"This is what we know about - brewing beer, not concerts," Leathers booms above the din of the machinery that surrounds him.
He strides through a large, garage-style door at the back of the corrugated metal building. Outside, the bright summer sunshine beats down on a vast expanse of lush grass.
"This is it," announces Leathers, scanning the empty grass lot. "It may not look like a place for a concert yet, but it will be."
Leathers, 41, is the president and co-founder of Big Sky Brewing Co. He's also the driving force behind a planned series of concerts to take place on the back lot of the brewery, here on this island of green, smack dab in the middle of the decidedly industrial Missoula Development Park, near the Missoula International Airport.
"The stage will be over there," he says, gesturing vaguely at the southern border of the grass lot. "People can bring their lawn chairs and blankets and sit out here," he adds, sweeping his arm in an arc.
As of last Thursday, the well-watered lawn was the only indication that anything out of the ordinary was in store for Big Sky Brewing Co.'s back lot.
Saturday, a temporary fence was to be installed around the lot. Monday, if all goes as planned, a massive concert stage will be installed on adjoining property.
All this in preparation for a concert Tuesday, featuring legendary roots-rocker John Fogerty (the former front-man of Creedence Clearwater Revival) and Big Head Todd & the Monsters.
Tuesday's concert was originally intended to be the first in a series of four to seven large-scale concerts this summer at the brewery, which moved to the Development Park back in 2002.
Since announcing the series in late May, however, Leathers and company have had to scale back those plans.
Putting together a major concert venue, it turns out, is hardly just a matter of setting up a stage and inviting bands.
"We knew going into this that it would be a new business for us, and that there would be hiccups along the way," says Leathers. "But it turned out that there were more hiccups than we expected."
Those hiccups have ranged from minor zoning headaches with the county, to organizational challenges related to lining up food vendors and security services, to difficulties finding big-draw acts willing to take a chance on the new concert venue.
Most of the organizational issues have now been ironed out.
Leathers hired Truxton Rolfe, a former UM Productions adviser, as his in-house concert venue director. Rolfe has worked to develop relationships with concert promoters - the people and companies who actually schedule concerts and absorb the financial risks involved. Rolfe has also helped herd together a number of vendors and other local organizations that will offer services for the concerts.
Because the brewery can't sell individual cups of its own beer on the premises, Leathers and Rolfe arranged to have two nonprofit organizations sell beer at the concerts. Proceeds from the sales will help support the Missoula Skatepark Association and Brennan's Wave, a whitewater park on the Clark Fork River.
"With all the nonprofits in town, we decided we wanted to try and help groups that were working to develop physical projects that would benefit the community," Leathers explains. "Those two groups have great projects that deserve support, and we're really excited to be able to help them along."
A further headache arose from subtleties in county zoning ordinances, which would not allow the concert stage to be located on the brewery's property. Leathers eventually arranged with an adjacent property owner to situate the stage just outside the brewery's property, in an area that falls in a different zoning district.
Ultimately, the most nagging challenge has been simply finding acts to commit dates to the venue.
"It turns out that most of the promoters we've talked to don't want to book acts in the venue until we can prove that it can work," says Leathers. "They've got a lot on the line when they book shows, and they don't want to put a show someplace where the people organizing it don't know what they're doing."
Leathers hopes that Tuesday's concert will prove that he and his staff at the brewery do know what they're doing.
But he admits that the company's decision to enter the concert venue management business wasn't a logical extension of the brewery's existing business or previous in-house talent.
Prior to this concert, Big Sky Brewing Co.'s only experience organizing concerts was simply as a fiscal sponsor of concerts in Caras Park.
"All of us out here (at the brewery) love music, and we really want to see Missoula get more great concerts," says Leathers. "It's really frustrating that so many big acts come to Spokane or to (the Gorge Amphitheater, in George, Wash.), but they don't stop through Missoula.
"So this started from the concept that we love music; then we looked at the ways to make it work as a business."
That field-of-dreams approach comes with plenty of risk. Initially, Leathers had arranged to purchase a stage and rigging. But with only one concert committed to the venue, Leathers decided that the $200,000-plus investment in the stage was probably premature.
So he's rented a stage for this week's show, and expects to do so for any further concerts scheduled this summer.
"That investment to buy the stage would have made sense and would have been a reasonable risk if we'd known for sure that we would have a series," says Leathers. "But now that we've seen how hard it is to get acts, we'll wait to make sure we can do this before we commit to buy a permanent stage."
As far as the beautifully manicured lawn in back of the brewery goes, Leathers feels he won't have entirely wasted his time and money if a series doesn't materialize.
"Worst case: we've got a nice lawn to play soccer on," he says with a grin.
But to be sure, Leathers expects Tuesday's concert to be a success. With ticket sales picking up in the past week, he expects turnout to be in the 1,500 to 2,000 range - not bad for a concert by two acts that, realistically, have dropped somewhat from the public eye in recent years.
Leathers also stresses that the venue's capacity of at least 8,000 people should make it one of the most attractive places to perform in Montana. The Adams Center, on the University of Montana campus, holds a maximum of 7,520 people. Brick Breeden Fieldhouse in Bozeman accommodates up to 8,000 people.
While Washington-Grizzly Stadium at UM could theoretically accommodate many more concertgoers, it has rarely been used for that purpose in recent years.
And although the brewery is situated in a lesser-traveled section of Missoula, Leathers believes that people will find its location nearly ideal for a concert.
"With good access right off the interstate and from (Highway 93) and from the airport, I think accessibility will be great for people both in and out of town," says Leathers. "People won't need to worry about sitting in traffic for hours trying to get to the concert, as sometimes happens at places like the Gorge."
For those who don't want to drive out of town to the brewery, shuttles will be provided from three central Missoula locations.
Regarding the possibility of more concerts this summer, Leathers says nothing has been confirmed, but plenty has been discussed.
At this point, he's hoping that two or three more events can be scheduled before cold weather sets in.
While he won't name the acts that have "penciled in" possible dates at the brewery, he does offer a tantalizing short-list of "names that have been mentioned that we'd sure like to see here."
Those names include Jack Johnson, G Love and Special Sauce, Journey, Reba McEntire, and Crosby, Stills and Nash.
"We really want to have a variety of acts to appeal to all sorts of different people," Leathers says. "There's so much great music out there, and so little of it ends up coming through Missoula. We'd like to help change that.
"But," he adds after a pause, "at this point we're going to just take it one concert at a time."
Reporter Joe Nickell can be reached at 523-5358 or by e-mail at jnickell@missoulian.com
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