by Travis Mateer

The Missoula Children’s Theatre was one of the biggest recipients of CARES Act funding. In addition to this lifeline from the American taxpayer, MCT also managed to use their phone line to speak with NBC Montana. The other big recipient of taxpayer Covid money wasn’t able to muster the same response.

Before getting to the excerpt from the article, you should know that Nick Checota owns Logjam Presents AND the Rialto in Bozeman. I guess he’s taking a page from the Ellie Boldman double-dip strategy of Covid taxpayer enrichment. From the link:

We found so much data, we focused on just one category: live entertainment. That group alone received over $10 million. In Bozeman, the Rialto netted $244,243, the Flathead Under the Big Sky received $656,783. But the two largest recipients were Logjam Presents and Missoula Children’s Theatre. Both received $1 million.

Logjam didn’t answer our calls.

It’s too bad that after getting $1,244,243 in CARES funding, Nick Checota can’t hire someone to answer the phones for his live music empire. Is this son of a Wisconsin multi-millionaire over-leveraged or something?

We can only hope that Nick Checota makes it through these tough times so that he can get back to his culture-production monopoly and the good work of treating local acts with professionalism and properly serving respectful audiences the appropriate amounts of alcohol to enhance the experience of the show.