RIP The Bier Stube
Snapshots in Song and Image To A Social Hub and the Last of an Era
I talked about it in a “Hey, Fred” and my Instagram, but I both wanted to include more photos and have a more permanently linked post out in the world.
A great friend and mentor once said to me—and it’s obvious, but I was 26 and just starting to formalize some concepts I instinctively knew—“You get the same booze anywhere. A bar is about the people. We come back because of the vibe and the camaraderie.” And as Anne has often said, “You always go back to the church.”
I’ve been lucky enough to be part of what my pal Gilby called (about another beloved bar on its 25th anniversary, thankfully not going anywhere anytime soon) “A perfect meshing of the staff, the regulars, and the time,” more than once: the Fado Irish Pub from 2003-2008ish, St James Tavern 2001-2010ish, Larry’s (RIP) 1999-2004, Mama’s Pasta and Brew (RIP) 2008-2018, Little Rock Bar (RIP) 2013-2018ish, and at an angle from that, not a perfect mesh but always comforting, welcoming, and always with that je ne sais quoi through various changing of the guard and regulars shifting as the neighborhood around it shifted: O’Reilly’s Tavern, the Ruckmoor likewise.
Of course, what I think of as a perfect bar is a bar like my first examples of it - unpretentious, comfortable spaces where, if you’re not an asshole, you make friends fast, and if you are an asshole, you get called on it. Places you can take your boss and your rowdiest compadre. Places where you’re going to run into CEOs, professors, people who made the Top 100 Scientists for your region, and people who are cleaning staff - various races and economic statuses, and we all develop, find, and affirm love for one another.
For many years, the OSU campus (and the northern end of what’s now the Short North) had a slew of these bars: Larry’s, Mama’s Pasta and Brew, and the Bier Stube lasted past my drinking age (before me included the South Station, Off Campus, and Molly Maguire’s), where you didn’t know who you’d see when you walked in but you always knew you’d knew at least five people and you knew you’d have a great conversation, with a wildly different crowd at happy hour than late night. The Library’s holding on - with some marked improvements from new owner Quinn Allen that retain the core feel and still have some of that older mix at happy hour - but the Stube feels like a nail in that coffin, ground down by development.
It fought the good fight and that fight was always animated by love - for each other, the traditions of the bar and the location, and the world. I don’t have enough words to thank Craig Kempton for running the last 26 years of this almost 60-year Columbus institution, his wife Emily, their two children, and an (extremely incomplete) list of bartenders, door people, and accomplices: Genna, Lauren, Rory, Sam, Rachel, Hank, Ricky, Kenny, Russ, Tyler. I’ve met some of my favorite people in the world in those walls, who I wouldn’t know otherwise.
I thought about how best to pay tribute to the last decade or so I was at the Stube once a week - sometimes I’d miss a week, sometimes I’d make it in two or three times. My thoughts were photographs, you know I like to document things, and music. One of the defining features of the Bier Stube was its CD jukebox. This playlist (linked below in its Tidal and Spotify forms) has as its spine songs I played every time on that jukebox, and it’s filled out with songs that evoke it for me or evoke the feelings when I heard it was closing. I haven’t written up each song from a playlist in a while, this was both a fun exercise and cathartic; I hope it works for at least a couple of you.
If anybody would rather not have their photo included here, please get in touch with me, and I’m happy to take it down.
https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/107f9fc8-fd06-4803-b1b2-2dfc58b81d7f
Eric Ambel, “Garbagehead” [Inspired By] - Not only one of my favorite party anthems, but a party anthem specifically written about partying in a bar written and performed by that bar’s co-owner, about a bar that also had a fucking incredible jukebox and created a similar sense of never-met-a-stranger community, the Lakeside Lounge (RIP). Especially relevant to what I’m doing here, the specific call-outs: “Billy Peitsch at the bar, screaming out ‘yeah, yeah, yeah,’” and the “My Generation”-worthy breakdown on the bridge, “Fuckin’ A, it’s all right, fuckin’ a, fuckin’, it’s Saturday night,” that makes me think of regular and dance captain Andy Taylor, creating an indelible sense of place.
