A wide musical mix has been lined up to go along with all the mixed emotions expected at Palmer’s Bar on its final day of business.
Thirty music acts are scheduled to play for the historic Minneapolis West Bank saloon’s closing-day marathon on Sept. 14, ranging from rootsy pickers like Baby Grant Johnson and Doug Collins in the early afternoon to punky noisemakers the Sex Rays, Silent Treatment and Scrunchies later in the day to a final set by the Twin Cities legend almost as old as the bar itself, Cornbread Harris.
“Everyone is 86’ed,” reads the poster for the 119-year-old bar’s farewell blowout. Other artists set to perform that Sunday include Jack Torrey and Page Burkum of the Cactus Blossoms, the West Bank Social Club, Whiskey Rock ‘n’ Roll Club MPLS, Jack Klatt, Butchers Union, Nato Coles, Michael Gay, Shrimp Olympics, the Heavy Sixers, Spit Takes, Products Band and Butter Boys.
The 11-hour music marathon will kick off at 11 a.m. with a set by the acoustic blues vets who’ve been playing happy hour at the bar since 2009 and seemed to embody the place, the Front Porch Swingin’ Liquor Pigs. After the 10 p.m. closing set by Harris — who has played off and on there since 2008, lately every Sunday — the farewell party will continue outside with a New Orleans-style second-line funeral procession led by the Brass Messengers.
The veteran musician who has served as the talent booker at Palmer’s in recent years, Christy Costello, said the lineup came together based largely on “who we consider family and loyal supporters.”
“Mainly, I picked folks I know who have been supporting Palmers by always playing here no matter if it were inside or out,” Costello explained.
Tickets to the final blowout are not available in advance. It’ll be first-come, first-served; or should that be “last-served”? Cover charge will be $10.
As was widely reported in July, the current owners of Palmer’s are selling the nationally renowned dive bar to a mosque to use as a community center, one of several cases in which a nonprofit Muslim American organization has bought up a bar in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood to convert it into something else. Over the past few years, Palmer’s owners Sarah and Pat Dwyer — who also own Grumpy’s Bar in northeast Minneapolis — have been unsuccessfully trying to recoup money lost at the bar by a former co-owner and business partner.
