.

It was a “secret” friends-and-family show, and something of a warm-up; the band’s official reunion set was to take place in front of thousands at the Chicago festival RiotFest six weeks later. But for a few lucky locals, the night represented the ultimate in unexpected wish fulfillment.

The Ivy Room is tiny, with a capacity just shy of 200. It was known as a great small music venue in years past, but for the last decade, despite various owners’ attempts at revamping the place, it had mostly been your standard old-man bar in a small East Bay town.

For die-hard Jawbreaker fans, in other words, this 2017 show was akin to learning at the last minute that Pink Floyd would be reuniting for a casual set at the local 7-Eleven. Earlier in the afternoon, one such fan was discovered hiding out in the Ivy Room’s bathroom, apparently hoping to stick around until the show.

“It was the perfect place for our band to ease back into playing,” Jawbreaker drummer Adam Pfahler writes in an email when I ask, a year later, what he recalls from the gig. “I mean, it’s a party for our nearest and dearest, how wrong could it go? Stakes were low.

“It was just a room full of friends in this old bar. Intimate, sweaty and loud.”

Ivy Room co-owner Lani Torres, who at that point had run the bar for just 16 months, recalls the sweaty part a little differently. “We hadn’t gotten the ventilation system figured out then,” Torres says apologetically upon hearing I was at that show. “I promise, it’s much better now!”

One thing was for certain: The Ivy Room was back.

As a bar, the Ivy Room is pretty straightforward. Past the appropriately ivy-green awning, you’ll find nine taps, $5 well drinks at happy hour and a pool table.

What’s less obvious to a first-timer is the scope and caliber of events that take place within these walls — and the range of clientele that has followed. Since Torres and her co-owner, Summer Gerbing, took over the place in 2016, the Ivy Room’s calendar has filled steadily with live music in a variety of genres — bluegrass, punk, folk, soul — with a show every night. The queer community has found a home here. Drag nights are not uncommon. On Sundays, there are often two shows, including a country hoedown that draws devoted fans in cowboy boots.

For an up-and-coming musician in the Bay Area, a new small room to play is a big deal, especially as independent clubs like Hemlock Tavern struggle to compete with the corporate promoters booking the Bay Area’s larger venues.

But for a music fan, the Ivy Room has also become a great place to catch an intimate “underplay,” when a nationally or internationally known artist who could play a bigger venue chooses, for a variety of reasons — a guaranteed sold-out room, a backing band getting its sea legs or a set list of new material to test — to play a smaller one. As I write this, punk godfather John Doe, who usually plays rooms like the Great American Music Hall, is taking the stage for one of two back-to-back weeknight shows at the Ivy Room.

And earlier this summer, the Ivy made headlines when Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day picked the venue for a handful of shows by his new side projects, the Coverups (a short-lived cover band) and the Longshot — a rare treat for fans who managed to buy tickets in the minutes before they sold out.

(Although Torres and Gerbing are both music industry veterans, bartender Jason Beebout is largely responsible for the big-name punk connections. Having helped open spots like San Francisco’s Oasis, Beebout is also the longtime frontman for Samiam, a Berkeley band that came up concurrently in the scene around the nonprofit, all-ages club 924 Gilman.)

So it comes as something of a surprise when Torres tells me she and Gerbing weren’t initially looking to run a full-time music venue when they took over the Ivy Room. They just wanted to own a neighborhood bar.

“We were looking for something a little rootsy, nothing new and shiny. We just wanted to run a neighborhood spot that was really welcoming and inclusive to everyone,” says Torres. “We thought maybe we’d do music just on weekends.”

More Information To order: Fresh-squeezed Salty Dog ($10), whiskey shot and an Olympia ($5) Where: The Ivy Room, 860 San Pablo Ave., Albany. 510-526-5888 www.ivyroom.com When: 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. daily, from 2 p.m. Sunday.

