In beautiful summer here in Missoula, it’s worth pausing to appreciate that downtown, you can find great music at a historic venue, an outdoor festival, or a street corner. Downtown, you can find a delicious meal at your long-time favorite restaurant or an upstart food truck. Downtown, you can find the perfect gift for any occasion, at one of the many stores featuring local artisans.
Downtown, this summer, you might even find yourself.
The community spirit of our city center shines brightly at Downtown ToNight, the Thursday night gathering in Caras Park of musicians, food trucks, local artists, and probably half the people you know in this town. Running from June to August, Downtown ToNight celebrates its 25th season this year.
It starts at 5 p.m., but by 4:45 the choicest parking is taken, the best picnic spots are filling up, and short lines have formed for the most popular food trucks. You’re happily listening to the band warm up and chatting with an acquaintance while getting your wristband for drinks. Steps away, light sparkles off the river rushing by, and kids splash in the shallows of the new terrace while kids-at-heart surf the wave.
Soon, emcee Reid Reimers’ familiar voice echoes across the crowd, introducing himself, without fail, as a third tier local celebrity. “That is my obnoxious tag line,” he says. “I make a joke, it’s a pretty big deal to read off a list of sponsors while people shove burritos in their faces. It’s just to be kind of tacky and add some levity to things.”
It’s important to Reid not to make too much of hosting a concert in the local park—which he has done since 2018—but he takes seriously his role to stage manage and assist the behind-the-scenes producers of the event, the Downtown Missoula Partnership.
The work of putting together the season starts in December with vendor applications, of which the team received about 50 this year, followed by seeking out sponsorships and coordinating bands—115 of those applied. Marketing & Events Director Kristen Sackett is involved in everything from early planning to blown electrical plugs at Caras.
But when she looks out over the crowd on a summer night, any residual stress gives way to awe.
“It does sort of blow your mind for a loop,” she says. “All this hard work in the months leading up and all the sudden the streets are full, the bridge, the riverfront terrace, under the bridge, shopping the markets. It’s all the best kinda vibes.”
For Kristen, the consistency and dependability of Downtown ToNight running for free all summer can’t be overstated.
“We’ve consistently put together this program that’s simple in nature, and more or less the same thing every year, but people just look forward to it,” she says. “It’s food trucks, it’s music, you can just show up and be in the space.”
“The other thing I think is really special is you can go and not spend a dime, you can bring a picnic if you want to,” adds Downtown Missoula Partnership’s Executive Director Linda McCarthy. “It’s really about bringing people together to experience all the things that make Missoula great: good music, great food, outdoor recreation. I think it’s the epitome of who we are as a community.”
“Where else would you want to be?” Kristen echoes. “This sounds silly but I feel like you’re not a true Missoulian if you haven’t come to Downtown ToNight. Only because it is the culmination, or whatever fancy word you want to use, of everything good about Missoula coming together.”
And it’s not just Missoulians coming to Downtown ToNight—tourists visit from all over the country and even the world. “People tell us, ‘We just heard music and we started wandering this way,’” Kristen says. “We’ve had people from other communities be like, ‘You’re so lucky to have this, I wish we had places like this.’”
“It’s not the flashiest and most existing thing in the world, but it’s really important to making a town feel like home to people, and making it feel welcome to people traveling through,” Reid adds.
You might still be enjoying your burrito, adult beverage, conversation, dance party, newest artistic find, surf adventure?—the possibilities at Downtown ToNight are truly endless—when the set comes to an end at 9 p.m. or the summer winds down, both seemingly arriving all too soon. Deb Hicks, lead singer of local funky soul band Joan Zen, is no stranger to this bittersweet moment. She first performed at Out to Lunch in 2005 and her band has been playing the closing set at Downtown ToNight for the last five years.
“The last set is just full of bangers so that people get out there, dance together, get their toes in the grass,” she says. “The weather’s changing, there’s a chill in the air. You see the same people you’ve seen for several decades and we’re aging together. Everything is kind of impermanent and there’s nothing more that everyone wants to hold onto than these last moments of summer.”
So get out there and savor it, and savor each other as we celebrate 25 years of this wonderful tradition.
“I’m so honored to be part of the soundtrack of people’s lives,” Deb adds. “That setting is so idyllic and everyone who comes there really feels the magic of Missoula in Caras Park. It’s a glorious feeling of aliveness when I’m there under that canopy.”
“This sounds silly but I feel like you’re not a true Missoulian if you haven’t come to Downtown ToNight." - Downtown Missoula Partnership’s Marketing & Events Director Kristen Sackett
“It’s really about bringing people together to experience all the things that make Missoula great: good music, great food, outdoor recreation. I think it’s the epitome of who we are as a community.” - Downtown Missoula Partnership’s Executive Director Linda McCarthy