The Heavy Anchor Is South City's Hub for Music, Drinks and Community

It's six o'clock on a Thursday evening at the Heavy Anchor, the friendly south city dive bar and music venue on Gravois just down the road from Bevo Mill. A handful of tipplers are scattered around the place — one at the bar, one at a table, one at a booth — drinking out of the Heavy Anchor's signature Mason jars far below the room's pop-fly-high ceilings and surrounded by the nautically themed paintings that cover the walls.

Those paintings — ocean waves, squids, narwhals, sailboats, lighthouses — were commissioned by the Heavy Anchor's co-owners, thirtysomething married couple Josh and Jodie Timbrook, who opened the bar in 2011. "Every mural is from a different person," Jodie says. "We put an ad on Craigslist saying we'll buy you pizza and beer if you paint the walls."

Elsewhere in the bar area, patrons can play a variety of games: An old Sega console is hooked up to a TV in one nook, a foosball table sits in another and two dozen board games (Operation, Sorry!, Battleship) are stacked next to an Aerosmith pinball machine. And a door on the back wall leads to a totally separate room, a 174-capacity music venue ready to rock with a sizable stage and a set-to-stun sound system.

Two nights after my initial visit with the Timbrooks, two stellar St. Louis roots-rock bands, Western States and Nic Gusman & the Coyotes, played blistering sets to teeming crowds in the back room, while the front bar area filled up with Saturday night revelers, making for two separate establishments. Just before Western States took the stage, however, Josh lifted a two-car garage door, a remnant of the days when the space was a carpet store with the sales floor in the front and storage in the back, and suddenly the two spaces became one rock club.

This multifunctionality and playful community spirit are key to the success of the Heavy Anchor as the Timbrooks prepare to celebrate the bar's 13th anniversary this April. The two Illinois natives (home cooking alert: a cardboard cutout of Michael Jordan stands watch over foosball games) started the Heavy Anchor back when they were dating in their mid-twenties and had zero experience working in bars, let alone owning or running one. "We said, 'We spend a lot of money in bars. Let's try to open our own,'" Josh tells me. "But we had no experience and no money."

The Timbrooks are a cute couple. As I sip on Four Roses across the table from them, Josh is wearing a Heavy Anchor T-shirt on a frame suitable for a defensive tackle, and the willowy Jodie sports a Blondie tee. In the early brainstorming sessions, they considered naming the bar the Bird and the Bear, which would have matched the couple's physicalities. ("I'm glad we didn't do that," Josh says.) Ultimately, they wanted a logo that was visible and marketable, hence an anchor, which shows up on the nautical murals, bar merchandise and the couple's matching tattoos. At this point, Josh pulls up his pant leg to show me the anchor inked onto his calf.

As we talk, the Timbrooks, who married in 2011, tag team every answer, finishing each other's sentences as they talk about their history. Jodie went to school for music business in Illinois and worked jobs in the Austin, Texas, music scene before moving to St. Louis. "I'm not a musician, but I liked being in the scene," she says. "I had a love and passion for it but wanted to stay on the business side of things."

Josh was also a music major in Illinois, focusing on both performance and recording. In 2010, he played bass for Americana singer-songwriter Samantha Crain's band, criss-crossing the country on tour. (Josh no longer plays music professionally, although Jodie wants me to know that he's a good singer. "He has a nice voice," she says fondly, patting him on the shoulder.) Their separate paths took them to the same place: working at the now-defunct Jupiter Studios in St. Louis, where the two met and, in short order, fell in love.

Almost immediately, the pair hatched a plan to open their own bar, despite having no idea what they were doing or any capital to do it with. "How the hell do we do this?" Josh remembers saying during those lean years. "I was doing drug studies for money and was literally writing out our business plan while getting my blood drawn."

By the end of 2009, the pair was getting serious about their startup but kept running into financial roadblocks. "We were so young and had no assets. All we had were crappy cars," Jodie says. "We went to banks for a loan, and they were all like, 'No.'" Eventually, they turned to family for help ("We made a whole PowerPoint presentation," Josh remembers with a laugh), but mostly got up and running with blood, sweat, tears and maxed-out credit cards.

"We were stupid," Josh says.

