Bar Centro: Keeping ‘Live Music’ alive in Riverwest!

There’s a joke that goes: “I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out.” While it’s not exactly what happened here, Peg Karpfinger and husband, Pat Moore, opened a restaurant and then a jazz club broke out next door.

To start at the very beginning, Peg and Pat were traveling in Europe and they saw that a lot of the places they frequented had “centro” in the name. They always wanted to open a little café like them here in Milwaukee.

So, Centro Café, an Italian restaurant began its seventeen years on East Center Street (‘natch) run as a popular dining destination. They did this without real experience running a restaurant.

Ten years later, when Pat’s good friend and fellow musician, Bill Peterson, said: “You should open a jazz club in the space next door,” they did just that. Again, their knowledge of running a music club was non-existent.

Peterson, whose resume includes playing bass for The Steve Miller Band and working in Minneapolis with some guy name Prince something or other, held sway and was the first of the many musical acts to grace the stage of this very intimate setting.

“If you build it, they will come,” Peg said, tearing a page from the Field of Dreams playbook. It became the couples’ mantra as they launched the venue around seven years ago.

They learned in fits and starts and a DIY mentality that you see only on HGTV. They built it and the people did come. Bar Centro became a spot known far and wide as great place to play.

Not only jazz groups flowed through, but any genre you can name: Pop, Rock, Folk, Latin, Reggae, the Blues…it’s a panoply of players that just keep coming.

Unfortunately, Centro Café will shutter at the end of this month. But Bar Centro will soldier on and remains a beacon signaling music lovers to come in.

The Milwaukee Jazz Institute, which was born just after Bar Centro and before COVID turn everything on its ear, kept funneling groups through in the beginning.

Paul Silbergleit, BD Greer, The GIL Jazz Quartet with Joel Lehman, Anne Davis, Anthony Deutsch, Michael Arndt and Alec Baca among so many others. Isabella Sances, Leslie Vincent and Silbergleit recently had CD release parties here.

“It’s not real difficult filling the schedule (at least three nights a week),” Peg said. “There’s a strong interest already. Friends and fellow musicians spread the word.”

Once someone has played there, they want to come back again and again. Bar Centro feeds the groups after the show and Peg said: “I think they come back just for the food.”

They draw from the neighborhood, of course, but people all over the area will come and give a listen.

With the restaurant just next door, “Some people come for the food and then watch the music,

others come for the music and then eat after the show,” Peg said.

Bar Centro’s model is to have a cover charge (which varies by day and artist) and the band

keeps the entire door. It hasn’t stopped anyone from wanting to play.

Bar Centro has kindred spirits as music venues in the Milwaukee Jazz Gallery for the Arts, The Art Bar and Linneman’s, which has been doing it since the Stone Age.