What started as a teenager sharing his love of country music and aesthetics on social media has become a new country bar in Five Points.
When Colton Patterson was a 16-year-old Columbine High School student, he started posting music clips and hand-drawn homages to old country singers and culture to Instagram.
He felt pretty alone in liking that brand of Americana and didn’t imagine many people would relate, or even notice.
“I thought people didn't like a lot of the music that I did and the much older grandpa style of music,” Patterson told Denverite. “But now it's really snowballed and attracted the right people and a really core audience for us that likes old Americana country music and new Red Dirt country.”
Three years later, with more than a million customers and followers, Patterson runs a flag-and-faith drenched brand, selling art, clothing and merch online.
Now, with help from his dad, who owns the RiNo Country Club, Patterson is opening a bar of his own: the Broken Bow Western Bar & Dance Hall, which debuts this weekend in Five Points.
One hitch: Patterson is still just 19. He can’t even order a drink.
The new bar will take over the old Mile High Spirits spot at 2201 Lawrence St. Unlike other Denver country bars with an EDM-dance-club aesthetic, Patterson said Broken Bow will be more relaxed and old-fashioned.
“This place will maintain a more traditional country music feeling, be laid back and a place where you can go and see a true, real, older style of country music and western lifestyle and dancing,” he said.
Bands like the Turnpike Troubadours, Whiskey Myers and other “red dirt” country musicians with an Oklahoma-Texas feel will play the space, Patterson said.
American nostalgia may have become the domain of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign, but Patterson says the dance hall he’s building is basically apolitical. He likened the spirit of the place to Johnny Cash or Bob Dylan, artists whom Patterson said steer clear of party politics — even as both artists leaned into activism at times in their careers.
Patterson hopes the bar is a place where people can get offline and build community with others they wouldn’t normally meet.
“Having nostalgia for the place that you live is something everybody should get behind,” Patterson said. “And I think it's feelings that every American does have … I think it's very extraneous from anything in regards to one political side or the other.”