"Oh, we were so stupid," Jodie echos before amending the thought. "Well, we were risky, not stupid."

The risk paid off. After an effort stalled to acquire the space formerly occupied by Radio Cherokee, the couple looked into a Craigslist posting for a bar called Antarctica, the space that would become the Heavy Anchor. "It was like an underground venue," Jodie says. "Everything was white with these preschool-looking chairs," an aesthetic that Josh compares to the milk bar in A Clockwork Orange. But the couple knew right away that they had found their spot. "It wasn't up and running. We were looking around with flashlights," Jodie remembers. "But we walked out after touring, and I just looked at Josh and said, 'This is it.'"

"We lucked out because [the previous owner] had done all this work in the building," Josh says. "Built a bar, had a cooler, had sinks. Everything we couldn't afford to do ourselves." The couple's dream had been to open a bar, not a music venue. But with the additional room in the back already equipped with a stage, and with Josh's music background, they found themselves entering not just the bar business but the live-music business as well.

The learning curve was steep. "We had to learn the entire business," Jodie says. "You have the unfun part. Payroll, taxes, all the legal permits. We had to learn all that stuff." For weeks, the couple had to scour the neighborhood surrounding the bar to collect property owners' signatures in order to get a liquor license. "Every day, I would wake up, paint the bar, drive around getting signatures," Josh says in describing the 70-hour work weeks of the early days. "I had to fix plumbing, get barstools, chairs, figure out legal aspects, sound gear." Jodie remembers their first booze order to stock the bar. "It was only a couple grand, but we thought it was so much!" she says. "Now it's that much every week."

As we talk, the raucous sounds of a comedy troupe rehearsing for that evening's show prompt Josh to hop up and shut the door leading to the concert space. Bringing in sketch comedy is one of the ways that the Heavy Anchor has kept things interesting, which Jodie says has been a goal from the beginning.

"It sounds cheesy, but part of the name 'Heavy Anchor' is that we want to be an anchor in our community," Jodie says. "We always wanted to do community-focused events. We did farmers' markets for years. We want to be a welcoming and inclusive place. You have to stay relevant and diversify your events. What is the draw? What makes you different?" Sure enough, a glance at the chalkboard calendar above the bar speaks to the variety of daily events, with upcoming music shows, comedy showcases, trivia nights and art themes that encourage guests to get creative. For instance, Collage Night will see the bar filled with magazines, scissors and glue with which folks share libations and construct their own collage masterworks.

On the music side of things, Josh books all the bands, which can itself feel like a full-time job. From the beginning, the two or so shows that the Anchor hosts each week have consisted of what Jodie calls "stuff we like," which primarily means all-original bands that play indie rock, punk, metal and experimental music. "It's gotten a little more heavy in the past couple of years," Josh says, although bands like Western States are also bringing in heartland rock and alt-country styles.

But for all the programming, the couple see the friendly, welcoming atmosphere they have built as their biggest achievement. "We pride ourselves on that," Josh says. "We have yet to ever have a real fight in the bar." A neon sign above the bar gets to the heart of the bar's requisite manner: "Calm the Fuck Down."

So how did the Heavy Anchor survive the pandemic? "We almost didn't," Josh says, describing days of shutdowns and layoffs and curbside booze. "We were lucky enough to partner with our neighbors, another husband-and-wife team, who have a patio out back." He's talking about the Arkadin Cinema, the adventurous microcinema next door to the Anchor. During the pandemic, the Arkadin set up an outdoor screen in the courtyard and the Heavy Anchor sold the drinks.

These days, the Anchor is back up to six employees besides the Timbrooks, including the terrific singer-songwriter Bobby Stevens, who switches roles among bar manager, performer and open-mic host. The Timbrooks now own a home a couple of blocks away from the Anchor.

On Saturday night, as the music blasts from the back room, Josh and Jodie stay busy behind the bar. One gal orders a round of Three Broomsticks-inspired Butter Beers. One dude orders a Sweater Weather, the Anchor's tequila-based specialty drink. Two guys next to me debate about Huey Lewis, of all things, while slugging PBRs. All the while, the Timbrooks keep moving amid the vessel they have created, occasionally checking in with each other, the steady co-captains at the helm of a prized community anchor. 

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The Best Places to See Live Music in St. Louis

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