The Badlander

About Us

One Year at the Badlander
by Joe Nickell of the Missoulian

So a cowboy and a ninja walk into a bar...

Cowboy says to ninja, “Who’s the band?” Ninja says, “I don’t know.”

Cowboy turns to bouncer. “Who’s playing?” Bouncer says, “I’m not sure; there’re four bands tonight.”

Cowboy asks, “Are they any good?” Bouncer says, “Sounds good to me. Sound good to you?”

Cowboy and ninja listen for a moment.

“Are there lots of people in there?” asks the ninja, digging a handful of dollar bills out of a pocket under his black robe.

“Of course,” bouncer says, taking the ninja’s money. “It’s the place to be.”

• • •

There is no punchline to this joke, because it’s not a joke. It is a real conversation, overheard last Friday night at the back door of the Badlander, the Missoula nightclub located at the corner of Ryman and Broadway.

That night, local nonprofit group Forward Montana was holding a costume fundraiser at the nightclub, titled “robotsninjascowboyssuperheroes” - hence the costumes of the two guys at the back door. Over the course of five hours that night, a procession of local bands performed to an enthusiastic crowd that crammed into every inch of the dance floor virtually from first mic-test to final cymbal-crash.

The bouncer’s final words to the cowboy and the ninja might sound a bit self-serving - at least from his employer’s perspective; but there’s no real contest to their truth: The Badlander, which celebrates its first birthday this week, has become the epicenter of a newly vibrant Missoula live-music scene.

But that’s not all that has changed at the busy downtown streetcorner. Just look around on that same night last weekend.

Downstairs, in the former pool hall known as the Palace, hipsters in wacky costumes danced well into the early morning hours to electronic music spun by local DJs. Meantime, next door at the Golden Rose, the hard-drinking crowd swelled steadily until closing time, the din of chattering voices completely drowning out the pinging and beeping of gaming machines at the new, adjacent Savoy Casino.

• • •

Four different bars with four different crowds and one thing in common - which is another foursome: the partnership of Aaron Bolton, Chris Henry, Scott McIntyre and Mark McElroy.

Together, the quartet of 30-somethings jointly owns the four bars and the maze of other real estate that make up the basement and ground floor of the Palace Apartments building, just kitty-corner from the Missoula County Courthouse.

It is an unlikely partnership born of initiative and chance. Before two years ago, Bolton and Henry - both co-owners of EarCandy Music, a small independent record store on Higgins Avenue - didn’t know McIntyre and McElroy all that well.

“I knew Mark and Scott via an old roommate,” said Henry, sitting in the Golden Rose one afternoon last week. “He remembered me because I was always talking trash about how bars ought to be run in this town. So a couple of years ago, Scott contacted me out of the blue one day and told me he was thinking about buying this place.”

At the time, McIntyre was living in Chicago. The son of a bar owner, McIntyre had been exposed to the business throughout his youth, and had spent much of his 20s working in bars. Having graduated from Hellgate High School along with McIntyre, he had long kept an ear to the ground for opportunities to return to Missoula when he heard that Hammerjack’s - the bar that previously occupied the Badlander space - was for sale.

“We got really lucky to basically be the first ones to find out that the place was available; and we were just naive enough to think we could buy it,” said McIntyre with a laugh. “I grew up in a bar, practically, so I knew something about the business, and I had always wanted to try running one. At first we thought the former owner would carry the loan for us, so we thought it would be pretty easy to buy it and just start running it.”

Little did he or his partners know that nothing is ever easy in such a large transaction - especially one in an industry as heavily regulated as Montana’s tavern industry. After the foursome put down earnest money to formalize their intent to purchase the property and its prized liquor license, the owner-financing deal fell apart.

Undaunted, the group put together a business plan and began shopping it to banks.

“It was a total rollercoaster that seemed to always be grinding to a halt or just about to jump off the tracks or going too fast to keep up with,” said Henry. “These guys were just so tenacious, and eventually it started to look like it was really going to happen.”

“Well...,” interjected Bolton, “I remember thinking it wasn’t a for-sure thing even a week before it happened. Remember? Even after the money was in place we were sweating it.”

Henry smiled and shook his head as McIntyre nodded.

• • •

Henry and Bolton were no strangers to the Missoula live music scene. For years, they had produced local performances by touring hip-hop and electronic artists at various venues around town. Through EarCandy - where they basically own the half of the business devoted to electronic music - the two had helped build a coherent community of local DJs, who spun records at underground parties and local nightclubs.

Ironically, though, the initial plan for the Badlander wasn’t to create a music venue - at least, not one that presented shows basically every night.

