Missoula Music Scene
Future of Missoula’s Top Hat Bar In Doubt After Owner’s Death
By Peter Metcalf, 2-10-09
The future of the Top Hat bar, a long time feature of the Missoula music scene, remains in limbo, after the death of its long time owner Steve Garr.
The Top Hat “is in a time of transition right now. It won’t be closed per se,” Nicole Garr, Steve’s oldest daughter said by telephone Monday afternoon.
Steve left the bar to his six children, who must now figure out how to run and work the place, Nicole said.
“We’ve all been in this bar all our lives. Each one of us grew up in this bar,” Nicole said. And like their father they worked as bartenders or musicians there too.
“Of course we all have a fantasy of coming together to run it,” Nicole said, but now most of them live in other far flung corners of the West and running the Top Hat would require some major readjustments to their lives. Still the family hopes to keep the bar open in some modified way or find an investor who wants to continue the bar’s legacy.
The bar’s late owner, Steve Garr, passed away Friday at St. Patrick’s Hospital in Missoula from natural causes. He was 62. He began working at the Top Hat around 1974 as a bartender, musician, carpenter and about every other role imaginable. A few years after the bar closed in 1984, Steve purchased the bar. It reopened around 1987.
The Top Hat “was everything to my dad,” Nicole said. “It was a place for him to express music. It was a venue for the fantastic musicians of this country and out of this country as well.”
Steve, a well known musician in his own right, set out not so much to run a bar, as a venue for live music, Nicole said. Music memorabilia decorates much of the bar and crowds regularly pack the place to listen and dance into the morning, especially to the blue grass, pine grass or other string jam-bands that were mainstays of the bar’s music scene over the past two decades.
Now the future of this Missoula music mainstay is clouded.
But before any future decisions can be made, the family wants to focus on a celebration of their father. This week the bar will “go black” in honor of its late owner. Beginning at 1 p.m. on Saturday, a celebration of Steve’s life will take place at the Top Hat for friends and family of Steve and the bar. In true Top Hat style, the celebration will contain plenty of music, Nicole said.
An announcement on the bar’s future could be made at that time.
"You never miss your water 'till the well runs dry"
Steve you bum, get back here !
May he rest in peace.
Soooo many great memories at the Top Hat over the years.... Watching Bo Diddly play to a standing room only crowd... the night Molly Hatchet played there was one of the funnest nights my friends and I ever had at the Hat. Matt "Guitar" Murphy was amazing... Pinegrass always pleased. God... theres seriously way too many to mention. Thanks for running the best bar in Missoula the way you did Steve... I hope your family can find a way to carry on the tradition. If the liquor license gets sold to a casino and the place closes, then Missoula is doomed.
Comment By hank, 2-11-09i too saw guitar murphy back in 96 or 97? one of my first concerts after moving from small town eastern mt to Missoula. The Top Hat was the first bar i was able to sneak into. good times.
Comment By Mic X, 2-12-09Having moved to Missoula from the east coast to attend grad school, I was dismayed by my sudden lack of access to contemporary, quality music. Then a girl in my orinthology class, from Berlin, Germany, told me about a cool band playing at the Top Hat called Tarkio. My love affair with the Top Hat (and Tarkio) began that cold November night in 1998. The Top Hat was one of the places that made the long, dismal, inversion-fused nights in Missoula bearable. It might have been frigid outside, but inside the Top Hat it was steamy with the sweat of a dozen hippie chicks two-stepping to whatever band was wailing away on stage. Thanks Steve, for all the great memories, and thanks for introducing Colin Meloy and his talents to a generation of Missoula students. Catch the Decemberists (Meloy's current band) at the Wilma when they come to town, you won't be disappointed.
Comment By George Crowe, 2-12-09Steve was a childhood friend. His dad and mine worked at the White Pine Sash where both were executives under my grandfather A. W. Olson. Steve was in the first band I put together after returning from California where I was going to private school and where i learned to play the electric guitar. The band members were Steve, myself(George Crowe), Leroy Cole, and Glenn Levitt. We were the house band at Post Creek which provided us with many memories. Every weekend the patrons would file out for the Saturday slugfest between a semi pro boxer and a huge Indian fellow. We would form a circle around the two fighters and watch as the semi pro boxer beat the shit out of the huge Indian fellow. Then we would all file back in to dance to the music provided by us. There were many fights at Post Creek, and sometimes the band would join in the fight just for fun.
Later Steve, George Wallace, my best friend for 42 years, Brian Knaff, Mojo moved to San Francisco as Initial Shock. I joined them a year later and we became the "Rolls Royce" of rock and roll bands during the 60
The Top Hat is truly one of a kind ....very much like its late owner Steve Garr. To say that this bar will be missed if it closes is an understatement, what are they going to put in there next ...a Chilis resteraunt? Thats the last thing Missoula needs. The Hat may not have been the most popular bar in town, but I challenge anyone to think of a bar in Missoula that is as well known OUTSIDE of Missoula as the Hat. I hope Steve's kids can keep it going, I've personally met a couple of them and they are as bright and as capable as they come. Longe live the Top Hat!
Comment By terry schoenthal, 4-21-09although i nowlive in ca., my most favorite bar ever was the Top Hat, in good old missouls. your dad became a pretty good friend. i then lived in billings and had a friend molly who moved up to missoula. after bugging me to come visit-- she knew good music would do the trip. i came and discovered the top hat.I think the first time i was there paul butterfield and the butterefdield blues band played. and whenever robert cray played there i was there. as often as i could make it, usually hitchiking, i'd call maggie and say "mag, leave the door unlocked i'm coming up.she worked swing shift at the hospital, and when she got home there was a note on her door.. "hi mag-- at the hat-- ter, and thats where I was.
once i got up there and it was sat night, no band,and I asked your dad"what's up? he told me "terry i know you've come up but we just don't do top twenty, juke box this weekend but hey i promise i'll make it up to you and you know what..... he always did. he was a great guy. and guess what i'm comming up. got a new boyfriend, don'e even know where Maggie is anymore. I;ve been telling denny-my new guy-- about this place, and the bagel carts, malfunction junction, and how much fun it was,planning to be a blast from the past........ anyway please don't close the hat..
hey if you see maggie,who used to work at saint pats, tell her "hey i'm comming up-- leave the dooe open,love ter
so sad to hear the news, the top hat is my favorite bar in the whole world, basically because its such a wonderful place to celebrate the music and to feel amongst friends. Hope that next time I'm in missoula it is still there. If i could I'd buy it to keep it going. peace.
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