Iconic Huntsville, Alabama music bar Tip Top Café to open for first show in many years

The bathrooms actually work now. That’s one of main differences between the rebooted version of iconic Huntsville, Alabama music bar Tip Top Café and its vintage version, says Kip Shepherd, who saw many shows at Tip Top back in the day.

During the mid ‘80s through early ‘90s, grimy tiny Tip Top hosted then baby bands like Widespread Panic, underground heroes like Dead Milkmen, roots legends like Bo Diddley, “almost famous” bands like Storm Orphans, and local standouts like Sex Clark Five.

On December 20, Shepherd attended a secret show at the new Tip Top by beloved long-running band Snake Doctors. Because all the licenses weren’t in place then, the show was held as a private party with no alcohol served.

“It sounded really good,” says Shepherd, an administrator of Facebook group “I remember the Tip Top” which has almost 2,000 members. “There was a nice crowd in there and they did a really good job with the P.A. and all that other stuff. I kind of liked it.”

Now, for New Year’s Eve, Tip Top is fully licensed, including liquor, and will host its first rock show in many years. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the show starts at 9.

The bill features two of North Alabama’s best – if not the two best – current bands, alt-rockers Camacho and funkateers Soul Karnival. Tickets are $10 via tiptophsv.com (plus a miniscule 25 cent fee) or $15 at the door.

[UPDATE 12/31: Per the venue’s Facebook page, “The presale tickets for New Year’s Eve have sold out. Tickets will still be available at the door, but they will be limited.”]

Camacho guitarist A.C. Segler is understandably jazzed to open the new Tip Top, whose partners include John Chamness and Evan Billiter, who cut their teeth with recently closed St. Stephens Music Hall, and Trevar Akins, who’s bringing wizardry from his Veloce Pizza at Lowe Mill to Tip Top.

Segler says, “I’m very bummed that the original Tip Top was before my time, but I’m super stoked that Evan and John asked us to play, period. But also that Evan and John are even making it happen in the first place with Tip Top. So it’s gonna be exciting.”

Chamness is in awe of Tip Top’s history and doesn’t take being its new torch bearer lightly.

“I get goosebumps in there sometimes,” Chamness says of the humble cinderblock building. “Just thinking about, man, who stood right there. Like, Chris Robinson stood right there.”

Indeed, Mr. Crowes Garden, the Atlanta band that turned into ‘90s “Jealous Again” rock stars The Black Crowes, with Robinson as their electric frontman, performed at Tip Top.

Chamness adds, “I just want to make sure everybody knows, this is not our take on the Tip Top. This is us doing the best we possibly can to honor what it is, because to me, it is a piece of Huntsville’s music history, and it is an important piece of that history.”

True to that, a list of every band that played Tip Top has been printed out and mounted on a wall in the new version. There’s more than 500 of them.

It’s been a long road here. Real estate developer Bill Chapman purchased the building around 2014. Chapman’s planned Tip Top reboot originally planned a fall 2016 opening. Some internal construction took place.

At one point, tvg hospitality, the group that runs Orion Amphitheater, was involved as a consultant But after eight years passed without opening, it seemed like the new Tip Top was dead before go.

Then this spring, new hope. Chamness, Billiter and Akins signed a five-year lease of the Tip Top building, address 125 Maple Ave. in the Lincoln Mill area. In mid-November, the new Tip Top announced its first shows.

But those shows, scheduled for late November and mid-December, didn’t work out as contractor work and licenses didn’t button up as expected. After nine years though, another month’s wait isn’t that big of deal.

Chapman has been a better than OK landlord during all this, Chamness says. “Honestly, he’s been way more hands off than I thought he would be. He completely just let us go and has been very supportive. We didn’t pay rent the whole time during that renovation, so I’m like, you know, you don’t get that anywhere. The rent we are paying, he gave us a very good deal on it because we paid for all the renovations. And when we need some muscle with the general contractor or with the city, he’s like, hey, I know a guy, and he steps in.”