Roy Head and the Traits, “Treat Her Right” [Jukebox] - One of my favorite parts of that jukebox was two pages of seemingly-random year’s “Top Hits” compilations. And this Roy Head weirdo-groove classic is a gem that even as big a music fan as dear friend, occasional bartender, and former owner of sister bar Mama’s Pasta and Brew Brian Galensky said, “Might be the coolest song I didn’t know was on there.” My favorite moment was one of my birthdays: I met Anne after she worked at the Wexner Center - rainy weeknight so just the two of us, more formal celebrating was going to happen on the weekend - shots just appeared and when this came on it felt like the whole bar lost their mind. Bob, a regular I miss and hope he’s doing well, is making an “X” with his arms, people are full-on dancing. That 10 pm Wednesday snapshot burned into my brain to this day.
LCD Soundsystem, “All My Friends” [Inspired By] - Almost so on the nose I didn’t include it. But it makes me think of so many people I watched walk through those doors - showing up for the first time or showing back up after the phase of “Spend the first five years trying to get with the plan, and the next five years trying to be with your friends again.” Plus the various references, the way music was the lingua franca that so many of connected through - my first bond with Rachel, with Darryl, with Butter - and I liked the way the simmering lower-key groove turned into glue between the two harder-thumping jukebox monsters on the flow of the playlist.
The O’Jays, “Backstabbers” [Jukebox] - Certainly one of my favorite songs of all time, repping both Ohio and a reminder that string-drenched Philly Soul always sounds good in a room with wooden walls. But my specific favorite memory: one happy hour, I queued this up, and I’m still at the jukebox finishing my choices, and Dr. Darryl Hood does the handclap and shouts, “What they do!” as the song shifts into the first chorus.
Jesse Malin, “Burnin’ The Bowery” [Inspired By] - Another song about people and a neighborhood by a great bar owner. That first verse alone, “I was wasted late last night. A young girl asked me for a light. Felt like I’d been here before, but the key to life is an open door,” conjures the walking in and sometimes the stumbling out, as does that beckoning, “Come on down, I’ve been burning all that’s left inside of me. Coming down, the generations haunted by the history.”
Cheap Trick, “Surrender” [Jukebox] - Another song I could play and everyone starts nodding. And I’m not sure this is the place where Anne came up with the concept of a “break-your-pencil song,” something so good it takes an enormous feat of will not to break your pencil, to keep going, (a concept settled on when we discussed this song which is not to discount the dozens of great song Cheap Trick wrote after) but it’s damn sure the site where she and I have spread that concept around.
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, “Tears of a Clown” [Jukebox] - Maybe the perfect jukebox song, with that lilting groove and those little touches in the arrangement like that stabbing flute. My memories around this one are mostly Suzette King - our patron saint and first among equals - lighting up. I wish I got a good photo of that well-deserved Suze’s Corner street sign hung above her spot at the bar.
Hugh Masekela, “Grazing in the Grass” [Jukebox] - Another favorite and my specific memory is Darryl and Suze talking about this one in particular, Darryl saying his first 45 was a Ramsey Lewis version of this.
Jerry David DeCicca, “Devil’s Backbone Bar” [Inspired By] - Anyone who’s ever read one of my year-end lists knows what a great songwriter I think Jerry DeCicca is, besides being a great friend. While I’m not sure we ever bent elbows at the Stube - we damn sure did at Larry’s - this highlight off maybe his most accessible album, Burning Daylight, emphasizes a couple of my favorite parts of his writing: finding the universal in the specific and a balance of wisdom and wonder. It also features a good local friend I have spent time with at the Stube, Caanan Faulkner on bass, and drummer Gary Mallaber, who’s on several CDs in the jukebox. That’s all around several songs that felt extremely like this bar, or another vanishing bar much like it, “You know me, I like to have a good time; read about in my memoir. Or watch me double-fisting on a Tuesday night at the Devil’s Backbone Bar. Hey, hey, don’t send me away, I can walk home by the north star; but I failed to notice that it’s still daylight outside the Devil’s Backbone Bar.”
