Another bar closes
The Spill was a haven for live music downtown
The last night at The Spill on Wednesday was a bittersweet evening of music and goodbyes, said a local musician who was there in the crowd.
Casey Bax, a performer who hosts Open Mic Nights across the street at Pappas Billiards, is also a patron of The Spill.
He said he learned through social media on Thursday that the bar would close for good that night, so he headed there.
Bax said it was crowded, and at one point a music set was interrupted for farewell remarks.
“These were heartfelt speeches – it was a bittersweet night,” Bax said.
It was unclear on Wednesday why the bar closed so suddenly. Dave Tobey, who has owned The Spill since 2008, couldn’t be reached for comment.
But the bar had a sign across the front window that said “So long and thanks for all the fish”, a reference to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to
the Galaxy (the title of the fourth book in the “trilogy” by Douglas Adams; it’s a quote attributed to dolphins).
Tobey was the third owner of the bar, which opened in 2003 as a coffee shop that sold records. Over time it developed into a bar and music venue.
Over the years The Spill was known for having touring musicians as well as emerging bands from Peterborough.
On Wednesday night, the folk-rock duo Greenbank (from Thunder Bay) was performing at The Spill on tour.
The musicians – Jimmy Breslin and Craig Smyth – didn’t know they were performing on the bar’s final night.
Part-way through their set, they noticed the bar was filling with people and they learned it was the last night of a beloved venue.
“It was a wild, fully-packed room,” Breslin said over the phone on Thursday.
He said there was a donation bucket at the door, and that people seemed to be pulling together to enjoy the music on what would be the last night for The Spill.
“It was pretty cool to be outsiders watching the community come together for this place – cool but sad,” Smyth said.
The Spill has had financial troubles, in the past: there was a fundraiser in 2010 when Tobey asked the community’s support to help pay off $20,000 in overdue provincial sales tax payments.
About $4,000 was raised, and at the time Tobey told The Examiner he would secure a personal loan or borrow money privately from people who don’t want the bar to close.
If he didn’t pay off the taxes immediately, in 2010, he said he would lose his liquor and business licenses. Meanwhile, Tobey told The
Examiner then that the business had been floundering before he took it over.
He said he “redeveloped” it into an “incredible place where events and culture are happening every night and people are coming out and enjoying themselves.”
But The Examiner also reported that during that time of “redevelopment”, Tobey sometimes had little money left over after paying his staff, hydro and rent – and he’d defer making his PST payments repeatedly.
Still, it wasn’t apparent on Wednesday what exactly had precipitated the closure - and even some friends didn’t know why The Spill is no more.
Coun. Dean Pappas, who owns Pappas Billiards across the street, said he’s known Tobey for years; on Wednesday, he was as puzzled as anyone about The Spill’s demise.
Pappas said the bar had been a welcoming place for new bands to perform and to develop a following.
“Dave deserves a lot of credit: he gave a lot of people a safe place to perform,” he said. “It’s a real loss for the community.”