Flood Romeo returns

BROOKINGS — “I don’t think you can force a scene to come to you. There’s Brookings, for example. How many, six or seven permanent bar stages? There was a time where those were pretty busy.”

Toby Kane is discussing what’s the same — and what isn’t — in the Brookings and Sioux Falls music scenes from the 1990s to now. This isn’t just a nostalgia act, though there is plenty to be had for that heyday of creativity and freedom.

This is also about the present, as Kane and Flood Romeo bandmates Monte Amende, Dan Anderson and Darren Matthes are set to play a pair of shows this weekend. The first one, at Phil’s in Sioux Falls on Friday night at 7 p.m., will mark a return to a bar they played often in their heyday in the 90s and 2000s.

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Flood Romeo is working on an album of all-new material. But they are also veterans of that scene, when a group of bars in Sioux Falls as well as spots like Joe House in Brookings and various SDSU stages made for a rich playground that spawned bands like Janitor Bob and the Armchair Cowboys, Kory and the Fireflies, This Wine is Mine and Violet. More than the success some of those bands had back then, artists and fans from that era mainly recollect the scene as a whole — the bands back then had different places to play, to be weird and to screw up before the whole world was watching and, combined, offered some kind of artistic freedom.

That didn’t seem rare in 1995. It does today.

“But you don’t want to be the old man shaking your fist at the driveway, lamenting some time that’s gone,” Kane said. “Because there’s some things that are pretty cool about now, too”

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You can’t talk about this next Flood Romeo show without talking about the 1990s, because of the venue: Phil’s Pub.

Phil’s was inducted into the South Dakota Rock & Rollers Hall of Fame in 2026. The venue at 106 S. Indiana St. in Sioux Falls is back up and running under new ownership — and trying to return to its glory days as a venue where every local act with aspirations of playing original music took their turn.

“My friend Monte (Amende) had been in bands all throughout high school, and he just regaled me with these stories of, ‘We played this flatbed and then we went to the party house afterwards,’” Kane said.

“I think our first gig as Flood Romeo was a house party. I’m sure with cobbled-together equipment. But Phil’s Pub at the time was a sort of easy entry point. They were very cool about giving bands a shot. ‘Can you have someone run the door and make sure they’re ID’d and take the cover?’ And we’re like, ‘I think we can figure that out.’ So we did a lot of things like Phil’s, and then we’d go back to each of our hometowns and try to get a gig in our hometown,” Kane said.

Kane and Amende had performed together as The McAllister Brothers, a humor and country music duo, in Vermillion during and after college. Think an aggressively Gen X Williams and Ree. But the Flood Romeo sound evolved more with the local scene.

“We met Dan Anderson, who is a proud SDSU Jackrabbit, and I met Darren Matthes, who was from Iowa State, all while living in Sioux Falls. They became our new guitarist and new drummer. And Monte remained our bass player. He and I have been together since the beginning. But that was a real cool turning point, because Dan brought a lot of attitude and groove and just power chords and things that we weren’t doing, and Darren brought the funk,” Kane said.

The result was a sometimes bouncy, sometimes jangly mix of what was then called alternative rock and what would come to be called alternative country.

Bob Keyes, former features editor at the Sioux Falls Argus Leader and arts writer with the Portland Press Herald, remembers Flood Romeo as a vital part of the mid-to-late-90s scene in Sioux Falls and Brookings.

“I remember the band came out of the energy of the Sioux Falls scene that was building in the 1990s. And I liked them as a band and as people. They were fun to interview,” Keyes said.

“That was a great time. There were lots of bands, and from my perspective it all felt collegial and fun. Some bands were more serious and had higher aspirations than others, but most of them just wanted to play and create an outlet for their original songs and musical ideas.

“Flood Romeo fit in the latter category. They were fun, smart, and interesting, and it always felt like they were pushing forward. I think it says a lot about the band and the individuals in the band that they are still playing. What they started 30 years ago still means something to them and to the people who follow the band,” Keyes said.

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That sound was created in part at Phil’s Pub, the first iteration.

“Originally, we were really into all that ‘90s alternative stuff: Soul Asylum, Counting Crows, even Matchbox 20 in the later 90s,” Kane said. “But Monte was into very technical prog stuff and well-arranged things. Dan, he was into punk influences like Descendants and things of that nature, and then Darren behind the drums, he listened to it all. He’s a big Eddie Van Halen fan, but he just brought in sort of an R&B kind of snappy drum vibe, where he just had some funk in it.”

“In the beginning, I was kind of singer-songwriter along with some of the jangly stuff, but Dan came in and he just kind of hit people with like a fistful of attitude with his electric guitar, because we had been pretty strummy before he came around,” Kane said.

That sound was captured on a pair of recordings: 1996’s I Broke Everything, followed by 1997’s The Sugar-Coated Truth.

What no one knew at the time, though, was that the scene was coming to an end nearly as quickly as it seemed to have arisen.

The Pomp Room in Sioux Falls famously closed on the last day of 1998. Joe House in Brookings also closed in 1998, and though briefly reopened as The Jackalope Lounge, it never quite recovered the magic of its all-ages heyday, when you might stop in and see a national touring act or you might end up watching friends from high school take their first shot at playing music in front of other humans.

By the early 2000s, there were once again very few places to play for newer, local bands looking to find their sound or even just make a few bucks doing what they loved.

That, along with the usual demands of life and jobs and children and families, put Flood Romeo on a hiatus during much of the 2000s and 2010s.

But each of the last five summers, the group has gotten together to rehearse and play at least one gig. And they’ve been writing songs.

“If we can get an album done next year, it’d be the 30th anniversary of The Sugar-Coated Truth album we did ‘97,” Kane said. “And I told the guys: If we need to press vinyl ourselves, if I need to go all Say

Anything and hold a boombox underneath someone’s window so they hear it, we’re gonna make sure it’s heard.”

And returning to Phil’s Pub will also bring the band full circle.

Under new ownership, the bar found a treasure trove of old playbills, posters and memorabilia from its first go-round as a cradle of local music and steered fully into the skid.

The entrance to the spot is now covered in reminders of that heady era, advertising some bands that made it big and some that never did — but all of whom played their parts.

“They found a stack of posters upstairs that we didn’t even remember making,” Kane said. “It’s cool to have a place that has live music as a destination — not as an add-on. So I hope they have a great run. I’m excited to go back there.”

But mostly, for Kane, it’s a space to once again create something live and in the moment, an urge that — for him, and for a lot of his generation — will never go away.

“I just think everyone, if you’re living, you’re driven by a need to create,” Kane said. “If you’re not creating something, you’re fossilizing yourself. I don’t care if that’s crocheting sweaters or just pulling weeds in your garden. But everybody’s got that urge to make something.”

Linehan is the Beacon’s managing editor and welcomes story tips and comments at BrookingsBeacon@@gmail.com