Dave Alvin, “Ashgrove” [Inspired By] - I hesitated on this because it’s about a music venue instead of just (or mostly) a “bar,” but something about Alvin’s story about not trying to recapture your youth but recognizing what’s been lost and what’s still precious in continuing to rise and keep going. Also, thinking of the transient nature of these third spaces - that some people are just passing through, and that’s fine; maybe that’s even good. “Thinking about friends and lovers, how they come and go, like look-alike houses on the side of the road. Full of everyday people, tryin’ to get ahead, tryin’ to figure out where our lives led. We all need something, just to get us through,” in the kind of warm blues rock that always went over well in this bar.
Johnny “Guitar” Watson, “Ain’t That a Bitch” [Inspired By] - This is an homage to the frequently harder southern soul or funk that would get played when Rachel, Hank, or Brian were bartending, and also some extended conversations about the form with Brian, drummer Will Kolhoff, and Andy. Also a more direct stab at gentrification as gets alluded to on some other songs like the previous “Ashgrove” (and its placement has something to do with a beautiful poem Alvin wrote about seeing Watson on a bill with the Reverend Gary Davis that’s always stuck with me, the lines, “I lit another cigarette and tried to look cool even though I was crying.”)
Talking Heads, “Life During Wartime” [Jukebox] - Breaking from the earlier-time-period genres I usually gravitated toward on the jukebox; I stopped in the Stube before that amazing David Byrne set at the Newport the weekend after 9/11 (maybe my first time in the bar, unless my memory’s jumbled) and every time I’d put this on I remembered that astonishing performance with the whole crowd leaping in waves.
Faces, “Stay With Me” [Jukebox] - I mourned a little when this CD rotated out of the jukebox but maybe my excessive enthusiasm contributed to it. This is one of the songs that makes me think about the people I brought into the bar’s ecosystem - the Faces are one of my dear friend Kevin Kunselman’s favorite bands and I’d often try to time this with his arrival. I specifically remember a conversation with Jen Winters and Matt Cooper and Kevin talking about the Faces as a blueprint for so much of the rock and roll we all love that went on for at least half an hour, empties piling on a wooden table. Beyond being a perfect “bar” song in general, with that easy groove, tight soloing, and slightly raunchy lyrics.
Aretha Franklin, “See Saw” [Jukebox] - The Stube had two of my perennial picks for “Best ‘Best Of',” iconic single-disc compilations by groundbreaking artists that I’ve never met a music fan who didn’t respond well to and that as a kid I saw in every jukebox: Aretha Franklin’s The Very Best Of: The 60s and the Earth Wind and Fire Greatest Hits. I went with this one because it’s one of my favorite Don Covay songs - the melody and groove so potent it’s easy to ignore that a see saw doesn’t really go “All around” unless things have gone really wrong, and because of the number of great conversations I had with Craig on slow nights about Aretha.
Black Keys, “Have Love, Will Travel” [Jukebox] - One of a handful of Ohio bands gracing the tightly curated Stube jukebox. This cover of Richard Berry’s classic - in an arrangement that owes a debt to The Sonics’ hit version - was my first inkling there was something more to the Black Keys (I was too much of a snob and too in love with the Fat Possum roster to give it up for the traditional blues that was most of their repertoire at the time). And it lets me remember Little Brothers (where I saw my friends in El Jesus De Magico open for them) and Skully’s (still with us, though now I’m there maybe once a year) a short stumble down High Street, the first two places I ever saw that Akron duo.
Lucinda Williams, “2 Kool 2 B 4-Gotten” [Inspired] - The loping, hip-hop-inflected groove of this Lucinda Williams conjures the layers of memories in this bar and the lyric constructed of a place not so different, images around and also graffiti and signs on the bar walls, made this one of the first “not from the jukebox” songs I settled on. “House rules, no exceptions - no bad language, no gambling, no fights.”
Paul Simon, “Hearts and Bones” [Jukebox] - Another classic Best Of I used to see on every jukebox, and the subject of many
conversations about the value of compilations in a jukebox with limited real estate. Also, because you know I have to have a couple, a classic that I’d always play for Anne - especially when she’d work the Wexner Center or have another happy hour first and would meet me into the evening, remembering a conversation with Anne and Craig (mainly between the two of them) talking about Paul Simon as maybe the greatest American songwriter as that lilting bridge drifted through the emptied-out Thursday.