Lance Church owned and ran the Tip Top during its glory days. His grandfather Calvin Church opened Tip Top in the 1940s. For years it was known as Church’s Tip Top Cafe. Lance purchased the Tip Top from his father Marshall Church around 1986.

After starting with local and state bands, Tip Top began attracting regional artists and eventually national acts, with Lance handling the booking.

In 2016, the amiable Church, then a manager at a local Applebee’s, told me, “Where Huntsville’s located, of course, we’re between Nashville and Birmingham, so a lot of the bands would be at the Exit/In in Nashville and then they’d play The Nick in Birmingham and in between they’d catch us. Or on their way they would catch us.

“And we got a good name. The place was a dive, but the customers in there made everybody feel at home. A lot of the bands would go home and spend the night at different customers’ houses and stuff.”

Although many cool bands played Tip Top, there’s one group Church told me in 2016 he wish would’ve worked out. The venue had been sent a promo pack for Seattle grunge rockers Pearl Jam. “And I guess it took a while to get to me and then they blew up so I never even bothered calling them.”

You can’t tell Tip Top’s story without talking about the bar’s unforgettable doorman, Lanny Taylor. Taylor weighed well over 400 pounds and his personality was just as big. He was frank, sarcastic, smart and surly. A bona fide character.

In 2016, Vira Ceci, a Tip Top bartender in the ’90, told me, “Lanny definitely added a lot to the vibe of the Tip Top, and it certainly wouldn’t have been the same kind of place without him. I really liked working with him.”

Taylor, who later opened short lived venue Lanny’s Downtown, died in March 2007. He’d struggled with a heroin, coke and Dilaudid dependency for years.

Chamness says for the new Tip Top he’ll probably work the door himself although he’s looking at perspective others for later.

Back in the day, there were occasional celebrity sightings at Tip Top, like when actor River Phoenix’s band played there.

There are also myths. Nope, R.E.M. never played there. And while members of Cheap Trick once stopped in to shoot some pool before their concert at Von Braun Center, Cheap Trick hasn’t performed at Tip Top. Then there are the many people who now claim to have been at proto-Black Crowes band Mr. Crowes Garden’s show, way more than those actually in attendance that night.

A City of Huntsville noise ordinance shut down live music at Tip Top in 1995. Around this time Church began leasing out the Tip Top for the next 15 years or so.

In early 1996, the venue began hosting live music again, but quieter shows. In 1997 new proprietor Marian P. Johnson revived Tip Top as a neighborhood cafe.

Around 2010, the Tip Top shut down after a final tenant just couldn’t make it work. In August 2013, the building was sold at auction for $15,000.

The new Tip Top’s guest capacity is currently 93. Once they get sprinklers installed, that will increase to around 200, Chamness says. Besides the three owners, a staff of four will work the venue.

They won’t be doing food for the first few weeks as Akins recovers from recent carpal tunnel surgery. But not pulling all levers at once on a new venue in a hallowed space might be a cloaked blessing.

Chamness asks initial Tip Top 2.0 guests to be patient. “We haven’t had a lot of time to kick the tires on the systems such as cash registers, sound, keg system, etc.”

Besides fully functioning bathrooms, interior updates include an expanded bar. The booths from the past have been removed.

This first show on New Year’s Eve will be a corker. Camacho, founded by Decatur natives Segler and singer/keyboardist Joe Canada, write and play songs echoing greats like Queen and Smashing Pumpkins, but with their own dynamics, fingerprints and soul.

Besides Alabama, they play shows in Atlanta, Virginia, Nashville and Florida. The band also features drummer Alex Powell, bassist Heath Brister and guitarist Mac Macdonald.

Camacho’s latest album “Bandits,” released this year, displays their arena-worthy talents in bold shades. See the title track, “What’s A Memory?” and “Lady Please.”

Drawing from guitarists ranging from Marc Bolan to Dean Ween, Segler says of their NYE show at Tip Top, “We’re hoping this one will be special.”

Asked what it means for Huntsville to again have a club-sized venue focused on original music, in the wake of Sidetracks Music Hall’s 2022 closing, he says, “It means everything.”