the music as remembered.

The 400 Bar closed. 

I feel like I must have been living under a rock or something, because when they started talking about it on The Current this morning on the drive in I almost went off the road. It’s not old news, I guess, having done a little Internet searching when I should actually be working, happened in the last week or so as I’ve been off in family-induced oblivion. And I’m kind of at a loss for why I’m so bummed out about it, honestly, but I’ve spent the morning in an emo funk over a shitty little bar that’s tied up in so many of my memories of college and after.

I mean, that’s why, obviously. Seventeen years isn’t an epic stretch of time, but it opened about the time I came to the Cities for school, and I saw so many shows there, the Jayhawks, an epic set by Elliott Smith, Jimmy Eat World and the Promise Ring, Semisonic and the Supersuckers, Whiskeytown and Dr. Dog. So. Many. Shows.

The drinks weren’t great and the acoustics were mediocre but it was a great place to see a show all the same.

It’s Chris Whitley I remember most, though. He played there more than once, but this is what I remember. October, 2004. The last show he would play in Minnesota. I was helping out with merch for that show, got there early and he was running late. His mom had died, that morning, the day before, I can’t remember but I do remember how much sadder he looked, how soft his words were. I remember sitting in the basement of the 400 Bar, signatures lining the walls, sharing cigarettes and drinking coffee out of paper cups. He played this gorgeous, gut-wrenching set that night to a crowd that was nowhere as big as it should have been.

We packed up the van afterward and he told me a few stories that made me cry. I gave him a hug and he was gone, one moment to the next. He was staying at the Holiday Inn up the hill from the bar, and I remember standing at the street corner watching him, his shoulders hunched as he walked, braced against the wind and he was probably sick even then, certainly heartbroken and it physically hurt to watch him move. It was the last time I would ever see him.

It was the last time I was in the 400 Bar.

I moved away and then moved back, but with kids in tow and too old for unannounced 11 pm shows anyway, not on school nights and maybe it’s as well that I haven’t been back since. Nothing is ever like you remember it. Except the music, in my head, in my heart, just a click away.

There was a kid there that night taking pictures, scrabbled down his name and a website that I’m not sure exists anymore but I found a picture he’d taken the next day that was everything about Whitley I remembered and everything about the 400 that I loved. I saved it, and it’s traveled with me ever since. The photographer’s name was Joe Cunningham, and this picture is his.


Hope you’re resting easy, Chris. Thanks for this memory and so many more, 400.