Ashley McBryde, “Cool Little Bars” [Inspired By] - Maybe a little too on the nose, but I couldn’t bring myself to not include it. “It’s cookie-cutter corporate on this street, so lord; as I sit me down to drink, I pray time just forgets to turn places like this into drive-throughs and condos. Lord knows we need those little holes in the wall for lost souls and old stray dogs. God bless two-for-ones and broken hearts. And cool little bars.”
Watershed, “Give a Little Bit” [Inspired By] - Maybe the bar I’ve spent the most time hanging out with Colin Gawel, co-lead singer (and singing on this one) of Watershed, one of the many great friends I’ve met through Anne. This beautiful kiss-off to certain corners of the ‘90s Columbus feels like a conjuring of all the bars kissed by the wrecking ball on the blocks around the Stube beforehand.
The Meters, “Look-Ka-Py-Py” [Jukebox] - Another of those Best Ofs that was a sign “This is a quality goddam bar,” and never steered me wrong. Three favorite memories of the Stube: a long conversation at a booth with local bass player par excellence and great friend Ed Mann about their arrangement of “Trick Bag;” sitting at a patio table on a beautiful Friday after work with the aforementioned Kevin and Andrew Patton (whose Substack you should be reading) and saying “All right, my jukebox strategy is no ballads, no bummers,” and Andrew deadpanning “Wow, that’s a complete 180.” and this song, talking to Anne’s niece’s boyfriend who was a percussion major, watching him light up and realizing I got to introduce someone to one of the drummers who shifted the course of rhythm in American music: Zigaboo Modeliste.
Mavis Staples, “Can You Get To That” [Inspired By] - There used to be that perfect Staples Singers best of on this juke - unless my memory fails me - but I went with this solo track because it’s the ideal intersection of so many things: seeing regulars down at the river for a blistering Mavis Staples show; Wilco who I’ve talked about with so many regulars in those walls (Jeff Tweedy produced this); and Funkadelic who this is a cover of, specifically the Maggot Brain album, discussion of which cemented my friendship with more recent regular Will Kolhoff.
Sarah Borges, “Tendency to Riot” [Inspired By] - This early example of the fruitful partnership between Boston-based singer-songwriter Sarah Borges and guitarist-producer Eric Ambel, both fits the general guitar-based rock vibe of the bar and makes me those else who stumbled in and found some warmth - and the people who couldn’t keep sticking around.
Rolling Stones, “Happy” [Jukebox] - Another “Anne song,” and one of the highlights of the Keith-singing-lead Rolling Stones canon. Another song I’d watch the mood of the bar subtly shift upward whenever it would come on, smiles blooming like slow fireworks by the time of that perfect Bobby Keys sax solo.
Van Morrison, “Jackie Wilson Said (I’m in Heaven When You Smile)” [Jukebox] - Another signature “Anne song” and (I believe) featuring the same drummer as the Jerry song earlier on this playlist. Played so often I basically can’t separate my memories from the place from that finger-snapping groove.
The Who, “A Legal Matter” [Jukebox] - A classic, frenzied ‘60s fuck-off that never sounds as good as it does on a bar jukebox. One of several songs off that Who best of I would rotate between but probably my personal favorite of the lot.
James McMurtry, “Hurricane Party” [Inspired By] - Maybe the greatest “story song” of the last decade and a gorgeous capture of the loneliness a place like this can salve or could exacerbate, depending on what you bring to it and how you meet it. With my favorite single description of those nights teetering on the brink: “I bought a whiskey for the gypsy and she turned my leather back into skin; just a fleeting sense of that rare suspense I once thought made the world go round. But now there’s no one to talk to when the lines go down.”
Whiskeytown, “Bar Lights” [Inspired By] - Another of my favorite conjurings of those feelings in this kind of space - many times when I walked home or to another location, this would be the first song I’d queue up in my headphones, from that wistful violin and the verse, “Bar lights and the liquor; the way the bottles, they shine; I’ve got five more dollars, drink another. You’ll feel fine,” through that soaring bridge, “Call me up on Sunday for a drink. Call me up on Sunday; call me anything.”
Requiescat in Pace, Stube. And I look forward to seeing my friends elsewhere, but it’s never quite the same.
The Chicago contingent and Anne 
From Left: Kenny, Will, Hank Zaborniak, Steph Katonah