“Originally we were planning on a small, modular stage that took up a small footprint in the corner and a couple of self-powered speakers and monitors - basically a system that was cheap and flexible, that we could take down or set up,” said Bolton.

“Mark and I had no background at all in the music side of things,” added McIntyre. “It just wasn’t really what we were focusing on.”

But as word spread in the local community that the bar was changing hands, Bolton said he began hearing a loud message from would-be patrons: “We started getting a lot of heat about the possibility of not doing live music, before we even opened.”

“The live music scene was such an intensely under-served demographic in this town,” said Henry. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are places where good shows were happening, and there are still places where good shows are happening. But it seemed like every time something had started to peak in this town, it had gotten shut down or changed what it was doing.”

Indeed, the recent history of live music venues in Missoula is a story of dramatic ebbs and flows. There was, of course, Jay’s Upstairs, the dingy yet socially tight-knit club on West Main Street where a nightly parade of edgy touring bands and start-up local groups played for years, until owner Jay LaFlesch retired out of the business in 2003.

Since then, a number of live-music venues have flashed into the spotlight and flamed out, including the Ritz - which preceded Hammerjack’s in the space that is now the Badlander; the Blue Heron, a large club where the Missoula City Council chambers now reside; and several non-bar performance spaces including Area 5, MARS, and the Raven Cafe. The Loft Above Higgins Alley and the Other Side have both continued to host shows; but both have seen ups and downs in terms of the quantity of events hosted.

Only the Top Hat has survived as a consistent downtown venue where live music shows can be heard more nights than not; but it has rarely catered to the musicians or fans that have finally come to roost at the Badlander.

“We realized at a certain point that there was just a huge demand for a place for more live music,” said Henry. “It became a decision that we couldn’t resist, and we didn’t want to resist.”

• • •

Few local musicians or fans have watched the transformations of recent years as closely as Colin Hickey. The one-time booking and promotion manager at Jay’s Upstairs, Hickey has continued bringing touring bands to Missoula despite the ever-changing landscape, organizing shows at a wide range of local venues.

Though Hickey was tied deeply into the Jay’s Upstairs scene, he believes that the best thing about the Badlander is that “it’s not Jay’s.”

“If you were an outsider, you didn’t always feel at home at Jay’s because it was such a tight-knit crowd of people who were into the same things,” said Hickey. “Whereas I think the Badlander, it caters to so many different people. You can see the most diverse crowds at the Badlander; they do hip-hop and rock and DJs and bluegrass and all that, and every night you see a different crowd. I think they’re very good at making all parties feel welcome.”

At the same time, the space has served as something of a laboratory for the development of new bands. Just ask Thomas Pendarvis, the lead singer of local alternative rock band Good Neighbor Policy. A year ago, the band was hardly known in Missoula. Nevertheless, the band was offered an opportunity to perform at the Badlander, on a bill with Arrows to the Sun.

Since then, Good Neighbor Policy has grown into one of Missoula’s most intensely popular bands.

“We played there the second week that they were open, and since then we’ve probably played there 40 or 50 times,” said Pendarvis. “The Badlander for us was such a blessing; if it wasn’t for them, we’d still be playing house parties and probably not building much of a consistent audience.”

Pendarvis said the venue has helped him connect with other musicians and feel like part of a community.

“I’ve made a lot of connections to local bands and touring bands there, and I think I’ve gained a lot from that,” he said. “At this point it’s like my second home. I’m either there or at work or at home asleep.”

For their part, the owners of the Badlander and its brethren bars aren’t resting in their own self-satisfaction. Indeed, most nights they are more likely to be seen running around the building, packing boxes of beer, mopping up spills, tweaking the sound system, repairing a glitchy cash machine.

Asked when they first felt that they’d hit on a workable concept for the Badlander, Bolton and Henry stared at each other expectantly for a moment before breaking into laughter.

“It still feels like we just opened,” said Henry. “It’s been such a head-down hustle mode we’ve been in, there’s never really been a moment to look up and see how things are going.

“We all have a pretty long-term view on this,” added Henry. “The one-year anniversary doesn’t really feel like much, in that sense. All along, I’ve been thinking in terms of a five-year plan for getting it anywhere close to where we want.”

With that, Henry and his partners launched into a litany of improvements they want to make to the space: better furniture, art on the walls, a new bar in the Badlander ... .

“It’s hard to keep up and feel like we’re making progress, even with four of us working together to manage it all,” said Bolton.

“But it’s totally fun to try,” he added with a grin.