Four Montana Natives Will Return To State Touring As TopHouse | News

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Jesse Davis, a guitarist with TopHouse, performs at the Red Ants Pants Music festival in White Sulphur Springs on July 30.

William Cook, a violinist with TopHouse, performs at the Red Ants Pants Music festival in White Sulphur Springs on July 30.

Jesse Davis, a guitarist with TopHouse, performs at the Red Ants Pants Music festival in White Sulphur Springs on July 30.

TopHouse performs at the Red Ants Pants Music festival in White Sulphur Springs on July 30.

Joe Larson, lead guitarist, left, and William Cook, a violinist with TopHouse, perform at the Red Ants Pants Music festival in White Sulphur Springs on July 30.

Joe Larson, lead guitarist for TopHouse, performs at the Red Ants Pants Music festival in White Sulphur Springs on July 30.

William Cook, a violinist with TopHouse, performs at the Red Ants Pants Music festival in White Sulphur Springs on July 30.

Joe Larson, lead singer for TopHouse, sits for an interview with The Montana Standard in Butte on July 29.

Joe Larson, lead guitarist for TopHouse, speaks with fans following a performance at the Red Ants Pants Music festival in White Sulphur Springs on July 30.

Jesse Davis, a guitarist with TopHouse, signs a fan's poster following a performance at the Red Ants Pants Music festival in White Sulphur Springs on July 30.

Growing up, Joe Larson, William Cook and Andy LaFave loved playing music. With four years of age between them, the three Butte locals spent a lot of time together honing their craft.

“Music was always a huge thing for us,” Larson said.

The three even had a band when Larson, now 26, was 11 that lasted a couple of years called Steadfast.

After Steadfast, there was Tomato Soup, which was originally LaFave and Cook, who were later joined by Larson and another friend.

“I’m actually really grateful I grew up in Butte,” LaFave said. “Between the people, the way Butte looks, and the history… you don’t realize at the time how interesting, cool and unique Butte is.”

LaFave said Tomato Soup played at the Silver Dollar and the Venus Rising Espresso House on Granite Street, and called it a “great, welcoming atmosphere” for musicians to start out in.

When Cook went to University of Montana in Missoula, he met Jesse Davis from Kalispell. The two of them started performing in parking garages at night, and only came up with a name when nearby listeners asked what they were called. They eventually came up with TopHouse because they lived on the top floor of a house together, Larson said.

“The band was almost called Irish Jiu Jitsu,” Davis said.

Eventually, Larson joined Davis and Cook in Missoula, where he also went to college.

For years, the band sang covers, like “Sugar, We’re Going Down” and “Fat Bottom Girls,” Larson said. In September 2019, the three of them released their first album, “Hopes and Fears.”

While their genre is said to be a mix of folk, bluegrass, rock, Irish, and pop, Larson said it's probably more folk than anything else.

"But when we started it was kind of our goal to not have a genre," he said.

Soon after the release of “Hopes and Fears,” they moved to Nashville, a long-held dream for them, and lived in an Airbnb rental with one door for about half a year.

Cook said leaving Missoula was scary, because it’s hard to know if people liked them because their music was good or just because the band was from there. “It’s really nice to know people actually like our music,” he said.

A few months later, COVID-19 hit. In a city flush with musicians where many of the performance spaces were closed and they knew no one, the members of TopHouse spent a lot of time working on music from their rental, while many other musicians left the city.

“We rented a 500-square-foot cottage with one door, and the door wasn’t on the bathroom, I’ll just say that,” Davis said with a laugh.

When Tennessee loosened its COVID restrictions, the band was able to take advantage of the availability of performing spaces they weren’t able to get into before.

LaFave joined them about a year ago, he said. He’d originally moved to Phoenix to be a teacher.

“I moved to Nashville to be close to the guys and play music,” LaFave said. “And I fell into playing music with them.”

Their latest album, “Snapshot” was released in August 2021. They also released an Irish EP and an EP called “Middle of Somewhere," both consisting of five songs.

The band is currently working on another EP, hopefully to be released in the next month or so.

Last year, “Sirens,” a song on “Snapshot,” went viral on social media, garnering them more attention than they’d gotten before.

“It just kind of took off,” Larson said of the song. “And started popping up in everyone’s Instagram feeds.” While the band members are enjoying watching their hard work pay off, things are for the most part, fairly the same as they always were, and the most important thing to them is that they love what they do and that they’re having fun together.

“It’s been kind of surreal, but it’s also strangely still the same,” Davis said. “The numbers go up, but we still kind of just do our thing; it’s kind of nice.”

“TopHouse is nice because everyone has a say,” Cook said. “It’s been fun being with Joe and Jesse and Andy.”

“William, Jesse and Andy are three of the most genius minds, musically, I’ve ever met,” Larson said. “And so it’s just a joy.”

Larson likens the band to a small business, with every band member having a responsibility.

“Like anyone who starts a small business … they can put their talents into it, and they have to invest in it, too,” Larson said.

Larson, who has a degree in business management, deals with much of the administrative tasks, like booking the shows and scheduling.

Each band member is now able to scale his non-band job back to part time, a milestone for the band. Aug. 19 will be the first day of a tour where they’ll hit an estimated 17-19 cities in 22 days, according to Larson.

These towns include Salt Lake City; Chicago; Minneapolis; Golden, Colorado; Billings; and of course, Butte.

While Larson, Cook and Davis have toured in Montana – and Butte – before, it will be LaFave’s first hometown tour. Both the city and the state have a special place in the band’s heart.

The band even has a song based off Butte’s history. "Into The Darkness'' is about the Granite Mountain-Speculator Mine disaster of 1917, when a fire started in the shaft of the Granite Mountain Mine, according to the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives.

Although many men were able to escape through other mines that were interconnected to Granite Mountain, 168 men died, making it the “deadliest hard rock mining disaster in United States history,” the Archives said.

Ironically, Davis, the only band member not from Butte, wrote the song.

One of the other band members told Jesse about the disaster, and he went to work, reading everything he could about the disaster, and even including excerpts from letters and notes the miners wrote while they were in the mines.

While Larson and Davis write most of the songs, each band member, naturally, has a favorite. For Cook, it’s “Written in the Rain” from “Snapshot.”

For Davis, it’s “Where Are You,” from “Middle of Somewhere.”

“It hits me in the feels pretty much every time we play it,” Davis said.

Larson said it’s hard for him to choose between a song he wrote, “Vanity,” “Sirens” and “In the Wake.” LaFave said his favorite is a three-way tie between "Sirens,'' "Vanity'' and "Written in the Rain.''

As part of the tour, the band is scheduled to play at 7 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 27, at the Covellite Theater in Uptown Butte.

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