Stages, Snakes And Cancel Babies: The Long Decline Of Missoula’s Music Scene

by Travis Mateer

Once upon a time Missoula had a vibrant music scene. Venues like Jay’s Upstairs were well-known on the circuit of traveling acts, like the young Jack White who performed a couple of months before I moved to town.

Imagine seeing a 24-year-old Jack White and a 25-year-old Meg White rocking faces in front of a giant banner advertising $1.25 pints of PBR during Happy Hour at Jay’s Upstairs, right here in Missoula. It’s not urban legend, it actually happened on June 15 of 2000.

Now, a quarter century later, the main stages for local audiences to see local bands are the VFW and the ZACC, the latter controlled by Nick and Robin Checota, the sellouts of Logjam Presents who inspired the reptile in the image above.

A recent Kaimin article got me thinking about this lack of local venues, and the trouble our musically-inclined youth get into when they just want to rock out. Here’s a little perspective from the college rag that reports on college culture (emphasis mine):

In addition to the closing of venues throughout the 2010s, such as Elk’s Lodge and an upstairs space in the Union, the COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench into the local music scene.

“It made a problem that was already existing worse, because I feel like [now] there’s a greater disparity and disconnect between the professional big stages like the Top Hat and The Wilma and DIY, local music,” Lakatua said.

The Missoula bar scene, along with venues like Top Hat, The Wilma and KettleHouse Amphitheatre often prioritize touring acts. Venues operated by Logjam Presents, a subsidiary of Live Nation, recently hosted large-name acts like the Pixies, boygenius and Pearl Jam, among others. However, Daisy Chain co-founder Lakatua doesn’t think commercial venues accomplish the point of a show.

“Making [music] about bar culture and drink sales is counterintuitive to me, [and] to the core of why live music is so beautiful,” Lakatua said. “It’s a community-generating event, and I think that everybody should have access to that.” 

I think this is a great breakdown of the growing tension between local musicians and the people, like Nick and Robin Checota, who want to sell big name acts (and booze) to deeper pocketed people (tourists) than cash-strapped locals.

Here’s what THAT segment of the music scene had to say to a college reporter (emphasis mine):

The entertainment trade publication, Pollstar, listed Logjam as #26 of the top 100 promoters worldwide. The Kaimin reached out to Logjam for comment but did not hear back.

Later in the article the ugly phenomenon of empowering cancel babies is referenced as an added layer of pressure to local acts, like Florabelle, a GREAT group of talented musicians who got THIS kind of treatment recently.

It appears that responding to CANCEL pressure is ALSO not worthy of providing comments to a college newspaper about. Fucking wimps (emphasis mine):

The festival will feature popular acts, including headliners Hozier and Kasey Musgraves, who have 48 million and 17 million monthly listeners on Spotify, respectively. Additionally, the festival lineup boasts musicians from Los Angeles, Boston and London. 

“[The festival wants to] use this opportunity as a launchpad to bring in national touring artists,” Osburn said. “But at the same time, we also want [Zootown Festival] to be a platform for local, regional and statewide artists to be able to perform and grow on the festival as well.” 

It previously included Give It To ‘Em Florabelle, a blues-influenced local band, but it was removed from the lineup around the time it received community backlash for frontwoman Cara Schulz’s appropriation of Indigenous art and regalia in her performances. 

Representatives for Zootown Festival declined to comment on the decision to remove the band from the lineup. Without Give It To ‘Em Florabelle, the festival now includes performances from only two Montana-based groups, The Dead & Down and Cole & the Thorns, and only one Missoula-based group, Why We Went West, out of a lineup featuring 23 acts.

To highlight how this same college media platform is helping shoot creatives in the foot by proliferating a degree of cognitive impairment when it comes artist controversies, this piece about “art in an imperfect world” poses some troubling questions about how to navigate the cancelling of a beloved artist, like Neil Gaiman (emphasis mine):

Amidst all the turmoil and change right now, one thing has remained the same — new information continuously comes out about authors, creators and artists.

One comes to mind recently: formerly beloved sci-fi and fantasy author Neil Gaiman. The accusations of sexual abuse sparked controversy about the author. According to the BBC, eight women have accused Gaiman of sexual misconduct, some of which reportedly occurred in the presence of his five-year-old. 

Not only have questions arisen about Gaiman, but also about the consumption of art and problematic creators as a whole. Can you still buy their books? What if they’re second-hand? Is it okay to watch a television show or movie they helped create, since other people worked on it as well? 

“What do you do with an author who has been profoundly influential in literature, who has this dark background, problematic background?” Rob Browning, director of literature at the University of Montana, said about H.P. Lovecraft, a known poet and racist. 

Lovecraft was a fantasy and horror fiction writer in the early 20th century. He is credited with creating the Cthulhu mythos and wrote to the concept of cosmicism, meaning humanity is simply a small part of the whole universe. He was also a white supremacist who named his cat a racial slur and supported Adolf Hitler for part of his life.

With this “problem” identified by a college professor teaching college kids about the grown up world they are ostensibly being prepared to enter (funny, I know), what’s the solution? Find a black person who likes Lovecraft. Then it’s ok (emphasis mine):

Browning pointed to the work of fellow author Victor LaValle, a Black man who loved Lovecraft’s work when he was young, as a possible way to interact with problematic media. 

“He creates a kind of critique of the problematic aspects of Lovecraft, while at the same time engaging with his mythology and his aesthetics,” Browning said. The book in question, “The Ballad of Black Tom,” revisits a particularly racist short story of Lovecraft’s from the perspective of a Black man. 

I wish this was intended as humorous performance art, but it’s not. And, I would argue, it’s a contributing factor to why Missoula has too few stages and too many snakes and cancel babies. This does NOT make for a conducive environment for creatives. As someone getting his first amendment shredded, I’m trying to sympathize.

If you would like to support THIS artist and citizen journalist, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is one way to do it. You can also buy one of my zines at the Loose Moose, or, if you see me with a contraption like this strapped to my chest, you can give me money directly:

Thanks for reading!