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With its kitschy neon signage, small stage and a location at the intersection of two main drags, the Ivy Room fit the bill. First opened in 1940, the year after the nearby Hotsy Totsy debuted, the Ivy Room reached its heyday in the ’90s and early 2000s. Those were the years when it thrived as a watering hole and music venue under the ownership of a beloved local named Dottie MacBeath; her son, Bill, booked the bands.

After MacBeath’s family sold in 2006, the Ivy underwent two different incarnations, neither of which ever quite lived up to their predecessor: one that billed itself as a lounge, and another that involved reclaimed wood and high-end cocktails. Music was often booked on weekends, but rarely did it make headlines.

Torres and Gerbing didn’t expect to re-create the MacBeath family’s Ivy Room. But it didn’t take long for them to realize that their cumulative experience and connections in music positioned them uniquely to restore the Ivy to its former music-centered glory.

“Once we started reaching out to the community, it became obvious that people really wanted music here,” says Torres, who still manages the bar at the Independent. Gerbing continues to work at Oakland’s Fox Theater.

With investments from friends in the music community, the pair installed a new PA system, soundproofed the place, then tore out and completely reinstalled the stage. The result is a blend of old and new. The walls are covered with concert posters and music memorabilia, including paintings of Jimi Hendrix and David Bowie. A California state flag hangs at the back, over one of two leather booths.

On my most recent visit, a small Tom Petty altar is set up near the merch table, opposite a lightbox sign that reads “MAKE RACISM WRONG AGAIN.” Above that, on a flat-screen TV, patrons can see a bird’s-eye view of the stage via Nest cam.

And below all that sits Bill MacBeath’s old pinball machine. Apparently jazz guitarist Charlie Hunter, a Berkeley native who used to patronize the Ivy in high school, still stops in to play it when he’s in town.

As for their reception in the community, the owners say Albany has welcomed them with open arms, mostly. The Hotsy Totsy and the Little Hill Lounge, a dive bar down the street in El Cerrito, have become “a little San Pablo family,” says Gerbing. “There’s a good vibe going on in this area.”

Business on the thoroughfare is booming; new brew pubs and a vegan restaurant now share real estate with the car dealerships and nearly 70-year-old bowling alley that once characterized the street.

More than anything, the Ivy Room’s owners say they hope to maintain a neighborhood feel, while adjusting to the obvious demand for music. Torres tells me they’re planning to take out the pool table and perhaps a booth soon. In order to remain appealing to music fans of all backgrounds and ages, she says, she wants space. It’s one thing to feel jam-packed at a punk show, but the Ivy Room isn’t just for punks.

“The No. 1 thing is we want it to be an inclusive space, where everyone feels welcome — tech workers, skaters, hipsters, queer-identified people,” says Gerbing. “We want a bar full of people enjoying each other’s company.”

If it’s going to retain a bit of old-school Albany, of course, the Ivy Room would do well to retain a bit of grit. It’s a fine line to walk: The bar is becoming something of a destination for shows, but does that make it less of a haven for the longtime regulars who knew it as a place to play a game of pool? A true neighborhood bar should, by definition, be home to folks from the neighborhood who just want to hang at a bar — including those who couldn’t care less about a Jawbreaker reunion.

But by that metric, apparently, so far, so good. Pressed for further reflections on Jawbreaker’s night at the venue, the trio’s first onstage performance together in 21 years, a moment fans — including yours truly — had been fantasizing about for decades, the band’s drummer delivers the following:

“There was an old guy and his dog hanging out at the end of the bar,” writes Pfahler. “I accidentally stepped on the dog’s tail, and the mutt bit me on the leg, drawing blood. Kind of freaked out, I yelled into the geezer’s ear, ‘Hey — does your dog have all his shots? He just bit me.’

“After a couple long beats, the guy looked up from his beer and said, ‘You’re probably all right.’”

Emma Silvers is a San Francisco freelance writer. Twitter: @emmaruthless Email: food@sfchronicle.com